How to Start a Freelance Life as College Student
Having freelance work during your study in college can give you invaluable experience. It can be difficult to get started but you don’t have to worry though. Knowing a few tricks will let you jump and begin your freelance career while in school.
Know the value of freelancing #
Taking on more work will inevitably take up more of your time. Before you start spending more time on freelance work, it’s a good idea to know how valuable the work is to your later career. Here are some points about freelancing:
- Freelancing gives you a taste of real design work, hence you can figure out whether designing is something you want to pursue as a career after college or if you should change your mind and focus on something else. This kind of experience gives you an extra step ahead as you start your career after college.
- Freelancing allows you to build your portfolio into something of quality. In the end, employers care more about the fact that you can do good work more than the fact that you can make good grades in school. That’s the truth. If you spent your college year just to make good grades and never build something awesome enough for you to call it as a portfolio, good luck finding a job with all those theory you got from college without real experience.
- Freelancing gives you an option to make money, which is usually something stereotypically broke college students always need.
If you know just how valuable spending the time to freelance is, there’s less of a chance that you’ll get burned out by it and more of a chance that you’ll see it as a great opportunity that you don’t want to miss out on.
Schedule your time #
Time management is something many college students struggle with. I still struggle with having time management skills (though I don’t have the excuse of being a college student anymore). When you start freelancing, you’ll be adding something else in your schedule to juggle, which isn’t always easy.
The best way to deal with this is to set aside consistent time each week or each day to work on freelance projects. This keeps you up-to-date on your current projects while ensuring you don’t over-commit to more work than you have time to do. Freelancing should help with your college experience, not overwhelm you.
Don’t be afraid to do some work for free as you start #
I know, you’ll call me crazy as i said that. But remember, one very necessary part of freelancing is having clients. If you don’t have any previous work to show, it can be difficult to land your first clients. In some cases, the best way to build a client base is to do a couple of projects for free.
While I was in college, there was almost always someone I knew who needed some type of design work done. I did a logo for my friend’s brand identity, marketing materials for a nonprofit that my friend is involved in and some materials for my brother’s wedding, among a few other projects.
I didn’t spend much time on any of these projects, but they all gave me good experience and helped out family and friends, all while I built my portfolio. But remember, If you’re good at something, never do it for free. Still, if you don’t have a portfolio, how could you say that you’re good?
Look for clients on campus #
Another good way to get your first clients is to look for projects around your school or university. Depending on the size of your school, there can be a lot of opportunities for design work around campus. And the best part is that the people behind these projects are usually specifically looking for students to hire.
At Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), where I went to college, there opportunities in departments of the school (science, business & management etc.), student media, the student orchestra and the event-organizing group, among others. Chances are, there are similar jobs at many schools for students.