Everyone has had a moment in their career where they wonder where else they can go. Whether it’s desk-job boredom or interested in new possibilities, it’s very likely that people who have worked in a field as competitive as marketing will have days where they start looking into where else they can take their marketing career. Fortunately, there are a lot of options that are open to people who work in digital marketing. They can open their own company, specialise their skills in one aspect or field of marketing, join an agency or a startup, or break into the freelance market and become self-sufficient doing freelance digital marketing.
Regardless of what choice leads you to changing careers, freelance marketing is a excellent opportunity for people who are interested in branching out of what they already understand and into a new field. The challenges of freelance work may sound insurmountable, however in this article, we are going to explain why freelance digital marketing is a good career to look into for when your day job starts to lose its lustre.
What is freelance digital marketing?
Freelance digital marketing is the process where an individual freelancer takes on a small number of clients handling all of their online presence. From social media, to the handling of their website, from search engine marketing to content marketing, you’ll be their one-stop-shop, so they can focus on doing business.
There are actually, quite a few definitions for ‘freelance marketing’.
Let’s start with the definition of freelancer.
While the word ‘freelance’ implies that it is only available to someone who is already involved in the marketing scene, that is not necessarily the case.
‘Freelance’ working options are available to everyone, from university students just graduated with their degrees to seasoned industry moguls looking for a more flexible working routine and the opportunity to grow their own career themselves.
It can also be people who have taken a leave from work for whatever reason, needing to do something to fill up their time, or people who are in the process of setting up an agency and not willing to put down the deposit down on a building yet.
Freelancing individuals have the freedom to chose where and when they work
Let’s define a number of individuals who would be able to digital marketing on a freelance basis:
- Persons who want the freedom to choose their own work and / or clients rather than what is given to them by their company
- People who are unable to keep a 9-to-5 job due to personal circumstances
- (New) parents who don’t want to dedicate to a full-time job and need flexibility
- Digital nomads, those who don’t want to be tie down to a specific location and roam from location to location
- People who have a limited number of hours to work
- People who simply refuse to work in a company because they feel it suffocates their creativity
- Those who prefer to work from home, or from their own preferred location
Of course, with more freedom, also come more responsibilities.
When you are a ‘freelance’ worker, you work for yourself; not an agency, or a company.
- You are responsible for your own wage,
- finding clients,
- finishing work, and
- billing your clients,
- chasing your clients for payments
- handling upkeep
- dealing with complaints promptly.
Freelance work offers a lot of flexibility, and for some people, the opportunity to expand their network, grow and spend more time with their families, and still maintain a healthy career.
On the other hand, freelancers also have to contend with all the problems that arise during working with clients: rush jobs, client complaints, and needing to chase for feedback.
People who are used to doing this find adjusting to freelance careers easier.
Opportunities and skills
There are a lot of opportunities for a freelance digital marketing career.
Whereas digital marketers working at an agency or in a company, will typically need to specialise, become a champion, or limit their tasks to one aspect, freelance digital marketers will take over all aspects of digital marketing themselves:
- posting to social media forums,
- analysing metrics,
- writing blog posts,
- email marketing,
- even join forums such as Facebook and LinkedIn to join in conversations about specific brands to help their clients reach their goals.
One needs to remember that the individual is typically working for a relatively small clients, who do not know enough about marketing, and so need your to manage and grow their online presence.
Of course, they expect you to lead with your expertise, rather than tell you what needs to get done.
The most successful freelancers are those who are able to grow their clients business through successful digital marketing, without requiring much intervention from their clients.
There are a lot of digital marketers all over the internet, however there is always more need for freelance digital marketing. As brands grow increasingly connected to the internet, and seek new ways to communicate with their clients, these opportunities will continue to grow.
How much does a freelance digital marketer make?
Wages, or rather, income which a freelance digital marketers makes will vary, the same as any job, on experience.
In reality, one has to find an hourly rate which makes sense for them, then have a number of “packages” which are sold to their clients, based on how many hours one expects to spend on that package sold.
As skills, efficiency and productivity of the freelancer grow, their hourly rate can increase to reflect the improved value which they bring to their client.
Since it is a relatively new career type, it is difficult to find adequate information about a specific salary for freelance digital marketers, as there is too little information left.
That being said, Digital Marketing Institute places the salary of a freelance digital marketer that is dedicated to improving and bolstering their career forward at around $66,597 per year.
While this may seem a considerable amount, freelance digital marketers are currently experiencing an upswing in popularity for their varied and dedicated skillset. It takes a lot of training and practice to achieve the digital marketer’s flexibility and know-how, as well as their ability to keep up with the ever changing pattern and peak of the Internet.
Source: Edelman Intelligence Report
Now, more than ever, social media platforms and technology is changing the way the internet does business. This makes freelance digital marketers a more valuable hire than ever, especially considering how new the field of digital marketing is.
While salaries will still depend on location, experience, and time dedicated to the career, you can be sure that freelance digital marketers are on the higher end of the wage spectrum when it comes to freelancing careers!
How do I start?
Starting a freelance digital marketing business will depend on a few factors, chief of which is whether or not you have clients to start with.
Usually, digital marketers who have spent years in the field will have a few contacts ready at hand to begin their business with. If you are new to the field, however, there is no first step better than finding some clients.
The easiest is always to reach out to family and friends and let them know that you are going solo. You’ll be amazed at what you can get out of this one simple ask. Even if you don’t get work immediately, you want to make your circle aware that your are open to opportunities.
Sites such as Upwork, Fiverr, FlexJobs, and other job-based payment sites are a good way of building up early client connections. We actually have a full list of freelancing sites which you can use to find jobs and work here.
True, the amount that is usually paid on these sites is well below the amount that a digital marketing freelance normally makes, however if you have no previous experience in digital marketing, these are some of the best ways of getting experience and, more importantly, some money in your pockets.
Ideally, as you build up a better reputation and clients start recommending you to other people, your prices can increase, and you can start to pick and choose which jobs you want to work on – however, don’t be surprised if it takes more than a year or so to be at a position where you can comfortably say ‘no’ to certain jobs, or drop certain clients.
As with a lot of freelance work, starting a freelance digital marketing business can be difficult at the start.
Job-based payment sites are very popular with freelancers, they are typically quite competitive (so they favour the buyers as opposed to the sellers), and can amount for a sizeable chunk of the business that a freelance digital marketer takes in at the beginning.
That said, there are thousands of other freelance digital marketers on those sites competing for the same jobs, so being proactive and constantly monitoring these sights tends to be the way to go for starting your business.
Start by competing ONLY for small jobs to be able to build a good star rating, some experience and ideally good reviews. Going for the larger jobs will only result in a lot of frustration, aand a lot of time wasted. Ultimately, one needs to understand that when you are starting out, you are at a disadvantaged when compared to others who have already been working in the marketplace. Buyers will be wary of people with no experience.
So you’ll need to start taking small, odd jobs, where you can excel.
Once you have an established reputation and steady stream of clients handy, then there are other things you can do, such as set up a Facebook business page or create a website.
It’s important that, prior to applying to any work, you have a good profile to draw people in. While initially you can use Paypal or other free systems for invoicing and payments, eventually you’ll find it useful to sign up invoicing and payments software targeted towards freelancers, as this can definitely come in handy when you are at the stage of billing clients.
It’s also a good idea to consider having a portfolio on hand to show potential clients. This could just be other projects that have been completed, whether they were done for pay or for personal reasons.
Try to get a positive testimonial from each client where you complete a job successfully, because these can be used to prove your work ethic and results, and close other clients.
It is worth pointing out that the initial set-up and start of a new business will always be difficult. Most businesses will struggle to turn a profit within the first year, so it’s important to have a steady income, or a good reserve before you decide to go for freelance work within any sector.
Another solid suggestion is to start freelancing as a side-gig. This allows you to have a steady income, until you reach a point where you find that your full-time job becomes a constraint to you earning more from your own business.
What do you do as a digital marketer?
There are multiple things you do as a freelance digital marketer.
There’s always the option of specialising in one aspect if the overall career seems to be too vast for what you want to do, or focusing just on the area that you’d like to excel in. It is likely that people who offer a complete service, from set-up to monitoring to reports and everywhere in between, will have a small advantage over people who will specialise in aspects of digital marketing, however this is not necessarily the case.
Initially, it might be good to distinguish yourself from the crowd by working on whatever aspect of freelance digital marketing seems to be the most appealing, and then expanding further later on.
The only problem with this is that there will be other people with the same amount of experience who will offer an extra service for the same price – therefore, it’s good to keep in mind what you are limiting yourself to, and what that entails in the long-run. What you specialize in must have significant value, such that clients would be willing to take on the additional risk of opting for somebody who handles this work only.
On the whole, exercising caution is good for many careers, however freelance digital marketing thrives on an environment where the competitive factor will definitely be a concern and hurdle for many just starting out.
On the whole, digital marketing can be split into a number of smaller facets, such as:
1. Email Marketing
Specialising in e-mail, newsletters, and e-blasts, e-mail marketers are wordsmiths with an acute understanding of current events and specific businesses.
E-mail marketers can shrink their news into an attention-catching headline, and follow it up with brilliant copy and a compelling Call To Action.
A large part of e-mail marketing also includes following up with people, as much as five times in some cases, when you are doing outreach. Furthermore, e-mail marketers should also stay up to date with tools to help with e-mail marketing, such as Mailchimp. These can go a long way towards making your life a lot easier.
Furthermore, it’s important that e-mail marketers diligently clean out their subscriber lists. Inactive subscribers can be removed to make way for newer leads. This reduces your fees and improves your deliverability and open rates, and ultimately your results.
You can also use free spam-checker tools to get your mail where it’s intended to go!
Unfortunately, as more communication moves to the internet, it’s easy to dismiss any mail from an unknown recipient as spam, so your role also needs to find ways on how to cut through the traffic and ensure that your communications are attention-catching and valuable enough to be opened.
You’ll also need to know how to respond to niche issues, problems or trends.
For example, GDPR was a particular problem for e-mail marketers, as people were suddenly bombarded with multiple emails from their newsletters asking if they wanted to receive the same newsletters they’d been receiving for a very long time – leading to dropped subscriptions and quite a lot of messages marked as ‘spam’.
As somebody who is handling the email for your clients, you’d know how to navigate such issues when they arise.
2. Content Marketing & SEO
A good content marketing strategy will focus on creating
It takes dedication and a fast typing speed to create good, current, content – and it’s one of the industry’s most coveted skillsets.
Content marketing is a cornerstone for digital marketing. Whether it’s a blog, product description on a website, a billboard, or an article, people will pay a lot of money for good copy.
The way digital marketing works is different to traditional marketing. Good copy is particularly important for digital marketing as it is what will impress clients the most.
Although the internet age has drastically shortened the attention span of most idle internet users, the prevalence of long-form articles and blogs on the web have remained at a steady rise. Even more so, as more business is conducted on the internet, more pages need copywriting, of any kind.
Writing good copy is only half the battle, however. To make your copy rank anywhere close to bringing in a sizeable chunk of change, you also have to understand SEO.
Search Engine Optimisation is the practice of ranking a blog, an article, or a web page higher in the search rankings. It’s not just researching keywords, and writing an article that will draw in a crowd; it’s also building links with other blogs, optimising web speed, and outreaching the website.
SEO is constant: if an article is dated, it needs to get updated with new information and re-optimised. If the website ranks highly for a while, and then starts to dip, it might be rewritten or expanded.
SEO typically pays a decent rate, even for beginners – the minimum tends to be around $500 per month.
4. Social Media Marketing
Nowadays, the old adage certainly rings true: if you’re not on social media, are you even existing?
People are taking to YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for mostly everything, including their business needs, which means a social media specialist can definitely be a worthwhile freelance career that can keep the money rolling in.
The beauty of this is that it takes quite a skill to discover and create the content which will engage with your clients’ brands.
Add to that Facebook’s constantly changing algorithm, the frequent Ad Manager updates, Google Ads specifications, and social media interaction in general, and you have a career that is ever-changing. It is also very tuned to specific people who like interacting with people, and see how those interactions change circumstances.
If you’re looking at paid social media marketing, this is a whole other specialisation.
Facebook Ads Manager is definitely a beast for most small businesses to handle. Facebook for Business is also time-consuming – particularly in small towns and cities, where all businesses are on Facebook.
As a social media specialist, your job would be to optimise those ads, understand the audience that you are marketing to, and tweak or adjust as necessary. There are courses available to teach you about this, if you need it, however for a lot of businesses, it is a case of trial and error, and practice.
If you’re interested in copywriting and design, this is also a good role for you to use those skills.
Graphics are always useful when targeting an audience, and it’s important to understand those audiences’ desires and problems, and start to market yourself as a solution – pretty graphics will always help, as people are drawn to colour and movement. Similarly, good copywriting is an easy way of getting people to notice you; everyone loves a good story!
4. Analytics
- How do you know if a website is doing well?
- Is your latest article bringing in the amount of viewers that it was written for?
- What are the channels that are driving the most conversions?
- Is the marketing returning a good ROI?
- Is there the possibility of quick wins somewhere?
Analytics takes digital marketing a step further, and goes behind the scenes, looking at the data on the marketing side – this is where everything is measured, where data is king.
Analytics is the practice of accessing data, analysing that data, and interpreting it, in order to come up with a stronger strategy, and a better marketing plan.
Data-driven decisions tend to be stronger decisions overall; if a piece of content is doing particularly well with a certain audience, then all other content can be written for or geared towards this audience.
Similarly, if you are struggling to gain a decent viewership, it would be good to see where the website, article, or forum is struggling: is it because the content is too long? Too short? How could you make it more palatable?
All of this is valuable marketing data that can be accessed through a variety of free online tools. If you’re serious about Analytics, there are also courses on Skillshare, Udemy and even the Google Analytics Academy that you can take, particularly if your goal is to rank websites and bring in more conversions to your clients.
Most importantly, remember this: there is no data that will ever be overused or underused.
Measure everything. Read everything.
Even if you use a free online reporting tool to deliver that data to your clients, making sure that you know exactly what’s going on can make the difference between a good content plan and a great content plan.
5. Ancillary stuff
There’s plenty of other stuff that can be part of your work. Such stuff as video creation for YouTube, graphic design, photography to showcase on social media, as a one-stop shop, you need to be able to procure such content as necessary.
Even if you don’t do this yourself, you’ll need to able to outsource this to potentially other freelancers. As long as your get the work done to the quality desired, at the right price, your client won’t mind whether you do this yourself or not.
Remember, you’re meant to be providing the whole digital marketing package, not the specific items.
9 Freelance Digital Marketing Tips
It’s not as easy as setting up a Facebook page, and getting clients rolling in – there’s a lot of work involved in making freelance digital marketing your day-job.
Here are a few tips to help you along:
1. Keep your day job
While nobody likes to be overworked, bear in mind that it will take time to break into any freelance career.
If you have a day-job that is particularly full-on, consider reducing your time to part time, or finding a career that allows you to work from home. Either way, expect that for about a year or so, you are going to have your hands full with setting up your new business as well as staying at your old job.
However, keeping your old job will leave you with some money in the bank should your career as a freelance digital marketer take a little more time to set up.
2. Find a niche and OWN IT
Realistically, you can ace all of the aspects of digital marketing and put yourself out there as a holistic agent, but consider this:
there are multiple industries in need of marketing, and there is less of a chance that you will be good at all of them. Before you set yourself up in a particular field, take some time to think about what you really want to write about.
Find a niche and excel in it.
Niche industries, such as bathroom supply companies and transcription services, might be more difficult to write about, but there are few people who write about them to begin with.
Making yourself an indispensable part of the operation is key to taking strides forward.
3. Expand your profitable skills
Are you good at writing? Do you know how to animate, or design?
Take your skills a step further, always.
People will pay more for someone who knows how to do one thing in multiple permutations, such as for a blog post writer that can also do research and long-form articles. You’re saving them the time and money of getting two people for a one-man job, and rest assured, when your time with them is done, they’ll remember you!
Also, expanding your skillset is always a good method for staying ahead of the competition. It’s worth factoring courses into your down time to see what else you can learn and market.
4. Find small size clients (who will need you)
Everyone dreams of writing for big corporations and a massive paycheck – but the reality is that most businesses are built on small clients.
As you’re starting out, definitely make sure that you have a list of small businesses you can offer your services to, reduced if necessary.
Most small businesses might not have the budget to afford a larger marketing team, or might not want to shell out the money for it, but ‘freelance digital marketer’ is one person less on the payroll; you’d be surprised at how much of a difference that makes.
5. Have flexible rates (until you can afford not to)
Unfortunately, there’s no way around this one: at the start, your paycheck is not necessarily going to be a lot.
It’s worth remembering that, as your own boss, you also get to set the fees – and sometimes, it’s worth taking less money for the promise of repeated business, especially in the beginning when your client base might not necessarily be large enough to sustain you.
However, keep in mind that once your businesses grows, it’s good to bring in a payment model to go off of for future work, and to gradually reduce the amount of haggling or bargaining you do with potential clients. You might lose some business in the short term, but in the long-run you will have clients willing to pay your fees.
6. Stick to Deadlines and Promises
This is absolutely crucial: don’t oversell your abilities, and definitely don’t oversell your time.
As much as you might want to offer them the best possible outcome for the shortest turnaround, real life crises and problems do happen.
It’s best to stick to a given deadline, and give yourself more than enough time to do the work, than to promise them a short turnaround and have to constantly change the deadline.
Similarly, it’s important to mitigate expectations. Don’t undersell what you can do, but make sure you run through what they can realistically expect.
7. Get Referrals for Repeat Business
Make sure that your clients know to refer you onto other people. This might seem awkward, but it would help to expand your business, and might even help raise your prices.
Plus, it will attract higher-paying clients, but only if your existing clients are happier with your work.
Most happy clients will be more than pleased to pass your work along to other people, though don’t be surprised if you then get inundated with work!
8. Treat your freelance marketing as a business
Possibly the most crucial tip on this list, it’s important not to treat your freelance marketing career as ‘something you do in your spare time’.
If you’re serious about making it into the business, then you need to be serious about all of it, including the very real workload.
Ultimately, a freelance digital marketing career is one of those careers that can be very sustainable, provided you keep up to date with the latest updates in technology, law, and Internet manners, but there will come a point where you will need to make the choice between staying at your job, or going fully freelance.
9. Try out Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is slightly different to digital marketing, but well worth getting into just to begin with.
Affiliate marketing is ‘pay per call’, ‘pay per sale’-type marketing that tends to be quite rote work, but given that the client will pay you handsomely for the time you spend with their marketing, it’s not a job you should turn down.
Your relationship with the “client” in this case, would be very different, because you get paid depending on whether your traffic converts to sales or not, but there are people who are able to run 6-figure businesses on this alone.
You can also use it as a “buffer” for your down time. When you don’t have much work to do, focus on expanding your affiliate income.
How to Find Digital Marketing Jobs
The internet is full of digital marketing jobs, ready for the taking! However, they might not be advertised on specific job boards, such as Indeed.com.
With freelance, it’s even harder to find those jobs, though not impossible.
Jobs that go up on websites such as LinkedIn Jobs and MediaBistro are usually highly paid and sourced, so you can apply to jobs assured that you’ll get a good salary, and definitely a good recommendation to go with it, but smaller job-boards will also have some good opportunities.
Furthermore, check out Facebook!
Besides actual groups around your skills, you’ll find that a lot of businesses will post their media needs on Facebook or Instagram, so if you’re active on social media, make sure you’re following some of the Facebook groups dedicated to freelance work – you might be surprised at what you can find there!
However, there are plenty of people vying for the same jobs. The key is how to distinguish yourself from the crowd.
For example, on most marketplaces, you’ll be competing with other candidates from across the globe. If you’re from the US, chances are your hourly rate is going to be much higher than that of developing and emerging countries in Asia (India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Pakistan etc.), so you’ll need to find a way to make your offer better.
For example, the fact that you are
- based in the US,
- live in or from the same state/city,
- same timezone,
- good work ethic,
- excellent language skills,
- know the culture or niche
are are all plus-points which could easily give you the edge, even if you might be more expensive.
On the other hand, if you’re from a developing country, you need to make it clear that you will be reliable, communicative, have an excellent work ethic, excellent language skills etc.
It’s not enough to be “cheap”.
The Gig Economy is Your Best Friend
There’s no way around it: the Gig Economy is probably your best bet at getting a stable career going.
‘Gig economy’ refers to the practice of working with one client for one job only, and quite a few freelancers find success starting out this way – eventually, they’ll find a client that will go back to them for repeat business, or will refer them to other people, and that will take care of the rest of their career.
That said, it’s unlikely that they’ll stop taking gig work – they’ll just be more selective about where to go!
Check out our full list of freelancing sites here.
Places you can look to for Gig work are:
How to Find Your Next Client
Of course, you shouldn’t spend ALL your time pitching for jobs on such market places and sites. It would probably work best if you chose one or two which you feel are a good fit for you and ensure you build a good profile on such sites.
In the rest of your time, you should be finding clients elsewhere using the below methods.
1. Outreach using LinkedIn / Facebook / Email
Social media is your friend!
Check up on your old clients with LinkedIn, Facebook, or by email, and see how they’re doing.
Alternatively, if there’s a business you think you can sell your services to, you can reach out and offer your services (if you’re starting out, you might want to reduce your rates, just slightly, to sweeten the deal!)
Just find a selection of businesses who you think will fit your profile and start getting in touch.
Email outreach is a skill in it’s own right, so study and research it well before you start your outreach. Remember that most people will be getting tens of emails every single day, so you really need to get the outreach right, if you want even a basic chance of success.
Make sure you keep your outreach short and to the point. Do make sure you “customize” each outreach message, and most importantly, making it about the value your are offering them.
It’s very important you can scale up your outreach. Sending 1 or 2 outreaches a day is unlikely to bring much results.
2. Be generous on Facebook groups (build a good reputation)
Make yourself an active participant in Facebook groups where your target clients hang out (with discipline on time – don’t spend all of your time here!).
No doubt you’ll find a plenty of Facebook groups dedicated to freelance work, digital marketing, or a combination of the two: make yourself known there!
Participate in conversations. Link to your work (with reason, don’t be a pain, don’t spam). Advertise your services when people ask for them (or if you’ve got the approval of the admin / moderator).
People won’t hire you unless they know of you, and today, having an active social media page is key to getting people to hear about you.
3. Engage in conversation / Build relationships
Keep an eye out for business conferences or meet ups in your country, even travel if you have to.
These are good opportunities to network and sell your skills!
This is especially important just because you might find it difficult to outreach to people in your community, so getting out and talking to local business leaders every once in a while will help find you new clients, as well as new audiences, that you can work with.
Once again, there is a difference between going for conferences to build your skill set as opposed to going to find conferences to get more work for yourself.
You’ll likely need to go to different conferences, because the end-goal requires a different frame of mind.
You might get some work from conferences where you go to improve your skills, but that’s a bonus, or a lucky break.
But when you go to specific conferences or events where your target client will be, then you are going with a frame of mind of selling yourself and your services.
The mind-set is completely different.
4. Build a Personal Brand & Portfolio
Of course, all the tips in the world can’t help you if you’re struggling along without a personal brand!
There’s a reason why big companies all style themselves as a brand – brands have increased recall in a lot of peoples’ minds, and if their social media is particularly dedicated, even a kind of personal approach to interactions with their clientele.
What you need to do is much easier: you need to make yourself a good profile page, some scintillating copy to go with it, and a portfolio.
If you’re starting out, you might consider doing some practice work or work for highly reduced rates just to build your portfolio.
For a writer, WordPress is a good way of building a portfolio of writing samples, whereas a stunning Facebook page or Instagram page is crucial for a social media specialist.
You can’t underestimate the allure of a personal website, which can double as your portfolio, and make things a lot simpler for you.
Ultimately, you need to decide what you want to spend on your portfolio and profile, but given that you are a freelance worker, it’s worth spending a little more money to get people to notice you.
5. Know how to Pitch
Pitching your skills is going to become a big part of your life now that you’re a freelance digital marketer.
It’s important that you understand how to pitch to clients, particularly in fields where you are going up against another client, who might have better rates or more experience.
Crucially, and this is a mistake which can kill your business, is this.
DO NOT make the pitch about you. Make it about how you can help improve the goals of the business.
Your skills are important, but pitches are a dime a dozen. Pitches which focus on the business on the other hand, are much more rare.
Questions to ask yourself can be found all around the internet – we particularly like this one.
Some things to consider when pitching is this: how do your ideas meet the client’s goals? Are they under budget? Will you require any more money than what they’re offering? What can you give them that’s different to other clients?
PROs and CONs
Freelance work of any kind is full of pros and cons, so it’s important we go over them before you make the final plunge.
Let’s start with the good stuff:
- Be your own boss!
- Choose which clients to work with, and manage your own time.
- Reduce daily commutes to almost zero by working from home.
- Bored of your house? Go out and work in a coffee shop or a co-working space! The possibilities are endless, so long as you have a decent internet signal.
- You don’t have to be in the same country as your clients – you can live anywhere.
Sounds nice, right?
Then here’s the stuff that might not be so great:
- You won’t make the same amount every month, so some months may be stressful while you’re trying to make up enough money for rent and utilities.
- You have to pay for everything your company might normally pay for, such as social security, retirement, and health insurance.
- You will have to be responsible for everything yourself (even if you outsource it, you will need to own it as your own), no matter how boring or out of your niche it is.
- It can get lonely unless you find ways to mingle.
What will my daily schedule look like?
Here is what a typical day as a freelance digital marketer could look like:
- Wake up at any time.
- Answer client emails.
- Create a marketing strategy.
- Monitor running ads.
- Create new ads.
- Set up KPIs for a new client.
- Write a blog post.
- Create a PDF or a presentation for promotional use.
- Update your website and portfolio.
- Design a case study.
- Write a newsletter.
- Send emails out to existing clients.
- Look for new work on job boards.
- Expand your skills using free courses online.
- Design a website.
- Create new social media pages.
- Improve conversions.
- Bill clients.
- Discuss next steps with clients.
- Optimise a blog post for SEO.
- Build backlinks.
- Join in discussions on online forums.
While this seems like a lot, if you learn to balance your time and improve your skills, it does not necessarily mean that you’ll be working 12 hour days just to get all your work done.
Alternative Resources
While we’ve tried to made this guide as comprehensive as possible, we understand that one would need additional guidance on certain topics:
5 Cold Email Templates Which Will Get You Warm Leads (Close.com)
Conclusion
Choosing to invest in a freelance digital marketing career is probably one of the best things you’ll do, we have absolutely no doubt about that. The important thing is that you plan this out carefully, so that you can handle and prepare for the stumbling blocks, rather than getting blind-sided by them.
But we have absolutely no doubt that freelancing as your next career step and getting yourself out of there will definitely take you places.
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