You’re ready to start freelancing and secure your first client as an independent, but there’s only one problem: you don’t have any previous client projects to lean on. 

When you’re in the early stages of your freelance business, you might not have a portfolio of work you can show potential clients. But not to worry! We all have to start somewhere. There are plenty of ways you can showcase your skills and expertise without having any projects or case studies to show for it yet.

Here’s how to get your first client without a freelance portfolio.

Can I Freelance With No Experience?

This is a question many people have asked themselves before taking the leap into freelancing, so you’re not alone if you’ve had this thought. The short answer is yes. No matter your background or which freelance vertical you want to pursue, you’ve likely had *some* experience that you can apply to freelancing.

For example, if your career thus far has been in marketing, you’ve likely dabbled in a little bit of everything from emails to copywriting to social media. This means you can apply any of these skills to freelance work. You can go all in as a freelance email marketer, or cover a range of services with a marketing retainer.

Not to mention, chances are, if you’re asking yourself this, you already have the entrepreneurial mindset needed to start a freelance business. Most people are surprised by how much business skill goes into freelancing. But don’t worry, you don’t need to have a business major to be a freelancer. All of the business aspects, from sales to managing your finances, are something that you can learn as you go.

5 Ways to Start Freelancing With No Experience

1. Reach out to your network

When you’re ready to dive into the world of freelancing and land your first client, one of the first steps is to reach out to your network.

Your network includes anyone you’ve worked with throughout your career: managers, co-workers, and collaborators. It also can include friends and family. Your network is essentially anyone who can attest to your skills and experience and is open to making an intro for you!

When sharing the news or reaching out to people, the key is to be specific with your ask. Let your network know exactly what type of client or work you’re looking for, and give them a refresher on your work background.

Whether you make an announcement on social media or reach out directly to individuals, let them know you’re open to working in X industry, you offer X services, and you’re available to take on new clients starting on X date.

2. Create mock projects

If you don’t have any projects to lean on, then make them! A mock project gives you the freedom to create something that showcases all of your skills.

For example, let’s say you’re an SEO consultant and you want to secure clients who need their websites SEO-optimized. Build your own website if you don’t already have one, and treat it like a client project. Apply your SEO skills to optimize your own website and improve your search rankings. Use your own website as a case study that you can present to potential clients.

Whether you build your own website, design a brand identity for a made-up company, or create a mock social media strategy for a brand you love, make it clear that the project was not for a real client. Transparency is key to building relationships.

3. Get social

Love it or hate it, social media is a valuable tool for making connections and building a personal brand — which are two things necessary to do when you want to start freelancing without experience.

Get active on social media to grow your network and promote your services. Twitter and LinkedIn are great places to get started if you want to share insightful content. If you don’t already have one, create a freelance LinkedIn profile. Since you might not have any freelance projects to share yet, share tips and insights for your industry as a way to position yourself as a thought leader instead.

4. Take a certification course

Another way to build credibility and showcase your expertise without any projects in your portfolio is to get certified.

Certifications are a great way to level-up your business and allow you to prove that you have the skills and knowledge even when you’re just getting started. 

If you’re in marketing, HubSpot Academy offers certifications for a range of marketing topics like digital advertising and social media marketing. There are also SEO certifications from Moz, developer certifications from Adobe, and a range of offerings from Google, Coursera, and LinkedIn Learning.

5. Team up with another freelancer

Building up your business can take some time, so it may be helpful to ease into client work by teaming up with another freelancer.

Partnering with a fellow freelancer allows you to gain experience with client work without having to necessarily secure the client yourself.

For example, if you’re an SEO consultant, try to make connections with website designers and developers who may want to bring you on for a website development project that they’ve already secured.

Plus, once the project wraps up, not only will you have something to add to your portfolio, but you may have created a partnership out of it, too! It’s a win-win.

3 Tools You Need to Start Freelancing

Once you start building your portfolio and growing your freelance network, you’ll be on your way to landing your first client — even without any experience. But since you’re new to freelancing, there are a few more tools you’ll need to turn your first freelance project into a thriving freelance business.

Here are a few tools that can help you as you’re getting started with freelancing.

Pricing recommendations

Figuring out your freelance rate or pricing is one of the most challenging aspects of the job. That feeling is compounded when you don’t have any freelance experience yet. To help with this, turn to other freelancers to see what they’re charging for similar services or projects. Not sure where to find this information? Our scope of work template library is a great place to start. 

Our library includes over 150 scope of work templates for all types of freelance projects, from marketing to design to web development. In addition to pricing recommendations that have been crowdsourced from thousands of freelancers, these templates provide a solid framework for how to structure your services and proposals.

Freelance community

Being around a community of freelancers is a great way to learn the ins and outs if you have no experience. Freelance Slack groups are a great way to make connections on a more individual level when you’re getting started. One of the biggest benefits of joining an online freelance community is learning from other freelancers and asking questions about everything from creating a portfolio to landing clients.

Invoicing tool

After you land your first client and complete your first freelance project, it’s time to set up a way to get paid. To get paid for your freelance work, you typically need to send an invoice to your client. Your invoice should include everything your scope outlined as well as the pricing for each deliverable. It also helps to have branding on your invoice if you want to come across as more professional to your clients. 

Next, you need to ensure there are several payment methods available to make it easy to accept payments. You can use Wethos as your all-in-one invoicing platform to help streamline your entire invoicing process as you start your freelancing business.

You don’t need a background or education in freelancing to get started. Freelancing with no experience is doable, even without a portfolio. By networking with other freelancers and peers, getting certified in relevant skills, and tapping into the insights of scope of work templates with pricing recommendations, you’ll be on your way to a full-time freelancing career in no time.

Ready to start freelancing? Get the tools you need by signing up for Wethos.