video1.0<iframe src="https://www.loom.com/embed/b5371b7dc862448ebb74e63d1f446452" frameborder="0" width="1152" height="864" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>8641152Loomhttps://www.loom.com8641152https://cdn.loom.com/sessions/thumbnails/b5371b7dc862448ebb74e63d1f446452-1655835780161.gif147Welcome to Pangea Academy. Before getting started as a freelancer, it's important to understand what a freelancer is, what they do, and what skills you need to get started. So what is a freelancer? A freelancer is a self-employed individual who offers contract-based services to a number of clients. So, rather than being an employee of a company, a freelancer works as an independent laborer and makes money on a per task or per project basis. So what do freelancers actually do? Because freelancing is such an incredibly flexible form of work, what it looks like on a day to day can vary. For example, some freelancers may specialize in one thing and offer that as their sole service and others may be more generalists and offer a wide variety of services. Similarly, some freelancers may have enough clients to freelance full-time and others may do it on a part-time basis or as a side hustle. But in a very simple sense, freelancers work with clients to provide them with a variety of services. Again, because it is so flexible, it can occur in a variety of forms and look like a lot of different things. But we tend to see freelance work occur in five main categories: marketing design, writing, business, and tech. To get started as a freelancer, you'll want to have at least one hard skill and a variety of soft skills as well. Hard skills are essentially the services you're going to offer the client. So that could be something like creative writing, engineering, web design, or search engine optimization. Soft skills are things that are transferable from role to role and tend to do more with your personality. These are things like your ability to problem solve, your ability to empathize, how effectively you communicate, and your ability to take responsibility when things go wrong. So to recap, a freelancer is essentially an individual that operates as their own business, providing services to a variety of clients. There are an array of services you can provide as a freelancer. You just need at least one hard skill and a few soft skills to get started.