Before you actually start throwing stones towards me, just give me a couple of minutes to explain. It won’t hurt, I promise.

I’ve been freelancing for a while and, in general, I think it goes well enough. Of course — there is always a place for improvement and higher income but, well, things do not always work the way we want them to. So, I decided to try something out and, weirdly enough, it actually worked.

I hate lying. I hate when people lie and when I have to tell something that is not true. But life is a complicated thing and, sometimes, we have to adjust. And there was a moment when I had to too.

I was at the point when I wanted to change something in my freelancing. To fresh it all up. It is dangerous in a way when you work at Upwork, for example, and have a decent reputation built through years. You wouldn’t want to sacrifice it all by taking an uncertain step with pretty shady chances for success. Well, I did.

I decided to change my profile a bit and started applying to jobs that do not actually fit my skills. For example, I present myself as a copywriter and translator but started applying for video and audio editing jobs. That is not something I’m good at but I definitely have my interests in this field.

Here’s what I had in mind at that moment:

Ok, I am not an expert video editor but I understand the bases and I think I feel the rhythms.

I am no professional but I can learn. YouTube is free and has lots of great tips to share.

Audio editing is like video editing but minus the video.

I know how it looks and sounds but to be fair — I did not try to get myself involved in some serious video effects and professional music creation. More of cut and paste, make things look and sound better.

While applying for various contracts, I also was studying the subject for better understanding of the process and practised during my free time. I also had to sacrifice my time I used to spend reading comics Yep, those who know me will tell that is a big deal.

Weirdly enough, I actually started receiving responses from potential clients and I kind of lied to them when they asked if I can do this or that. What I did was searching for the requests they had on their job offers and then checked how hard that is on YouTube. Since freelancing does not require instant answers (unless it’s a live interview), you have some time to think over your answers and give a thought out one a couple of minutes later.

So, I started taking contracts that were “out of my league” and requested a couple more days for them to be done. During that time I learned and implemented my freshly gained skills right away. And before you ask — yes, it was hard as hell! Literary! Of course, some small things required pretty much none effort since they were self explanatory and pretty intuitive but some seemed to be requests from an alien nation (no intentions to offend any of the alien nations here).

Now… Was I allowed to do this trick? Well, judge for yourself:

I gained new skills and kind of opened doors for a new profession (still a lot to learn here but I am on my way).

I managed to complete all the contracts on time and did not fail a single employer (I am actually very proud of myself here).

I earned good money and plan to continue doing so.

One of the clients actually said that I did a lot better job than his previous video editor.

Great responsibility and my reputation forced me to go another step and do better job. No chances for failures.

Ok, I am not saying this is something you should definitely do. First of all, you need to know what you are capable of and, for example, if you've been doing translation all of your life and start claiming you can code, well, it does not seem like a good idea. Unless you can learn coding in a couple of days. But, if you let yourself leave that comfort zone and make an extra step, let your brain work and base it all on your responsibility before the client, I am more than sure it will be a win-win situation for all of you. Funny thing — we can do a lot more than we think. So, why limit ourselves?