Most freelancing advice comes from people who stopped freelancing the day they started selling advice. This site is different. I still do the work, every day, at the top level of the industry. Everything here is what I actually do, not what sounds good in a course.
My name is Ian Brealey. I’m from Swansea in Wales, and I’ve been freelancing for over a decade.
The short version of my credentials: I’m a Pro-Verified Top Rated Seller on Fiverr, which is the platform’s highest tier, held by a small fraction of sellers worldwide, and I’m Top Rated on Upwork too, so this isn’t one lucky algorithm, it’s a track record across the two biggest freelance platforms in the world. I’m a Fiverr UK Community Leader, which means Fiverr itself asks me to speak at events and mentor other freelancers. I run Smart Website Designers, a web design agency now in its tenth year, with a 5-star Google rating. And I’ve delivered work to over 1,700 clients across 30 countries, earning more than £350,000 as a freelancer along the way, with over 1100 five-star reviews.
I’m not telling you this to show off. I’m telling you because the internet is full of freelancing gurus whose only qualification is a ring light. Before you take advice from anyone, me included, you should check they’ve actually done the thing. Mine is all publicly verifiable. Go and look.
I didn’t rage-quit my job to chase a dream. I did it the careful way, and that’s exactly what I teach.
I spent years in the corporate and education world, working full time. Freelancing started on the side: evenings and weekends, building my profiles on Fiverr and Upwork one order at a time. I priced cheap at the start, deliberately, to get the reviews in. I focused on getting genuinely good at my craft before pushing myself out there, because I never wanted to be the freelancer whose ability couldn’t cash the cheques their profile was writing.
I only left full-time employment when my freelance income could support my lifestyle on its own. No leap of faith, no burn-the-boats moment. A planned exit, backed by evidence.
Along the way I worked out a structure that I still run today: a limited company for UK and local clients, and the freelance platforms for clients overseas. Two engines, one business. It’s served me for a decade, through algorithm changes, a pandemic and now the AI wave, which I’ve leaned into rather than hidden from.
That’s the journey Freelancer Essentials exists to share. Not “how I got rich quick”, but how a careful, ordinary person builds a freelance career that lasts.
The blog is where the free knowledge lives: winning your first orders, building a reputation from nothing, the tools worth using and the ones to skip.
The Ultimate Freelance Guide is the full roadmap in one place, everything I’d tell you if we sat down for a day, for £9.99.
A 1-hour call with me if you want advice on your specific situation, straight from someone who’s been there.
I don’t just write about this stuff. Here are two recent webinars I delivered, so you can see how I work and decide for yourself whether my advice is worth your time.
Not sure if freelancing is right for you? Rather than guessing, ask someone who’s done it.
his is personal advice, not a webinar recording, and you leave with a plan.
