Most startup fashion funding advice sucks. The best way to get money without debt? Freelance on the side. It’s fast, flexible, and pays off big.

Get Money For Your Fashion Brand By Freelancing On The Side

Not many people talk about this strategy – but I’ve interviewed people on my Fashion Designers Get Paid Podcast who’ve done exactly this.

🎧 Like Mat Booth, who funded his men’s luggage and accessories brand with his freelance income.

🎧 Christina Yother who freelanced on the side and invested the cash into her clothing line.

🎧 And Kristen Anderson, who built a freelance fashion design agency and is building her brand on the side.

You’ve probably read obvious advice like:

• Take out a loan / put it on a credit card (interest quickly adds up)
• Crowdfund on Kickstarter or GoFundMe (not as easy as you think)

Here’s a story from my podcast guest Colleen Monroe who had a wildly successful Kickstarter but struggled to make ends meet.

• Hit up friends and family (a bad idea)
• Land a rich investor (super, duper, duper hard)

But if you go the freelancing route, you can get started on your own and use your income money to pay for startup expenses.

5 Reasons Why Freelancing Is the Smartest Way to Fund Your Fashion Brand

1. Freelance Startup Costs Are Practically Nothing

You can get started as a freelancer with pretty much no money. Depending on what services you offer, you can get away with an Illustrator and Excel subscription for less than $40/month.

2. You Can Start Making Money In A Few Weeks

It will likely be years before you make any profit from your fashion brand. But you can start making money as a freelancer almost immediately no matter where you live.

Many of our FAST (Freelance Accelerator) students have done just that:

🎧 Like Arya, a self-taught fashion designer from India, who landed her first 6 clients in about a month.

🎧 Alexandra, a fashion school dropout, who started making serious cash in just a few weeks of offering pattern making services.

🎧 And Amy, a full-time mom, who earned $2k in her first 2 months of freelancing.

How would it feel to have $2,000 in your bank account right now that you could invest in your fashion brand?

Stop your scroll for a sec and really think about it. 

What could $2k do for your clothing line?

You could earn it as a freelancer.

It could take years to break even on your clothing line. But you can start landing freelance gigs in a few weeks.

3. You Keep Most of What You Earn

No overhead. No inventory. No minimums.

Your profit margin as a freelancer is high because the only major “cost” is your time.

You do the work → you make some serious cash→ you invest in your brand. Simple as that.

4. Double Dip On Resources, Suppliers And Factories

As long as it doesn’t infringe on your client and you’re freelancing for brands that are not competing with yours, you may be able to use the same resources, suppliers and factories. Sourcing takes A LOT of time, you might as well kill two birds with one stone.

5. Learn From Your Clients’ Mistakes

Most freelance clients are startup brands – just like yours.

Which means while working for them, you get a front-row seat to everything they do right (and wrong!).

Think of it as paid training for launching your own brand. You’ll get the inside scoop on things like:

• Where production tends to go sideways
• How tech packs matter
• How factories really operate
• How to set up a photoshoot

Instead of trial & error and learning from your mistakes, you learn from theirs – and get paid for it.

But I Don’t Know How to Freelance – Where Do I Start?

I got you covered with a ton of resources. Get started with my Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Freelance Fashion Designer (it’s free).