Hmm. Good question Jerine. I wouldn't necessarily place freelancing that high on my list in terms of marketing yourself and building an audience. HOWEVER. Freelancing can give you valuable experience and time at the keyboard, which will inevitably make you a better writer and give you more confidence. For me if I want to build an audience I'm doing everything I can to grow an email list. To do that you need traffic, and to get traffic you can either use Medium, LinkedIn, or Quora or you can dive into learning SEO and get traffic from Google. That would be my strategy.