According to a study, it was recorded that approximately 55 million Americans have been working outside the context of a full-time job and have been taking freelance work into consideration lately. It is calculated that if the freelance trend continues, half of America's population will be busy doing that by 2027.
Freelancing is considered as an alternative work situation, where people side hustles in their free time after their 9 to 5 job. There are many other terms to the alternative work situations that not only include a freelancer but a contractor, a telecommuter and more. They might be similar to some extent but withhold some of their own differences.
What Is Freelancing?
An individual who is in the field of freelancing is considered as a self-employed person who offers their services to individual clients, companies or organizations. Oftentimes, not necessarily though, these services are offered to businesses through the help of various applications that include TaskRabbit, Mechanical Turk, Google Sheets, etc. However, without any inclusion of third party resources and applications that often take a part of the pay, an individual can also offer their services through direct communication and dealing with the client.
Nearly, a freelancer can provide every type of service that an organization requires in order to grow and become successful in the market. A lot of people hire freelancers and become the medium between the freelancers and the clients. Some of the most common freelancing fields and opportunities are:
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Accounting
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Bookkeeping
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Graphic designing
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Marketing
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Social Media Managing
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Teaching
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Tutoring
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Virtual assistance
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Writing
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Web designing
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Web development, etc.
According to the level of expertise and experience, every freelancer focuses on their own interest-based skills. In addition, some freelancers choose to focus on general areas that are listed above whereas some focuses on specific niches, genres or markets. These include niche topics or skills such as accounting and bookkeeping, law, real estate assistants, etc. Discover the top self employed jobs here.
Some freelancers work for all kinds of niches only as a copywriter that is supposed to come with catchy and attractive headlines. A copywriter freelancer is supposed to create engaging hooks for the people in order to gain their trust and make them buy the services and products of a specific organization. Whereas some individuals use word templates in order to minimize their time and efforts to some extent.
Furthermore, the income of freelancers varies based on the services they offer including their skills and experience level along with the market they are targetting. Generally, freelancers start anywhere from $ 15 to $ 30 per hour and can exceed up to $ 70 to $ 80 per hour. For the skills that require a high standard of education and experience, such as website coding or bookkeeping and accounting, supposedly pays more than the skills that don't require as much of the expertise or knowledge but creativity.
It is up to the individual to ask themselves what they are good at. He or she must know how much of a better content and services they can provide. In what areas they are strong and can excel effectively. Along with that, they need to make up a better portfolio, samples and resume to impress the businesses or other individuals with their skills.
Advantages of Freelancing
Freelancing is challenging but a quick and affordable way to stay in the comfort of your home and become your own boss. Other advantages of freelancing are:
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Set Your Own Working Hours
Being a freelancer is flexible. It is up to you to take it as a part-time job opportunity or a full-time job where you can focus according to your own terms. Some days you can rest and do your own stuff while on the other days you can completely focus on your projects according to deadlines assigned. It is easier when you take out time daily instead of twice or thrice a week, as it leaves you with less exhaustion.
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Work Wherever You Want
Freelancing is considered to be a great and portable option for people who want to have the lifestyle of an entrepreneur or those who love traveling. They can work from anywhere, at any time of the day, according to their mood and environment.
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Manage Your Work Yourself
Although clients will set specifications to your projects and the work they will assign you, a freelancer is still independent to choose how to manage the work without answering anyone, unlike an employee.
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Get Paid What You're Worth
It is convenient for a freelancer to set their own price for the services they provide which is often considered higher than what they'd get from a 9 to 5 job.
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Affordable Options To Start With
If an individual has the ability to provide a service according to their skill set, they most likely have the software of a system to work from for the client. They would not need to invest steep startup costs.
Disadvantages Of Freelancing
No matter how much relaxing the above advantages may seem, freelancing isn't for everyone. Not everyone can manage and suit well to it. Here are some of the disadvantages of it.
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The Work Isn't Permanent
This is an actual scenario when an individual offers one-and-done services to the clients, like creating a certain design, writing up a certain blog, etc. The client might not need them in the other one. This is when the individual will need to find another client to get paid.
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Clients Have Proper Schedules And Deadlines Too
Sometimes, the clients ask to deliver the work on the immediate basis where the schedule of a freelancer can get disturbed. But they will have to do it so that they won't lose the client. If a client requires the work before the afternoon of tomorrow, an individual might need to get up with the crows to meet the deadline.
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You Can't Totally Depend On Freelancing
Getting enough clients with a substantial volume of consistent work cannot happen overnight. In the beginning, it will take time to build trust among you and your clients. For that reason, you should not depend totally on freelancing as it will not be enough for you to support yourself and your family along with paying the bills, etc.
