The Reality Of Freelance

When you first heard about freelancers’ way of work and life, mostly you got fascinated by their freedom and flexibility of work. Well, the reality is different.

Freelance is a two-edged sword. Success in any field as a freelancer requires a tremendous amount of self-discipline, arrangement, and a bunch of essential skills.

In this article, we are discussing both the advantages and disadvantages of being a freelancer, how to help you be a successful one; but first let’s talk about the importance of freelancers in general for customers and market. The concept of a freelancer isn’t new at all, freelancers had been in various fields since eras; actually as “Richie Norton” said:

Up until the last 200 years basically everyone was a freelancer, entrepreneur or indentured.

Now freelancers in the market are an irreplaceable alternative for the companies. Many costumers tend to use freelancers to avoid sophisticated dealing with most of the companies. On the other hand, lots of companies use freelancers in many cases and projects. Now freelancing can be taken for a complete career by people with outstanding skills in their fields.

If you decided to be a full-time freelancer or even take freelance as a side career in your field of work or beside your undergraduate studies, you need to know the pros and cons of this work.

Starting with advantages, freelancers have a tremendous amount of flexibility in doing their work the way they love, also in choosing the suitable job based on their skills, they don’t have the stress of HRs that is in most of the companies; also most of the freelance jobs are remote so you can do them wherever you want which saves a lot of time in transporting also provides comfort in wearing the clothes that you love.

But every advantage could be a disadvantage. Extra flexibility can increase procrastination, hesitation of deadlines, and much more. Finding suitable work also isn’t easy at all due to the tremendous number of variables with each costumer. Also defining your suitable price is difficult. The point with a freelancer, you turn out to be an entire company. You are the BOSS, HR, PR & marketer.

The number of freelancers is increasing rapidly. lt turns out that from 2014 to 2019 the number of those saying they're freelancing increased from 18.5M to 28.5M, adding 10M in only 6 years and its increasing more. That’s because of the suitability of criteria for many people; and also the fact that most people take freelance as a side career to increase their income by their skills.

Here we are asking can you become a freelancer? The answer is sure, you can; you just need some improvements in the skills of your field, also getting used to the ways of marketing yourself through building a suitable profile on the freelance hiring websites.

Starting your career as a freelancer is a very important step for sustainable success, but because you compete for jobs with others from all over the world, most of them with more experiences and maybe even better skills you need to show the customer that you are the most suitable one for the task. You have to build a good portfolio in your field to assure the trust of the client.