What is Freelancer and how to work as a Freelancer?

Do you have these below questions in mind;

What is Freelancer and how to work as a Freelancer? Likewise many other questions, Then you have arrived at the right resources, to get all of your answers. We have done all the extensive research to guide you to understand all about Freelancer.

Why Freelancer is gaining popularity across world?

Many of you must be knowing or working as Freelancer. But this is not a new concept which has arrived in this advancing world. It was into our professional concept since 19^th Century. The only thing, it was not named as a worldwide platform in this digital network.

The term first appeared in Thomas N. Brown’s The Life and Times of Hugh Miller (1809). Sir Walter Scott mentioned it in his 1819 book, Ivanhoe, later in 1820. “I offered Richard the service of my Free Lances, and he refused them—I will lead them to Hull, seize on shipping, and embark for Flanders; thanks to the bustling times, a man of action will always find employment,” the book says.

To understand what Walter Scott meant by this word, we need to go back when there were two kinds of soldiers in the Middle Ages: those who worked for the king and those who worked for whomever paid. Thus, free lancers were independent mercenary soldiers who sold their services and skills.

As the years passed, the term transformed beyond the military and into the business world. It is gaining popularity with the increase in connectivity of different world parts in different sectors.

What is Freelancer? Definition and Meaning

• Freelancing is a contract-based profession in which the individual uses his skills and experience to provide services to several clients rather than being hired by an organization.
• Freelancing is defined as using own skills, education, and experience to work with multiple clients and take on various assignments without committing to a single employer. The number of assignments or tasks you can accept is limited only by your ability to complete them as requested.
• You can make freelancing full-time job, getting committed to various clients and completing the job and accepted work frame time. Freelancing typically entails jobs (called gigs) that allow you to work from home. However, don’t confuse freelancing with having a work-from-home job. It might be the requirement of your assigned job to visit places for work.

• New term has arrived called as gig economy. In the gig economy, a person, instead of working for a single employer full-time with a fixed salary in return rather works for multiple clients at his own terms accepting salary which he/she finds satisfactory. It completely depends on freelancer interests.

What we don’t know about Freelancer?

• People assuming freelancer as Side jobs, but they should believe themselves as small business owners. Thinking of oneself as an entrepreneur and treating your business as a start up to move your career forward to your height of success, should be the motto.

• In as survey in New York, it was found that 70% of people started work as Freelancer with their own choice.

• There are plenty of opportunities for freelancing business in It sector, Digital sector, Marketing sector, Manufacturing sector, as tutor, accountant, Journalist, musicians, customer services etc.

• Cultivating the right client and ultimately help to position your career to heights one wants.

• There is no barrier how much you can work, grow increase your skills along with earnings.

• One can pitch and get their networking enlarged, get good reviews.

• Soon your only competition will be with yourself as one would focus on to keep on improving and ways to grow their business.

• Create multiple streams of income and investments so that during less work and earning months one can have secured life and income supported by other means. Work as a freelancer on multiple sites and network.

• All small and big decisions have to be taken by you if you don’t have partners yet, work stress will persist.

• A stable company culture might me missing, but the options and growth are at vast level.

Are we there yet to answer your question – What is freelancer and how to work as a freelancer?

How to work as a Freelancer?

Right Equipment

Getting the right equipment is very important to start the work as a freelancer. To have steady work and income as a freelancer, lots of hard work is required along with right tool to be able to use multiple features and be upgraded/updated with the evolving digital world. Old laptop or old computer will also give great start and quality work outcomes.

Get marketable skill

Getting equipments comes along with responsibilities to work on own skill upgradation or for learning new skills. Understand the market which skill is in great demand or which you find relatable to your work or filed of interest. Your skill should have enough demand in the market. One can utilize skill from copy paste or podcast to developing mobile games or content writing.

Skill updates

Keep polishing your skills to keep up with the market. On can learn from online platforms or do certifications of same to fulfill the work demand of market. This will make you unique for getting numerous opportunities.

Reputation

Building reputation and getting feedback from customers is very important. One can offer to do free works for clients to have good network and reputations. Try to pitch about your skills and also post your works online for client to gain more trust and confidence.

Create Portfolio

Showcasing your skills are very important to gain client attention. It will a website or your webpage to highlight all your works like graphic designer can showcase his/her graphics or skills by providing link to the clients.

Part Time Freelancing

Freelancing is not everyone’s cup of tea, it’s a full-fledged process of marketing yourself, selling your services and dealing with multiple clients. One should try as a part time freelancer of does can have clarity in mind or time to invest time.

Find suitable freelancing platform

Pick a marketplace that’s fairly new and join it as it’ll have fewer freelancers so you’ll have low competition and your scope for landing into jobs increases. Having required skills and getting your price lower will lead you nowhere.

Your market prices

In the beginning, look at the market prices of different freelancers of your segment/Industry. Try to figure out middle competitive price considering the fresher and experienced one. This will make your pitch more unique and preferable.

Uniqueness

Try to persuade the client to prefer you over others pitchers, showcase your expertise and price. Do write a winning proposal. Add certificates , profile picture, catchy tagline for your site.

Work beyond expectations

Try to handover complete job before timeframe with some extra creative changes with out extra charges. This will make your clients happy and they will get back to you in future. Stand out from crowd.

What is the scope of working as a Freelancer?

• Scope of working as a freelancer at the beginnings does not requires experience, it only asks for your skill set and hard work to once establish yourself in this competitive freelancing market. Few easy working jobs are Data entry gigs, transcription jobs, translation jobs, copy paste, changing format etc but the tough ones will give you the actual career heights like content writing, blogs, marketing, designing, data analyst, developers, audits etc.
• One can initiate his/het own career to begin as a start up and person interest to decide if he wants to work later by forming a team or single person as a lead. Overall it helps a person to polish their skills along with earning money. Freelancer has been observed to be best way for women to continue their professional career and being independent.
• Few Freelancer sites to be preferred are Fiverr, Upstock, People per hour, Freelancer.com, Truelancer, Toptal, Joobal, Simply hired, Crowded, Flex jobs, Millo and many more across the world. These sites gives larger scope of working as a Freelancer.

What does Freelancer Statistics says;

Let’s draw some conclusions on statistics, What is freelancer and how to work as a freelancer?

• As per Upstock stats, more than 28.5 million freelancers found in the U.S. said they purposefully made freelance work their long-term career choice. In 2019, more than 57 million Americans have got involved to freelancing. This represents 35% of the U.S. workforce. Addition to this full-time freelance work has increased in America.
• From 2018 to 2019, there was a whopping 31% increase in people looking to get into freelance work in UK. In Japan, more than 3.4 million people work as freelancers which is a mere 5% of the 66 million workers plodding ahead each day as per Cabinet Office report.
• By 2025, freelancing statistics is estimated to grow to $20 to 30 billion In India. Top countries to be involved as an Freelancer are USA, UK, Brazil, Ukraine, Philippines, Pakistan, India. So, don’t be jack of all as being expertise make you unique trustworthy to the clients. If you are getting an opportunity to take jobs from foreign clients and getting paid in Dollars sitting at your home, you must take it.

Wrapping up,

The scope of freelancer job is overwhelming across globe, we just need to grab an opportunity to get along with the moving world. Freelancing comes up with challenges but one can prioritize Work -Life balance and job flexibility. Hope we now know what is freelancer and how to work as a Freelancer? As this is the perfect solution , no matter where in the world you live in.