Freelancing: Get To Know It More

Do you know someone who does not work for someone else or a company, but instead provides valuable skills to perform a service for more than one client and gets paid for doing that? That is freelancing.
The notion of freelancing has been around for generations, but the internet has recently made it more popular. With innovation and improvement to internet accessibility, more and more people are trying their luck in digital freelancing. It’s become a massive hit due to numerous benefits that suit their specific preference of lifestyle.

BENEFITS

“You are your own boss” is the most common and classic phrase you hear first whenever you ask people who are experiencing or want to pursue freelancing. In Topcoder, freelancing is their main business model and below are some undeniable benefits of doing it with them.

• Flexible work time – Work for a few hours only, have a break every two hours, complete your task in the morning, do client activities inside or outside your home, and the list goes on in how you want to allot time for freelancing at a place you are comfortable working in with Topcoder. You can’t find this flexibility in traditional corporate work.

• Gain much more experience from the same amount of time – Do you want to get ahead of your competitors? Gain more relevant skills and experience by working on different projects or competing in several challenges in a shorter timeframe across various niches, as compared to providing your service for a single client or project in a single-focused industry.

• Get paid to learn – At Topcoder, specific skills are being featured on a regular basis and you can take advantage of learning those at your own pace. It’s more rewarding to learn a skill if you are being paid to acquire knowledge from it in a limited time, which pushes you through your boundaries of learning and to be successful in achieving your desired freelance journey.

• Increase financial security – Topcoder is not your ordinary freelancing platform. It is proven that the budget allotted for the completion of your service is way higher than your normal platforms catered towards freelancing gigs. Would it be nice to achieve your future dreams a lot sooner by increasing the funding rate through freelancing? Sky’s the limit.

PROS AND CONS

The major pros were already mentioned above, and those hold true not only in Topcoder, but in freelancing in general. But there’s this one obvious thing that is not commonly mentioned in the pros of freelancing, the moment you provide your service, clients perceive you are an expert, you are credible in helping them, and you have the authority to accomplish what needs to be done. Being the expert in your chosen field is not something that can be achieved for several years in a traditional corporate setting, but which is common in freelancing.

Moving to the cons of freelancing; below are some of them that you need to consider before fully diving into this journey.

• Less than one client is equivalent to lesser job security – Freelancing as a less secure income-generating opportunity is true if you only work for a single client. To increase the chances of cash flow security on a monthly basis, you must provide service to at least two clients or projects. Of course, only handle what fits your working schedule.

• No paid leaves – The good old saying “no work, no pay” is very much applicable in freelancing in general. Freelancers whose payment is based on hours worked are definitely affected by these cons. But you can avoid this by requiring the client to pay based on the result or expected deliverable rather than being paid by the amount of time you rendered.

• Pay for your own government benefits and insurance – If you’ve experienced working in a corporate world, you know this is not a problem. But as a freelancer, your service is your business and this means you don’t have the perks that are normal to a corporate employee. Don’t worry, expenses can be covered by increasing your freelancing rate or accepting more projects and clients.

• Irregular and sometimes unpredictable stress and workload – As a freelancer, there could be times that you experience fatigue as you exceed your capacity to cater to the needs of your clients. There could also be weak months in which no service is being provided, hence income is not coming. Deal with this uncertainty by being consistent in acquiring clients and projects in your work pipeline.

SUCCESS

Many people want to be successful in the endeavor they are pursuing including freelancing. You have to consider and be prepared with several factors that will contribute to the success of becoming an effective freelancer.

• Observe – This is obvious, especially if you are just starting in freelancing. You have to allot time in researching to be familiar with different aspects of freelancing. This means you have to immerse yourself in freelance-related communities such as social media groups and pages, forums, group chats, and even physical meet-ups.

• Choose your specific niche – As a rule of thumb, assess yourself on what you are very good at. Take advantage of those skills to offer as your freelance service because you don’t need to start from scratch anymore. Niche is not only about skill, it is also about choosing your specific target market. Don’t go big at the early stage as it is very difficult to build credibility and authority in your chosen service. An example of a specific niche is providing copywriting service for health and nutrition-related products for males.

• Make yourself and your service known – You have to market yourself so that prospective clients will know about your service which can solve their problems or satisfy their needs. Post something to create engagement, comment and help others with posted problems related to your service, create your profile in freelancing platforms, advertise your freelance service through different social media channels, and utilize a lot more ways to market yourself out there.

• Know your worth – Avoid lowballing your service rate. Evaluate how your freelance service can impact your client or your client’s business. Rate your service based on the value that you can provide and the problems it can solve. But this does not mean that you automatically decline offers of those prospective clients who can’t afford you at the rate that you want. Make some adjustments and modifications on how you can still cater to their needs relative to their budget so that you can gain trust and have higher chances of more opportunities in the future through referrals or more project offerings.

SKILLS

So we have come down now to the skills. In modern freelancing, the most sought after skills are those provided digitally or with the use of technology. If you don’t have these basic computer skills, do not worry as you just need to assess yourself. What are the things you are good at that can be migrated digitally? You can start working on top of that.

For example, you are fluent in another language and you can easily translate and understand in your mind those two different languages you are encountering on a regular basis. Instead of just using it in your everyday normal conversation, make money out of it by providing translation service online and find clients in different parts of the world that need your help translating contexts across different media.

Here is the list of top skills you should consider learning in your freelancing journey to help you decide which niche and service to provide to your future clients.

1. Website development – One of the highest paid skills, and opportunities keep increasing as more websites are being published everyday.

2. Social media marketing – As businesses pivot their brick-and-mortar businesses to create online presence, you will surely benefit big time with this trending skill.

3. Search engine optimization – Online businesses want to be noticed by their specific market and you are in a good position to help them using this skill.

4. Photography – People cherish memories and they are willing to pay for those moments to be captured and sealed in beautiful and captivating photos and albums.

5. Animation – The long hours and number of templates needed is justified by the good pay in this type of skill.

6. Virtual assistant – This is a generic term for basically any person that provides assistance to people virtually to help run and operate a business in the form of administrative tasks.

7. Writing – From catchy slogans to an ebook to even this very article, this skill applies in any industry as long as you have skills in different kinds of writing.

8. Website Design – That website you were amazed by is a masterpiece of a skilled freelancer with this cool skill.

9. Graphic Design – This encompasses several mediums such as books, tarpaulin, magazines, and even postcards.Excelling in just one medium is not enough to make this skill lucrative.

10. Copywriting – If you ever found yourself interested and captured by a post because it resonates with what you are feeling or your needs, then the brainchild behind those posts is definitely equipped with this skill.

11. Data Mining – With the exponential increase of data in every organization, the need to tap data and convert them to opportunities for business to grow, this skill is increasingly becoming popular.

12. Data Analysis – The proficiency in using spreadsheets, making sense of numbers, and identification of patterns makes every freelancer with this skill grab some big bucks from the clients.

13. Videography – One of the most admired skills by consumer product companies for their advertisements as well as in industries such as events and advertising.

14. User Testing – Every product, be it physical or digital, needs to be tested before being introduced to the public. This is where this skill of freelancers fits perfectly.

15. Tutoring – If you love teaching but don’t want to be tied into an educational entity, it is a perfect opportunity for you to share knowledge while being flexible on your working conditions.

16. Customer service – Due to globalization, international companies need to top up their customer service 24/7, that’s why this is one of the easy to enter opportunities to start your freelancing career.

17. Voice talent – Even prior to the internet, voice actors were already in demand through movies and films, advertisements, and radio stations. This skill won’t be out of the picture any time this decade.

18. Affiliate marketing – This skill is considered passive as you just need to make an effort for a short while and just wait for the money to keep coming to your bank.

19. Blockchain – This is probably the latest in-demand skill on this list, that is why freelancers need to take advantage of this emerging global innovation.

20. Lead generation – Every online business wants customers and they are willing to pay a percentage for any freelancer that can help them acquire more customers to pay for their products and services.