Freelancer way: how and why to become a freelancer, how and why stop being them?

Gig-economy is the concept, which appeared quite recently but has already firmly secured its position. The essence of the phenomenon is a fundamental change in the labor market, its transition from jobs with constant employment from one employer, to temporary projects from different companies from one independent employee. In other words, gig- economy means freelancing. Delloite's research shows that nowadays each third American worker is a freelancer. And expected that it will only increase over the years! Companies in all industries, in particular, Airbnb and Uber, hire freelancers even more often than full-time employees. Lower costs for each worker is only one of the factors, the main reason is a Talent (for example, some highly qualified experts cannot move to the company's headquarters, but can work remotely for them). However, people become freelancers not only because of the freedom from traditional Mon- Fri 9-5 day shift, but for different reasons and at different ages. The distribution in average looks like this:

Where on the horizontal axis is age, and on the vertical one is pointed the percentage of freelancers relative to full-time employees. The top of the entrance to freelance is 25 years. And it's difficult to say why so: for first it's an opportunity to earn an extra money, for second —  a chance to master a new specialty, for the third —  method to get work experience after the graduation. Also, freelancing is well suited for people with small kids or old relatives, who require a lot of attention. The most popular freelancing specialties, wherein, are programmers, designers and copywriters. Their distribution is as follows:

Some people have the wrong feeling that freelancing is simple and easy, others believe that it's a specialty, not a way to interact with a customer. And therein lies the reason for the further “dismissal”. Don’t believe pictures of a man with a laptop under a palm tree, in reality everything is somewhat more complicated!

In the early stages, it may be hard to get an order, as long as the freelancer doesn't have a reputation, reviews, and portfolio either. And the competition is huge, lots of wishing to lie under a palm tree! Statistics of common freelancing websites, including Beesy.pro, shows that less than 15% of people go beyond submitting bids, so at the very first level, 85% of people are oust (with a small difference among specialties). The reasons are various: high competition, insufficient tenacity, inability to present oneself. But the strains and adventures don't end there. Here are how many people get more than one review: programmers more or less 60%, designers 45%, copywriters 40%. So, in general only nearly a half continues freelancing. Here is already a chance that the freelancer has found a constant client in the first customer and continues to cooperate with him. Otherwise, the reasons to end up are the same as in the first stage, plus dissatisfaction with the wages/efforts ratio —  at the beginning, the most difficult is to be hired and the amount of payment is often low.

At the freelancing career start, the growth is very dynamic: freelancer gets an experience, his earnings and reputation increase, appear regular clients. Over time (2— 10 years), freelancing websites go by the wayside. Searching for projects and bidding are no longer the main source of orders, for a freelancer work his portfolio and reputation. There is no fast growth anymore. On the other hand, the freelancer have working schemes, an understanding with whom and how to cooperate, the list of tasks is quite stable. After some time, such work may become boring. And here are several options for the further development:

1. Own team / studio

The freelancer doesn't work alone, takes over the team leading functions, mentoring, begins to delegate work and expand the range of services provided. For example, programmers, designers and copywriters make a turnkey website development together. Oftenly, helps well pumped up teamlead’s profile at the freelancing website. But not everyone cope with the increased responsibility and load: some just spoil their reputation. Remember, it’s not enough to be a good performer and ‘your own boss’ in this stage, you need to be responsible for the whole team! 

2. Return (shift) to the office

Going to the office or working remotely as the staff member of a certain company is not always the final rejection of freelancing, and often —  an attempt to relax. In this cases, freelancing can be a side job or a blowhole. For example, taking an interesting project or experiment with new technologies / approaches that do not apply or are not welcome at the permanent work place.

3. Own product

The third way of freelance career development is to create something own. For example, starting a personal blog or writing a book for a copywriter, developing an individual training course or an application for a programmer, etc. For experienced freelancers it's often enough to have an idea, as they know how to find contractors.

Some freelancers get disappointed in the office work, fail to create the own product, get tired of managing the team and return to the freelance marketplace as the sole performer. Others act as an intermediary employer. Rest masterly go ahead and earn their millions.

Contrary to popular belief, freelancing is not easy at all. It requires not only high qualifications, but also a lot of additional work on finding orders, conflict resolution, time management and finance. At the same time, we are sure that in freelancing is the future. Be persistent, develop your skills and stay with Beesy.pro —  we will take care about your working conditions and make them as comfortable as possible!