Recently, more and more young people are giving up jobs with a fixed schedule, to the detriment of freelancing. The reasons are easy to imagine: annoying colleagues, the boss’s tone, the fact that their work is not always appreciated or the time spent on the way to the office. All the while, companies are increasingly open to hiring freelancers and collaborators.
If in Romania 7% of employees are freelancers, in America things are completely different, there over 34% have already opted for a career from the comfort of their own home. Which was to be expected, in the context where there are many more private schools and paid courses, so we are talking about a different mentality. Being on your own is not at all easy and requires a lot of patience and courage, especially since in the first five months you will not have any income. Most young people expect fabulous earnings right from the start, and the lack of a reliable profile on freelancing sites, which is built over time, does not guarantee them constant projects. They must learn to be patient, quick and efficient, because after all, that’s what they’ll get 80% of the total pay for.
When they quit their regular jobs, young people don’t exactly plan their best schedule. In freelancing, as in any other type of work, it must be determined from the beginning how many hours you are willing to allocate per day to a project and the search for new clients. Specialists recommend a normal work schedule, because many times, those you end up collaborating with work from 9 to 18 and if they call you during this interval, ideally they will find you.
Those people who tell you they can’t pay you, but help you expand your portfolio and will recommend you to other people in the future, should be avoided. They may have no intention of harming anyone, but usually no other project comes up, and effort must always be rewarded.
Young people who have just started working on their own, should not sleep on one ear. Once a client appears, he must not stop looking for others, because when the project ends, he will be left with nothing else to do, or money to collect.
Among the most popular freelancing areas:
Design
Here most offers on freelancing sites are for websites, magazines, posters, PC games, logos or advertising prints. Must have knowledge of Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark Xpress, 3D Max or Macromedia Dreamweaver. Usually there is an auction, more clearly: the client posts a brief, and those who want the project work ahead, post what they have worked on, and if they are chosen they get paid.
Content Writing
You write on various fields, but just knowing how to write is not enough. You must also have SEO knowledge. Here you are paid either by the hour, where once you have accumulated experience you can receive between 20 and 70 dollars per hour, or depending on the number of words.
The most popular freelancing sites:
the largest platform of its kind online by the number of registered users and projects posted. Here a commission of 10% of the total amount received per project by the freelancer is charged. The money is withdrawn from the account, the moment the freelancer accepts a project. More than 19 million users have published more than 9 million projects so far on freelancer.com;
– hourly paid work;
#3 Constant-content.com
– copywriting;
Here, the freelancer can be paid by the hour or by the project. For projects with hourly payment, the provider requests payment once a week. For fixed projects, freelancers are paid after completing the project. On upwork you can pay with Visa, Mastercard, American Express or PayPal. Upwork has a commission of between 5% and 20% of the project value, money that is withdrawn from your account when you accept a project. Currently, there are over 129 jobs on Upwork in the field: digital art.