Are you thinking about starting freelancing as a career? There are different opinions and thinking of people who are going to start freelancing. We have researched the problem in a deep process and ended up with amazing results, including the advantages and disadvantages of freelancing from the best and top-rated freelancers.
The first question that came into your mind that will freelancing help me or am I taking the right decision choosing freelancing as a career?
When you will search for the answer, then you’ll have to face different answers. And you know that the society you are living in always prefers the job as a career instead of freelancing.
You have seen that as the internet is becoming popular day by day, similarly you will see the number of freelancing websites which is increasing day by day and our job industry is also changing. This is because the works are moving to digitalization and in the future, most of the work will be done through an online system.
Pros and Cons of Freelancing
So after a long discussion, we have gathered the data from the top freelancers. So let’s start with the pros or advantages of freelancing.
The Pros:
1. Flexible life
Freelancing offers you a flexible life which means that you don’t have to work from dawn to dusk (basically 9 – 5). You can work remotely from wherever you want to decide your own working hours. Freelancing gives you the freedom of sleeping working and much more. Moreover, if you have children then you can also spend your time with them playing cricket, movies, etc instead of having a hectic office routine.
2. Ocean of Offers
Freelancing offers you a variety and plenty of job offers so you can easily bid on them and win those jobs easily. It depends on the skillset you have the more the skills you have, the more offers you can get and win easily.
Just learn a skill and do mastery in it and enjoy the taste of freelancing.
3. Avoiding the Traffic
According to a study, the performance of people working from home increases by 13%. Do you know why? It’s just because the employees are away from exhausting, both physically or mentally.
If you join freelancing you have the freedom of working from your home, coffee shop, or co-working spaces, etc.
4. Work-Life Balance
Being a slave of 9 – 5, most of the traditional workers loses to maintain a balance between life and work. According to a study, 66% of the people working full time raises the issue of having a balance between work and life.
Many companies claim to take work-life balance by creating such policies of HR but when it comes to implementation, the result is almost zero. There are many complaints from the workers being forced to spend additional time in order to complete their tasks.
Contrary to this, freelancing offers you a great work-life balance. You can make your own schedule managing your preferences and interests. Freelancers can make a gap between working hours and personal work without being questioned by anyone. You can spend your precious time with family and friends and can enjoy doing traveling as well.
5. Prevention From Office Politics
Politics seems good when it is for the country but when it comes to the office, this makes people distract. Office politics play a major role in the life of workers and their happiness. People in the office always come up with the unhappiness caused by politics and this is very dreadful.
The toxic environment makes affects the productivity of the workers. However, as a freelancer, you don’t have to deal with the politics in the office as you are not working for a particular company.
If you feel any politics in your surrounding while working in a co-working space, then you can easily switch the place and move to another space with no loss.
6. Stay Healthy
In today’s environment, the most important is health. You have listened from your childhood that “Health is wealth”. But nowadays as pollution is increasing day by day so it’s very difficult to maintain your health.
While working full time, you cannot manage to do exercises, balanced diet, going the gym, and much more because you don’t have time for it, but in case you managed to grab some time then after your office, your mind won’t allow you for extra activities due to tiredness.
In this scenario, freelancing offers you to make a schedule for your exercise and eating habits (healthy eating). You can manage to make yourself healthy and fit. And the benefits of freelancing not only offer you physical health but also give you the ability to maintain mental health as well.
The Cons (with solutions):
1. Facing Distractions
You know that life is full of distractions, similarly you will face the distractions in freelancing as well. You have to deal with
- Grabbing Projects
- Manage Clients
- Account Settling
- Manage taxing and much more
Most of the time, you have to deal with everything by yourself including your family as well if you are working from home. This will result in a distraction in 100 directions.
How to conquer this:
To overcome this issue of distraction, you have to be focused enough to achieve your daily target. You have to define your boundaries and play within the boundary. In addition to that, you also have to learn some productive and collaboration tools in order to set up your working day more effectively.
2. Financial Instability
You might have heard that the freelancing career is very unstable in sense of cashflow. You don’t have a constant or guaranteed cashflow like other professionals who are working from 9-5.
To some extent it’s true but if you follow the correct way to handle it, you can easily get rid of this situation as well.
How to conquer this:
you will have to be proactive and be clear while signing the agreement with the client. Freelancing pays so much well, however, the income is not regular but you can choose from a variety of jobs in a freelancing career.
You can make an excel sheet or use software to manage your billing, expenses, income, etc.
You must have a back up reserve in order to regulate your expenses in the back as well.
3. Regulate the Flow of Work
One of the issues freelancers have to face is the regulation of workflow. Unlike the normal 9-5 workers, freelancers have to find projects on their own selves and manage them. There is a great possibility that sometime you have 5-6 projects simultaneously and sometimes you have 1-2 projects or no project. You can never expect a steady flow of work.
How to conquer this:
this can be overcome by doing project management because this skill teaches you how to manage a single project or multiple projects in sense of cashflow, workflow, and much more.
You can use some tools for project management as well. Good project management will lead you to make permanent clients which will lead you to the regular monthly income as well.
4. Use more than Two Hands
A freelancer have to use more than two hands while handling the business. You will have to do:
- Bidding
- Managing
- Marketing
- Working and much more
In short, you are the boss and the employee as well as your business.
for example: if you are a graphic designer, you cannot only rely on graphic design only. You have to learn some other skills like web development, search engine optimization, content writing, digital marketing, etc based on your interest. This will help you to win more projects and earn more.
How to conquer this:
Well, in this situation, you can think about some solutions like:
- If you have any backup reserve, you can hire some professionals to help you to make your work easy and less hectic.
- You can spend some more time managing all these aspects of business parts in order to make your business smooth.
5. Risk of Being Alone
If you are worked in an office environment and currently shifting towards freelancing, then there is a higher chance of feeling alone. Because when you are in an office, you do gossips with colleagues, attending meetings with bosses, etc. But in freelancing, you are your own sailor of the boat. You have to keep in mind that you can feel bored or alone.
How to conquer this:
Simply to overcome this situation, you can join online communities based on your interest and attending webinars, seminars, and a variety of platforms which will help you in polishing your skills and you cannot feel bored as well.
Conclusion:
After reading the whole article, you can easily understand that like other businesses freelancing also has pros and cons. But for a person, who demands freedom, flexibility, and ease in work will always prefer freelancing.
However, you will face some difficulties at the start but if you are consistent then surely you can get the reward of your hard work.
Just keep in your mind that
“Slow and steady wins the race”
To start your freelancing career, you can join different platforms like
- Upwork.com
- Fiverr.com
- Freelancer.com
- Guru.com
- People per hour and much more
