Pros and Cons of Being a Freelancer

Which is better: Freelance jobs or in-house working?

The answer is not that simple as we think. Each one has its own pros and cons. If you are already bored sitting in a cubicle and dreaming of freedom with your own freelance business, then you should be aware and evaluate all the advantages and disadvantages of the decision. We have done the work for you and listed pros and cons of being a freelancer.

Pros:   

Freedom: Degree of freedom is high in freelancing or self- employment, which can be in working hours, clients, workstations, vacations etc. Freelancer is nothing but self-employed and in-charge of production, administration, business development.

Flexible Hours: The First advantage that any employee will expect. In freelance employment, one can rule the time and place – can take a full afternoon nap and work at the nights or have a weekend to explore the city. Choose your own working hours, workstation according to your needs, unlike the regular business hours.

Hold all the profits: Freelancing runs on a purpose of more you work the more you earn. Unlike a regular job, can increase the profits and keep all of them. Implement your ideas in the comfortable timings with your clients, put the effort and enjoy 100% of the benefits. No matter, how less the rate is and how large the projects, clients are, freedom to use the money is all yours.

Cons:

Payment Risk: It was mentioned about profits earlier, but the payment has to be made at the right time for profits. Payment issues are not uncommon in freelance employment but necessary precautions have to be taken to avoid scams. Some of the ways to protect from risks are to ask for advance token of amount from new clients, find out if the client is trustworthy by calling or from other freelancers, take extra care when dealing with foreign clients as their legislation are different from yours, gather as much information as possible like location, web address, head of the company, clarify the payment procedure and etc.

Work-life balance:  Unless a freelancer has strong ground rules, it is hard to have a work-life balance. Strict work schedules defined workstation which gives the feel of office even if it is home or spends time at café’s, libraries to complete the job. Most of the freelancers lose the interest to work when they fail to distinguish between personal life and professional life. 

As a coin has both the sides, freelance also has advantages and disadvantages. Understand the needs and analyze how freelance jobs will work for you

Taking the Freelance Route? Here Are Some Tips for an Aspiring Freelancers

No matter how lucrative a freelance career seems to be, it is advisable to test the waters before taking a plunge. If you are hell-bent on taking the dip and so forth want to two time your full-time job and a freelance one you need to lay a strong foundation that enables you to manage both the jobs without any hassles.

In short, you need an action plan that can pave the way for a profitable career in the time to come. So, here are some tips that can help you with the plan:

Specialize: 

First things first: Don’t be an average Joe, i.e. if you are a designer, don’t be ‘any designer’, choose your specialization and market yourself as the same. This saves a lot of time for the employers and also for you to channelize your marketing efforts.

Advertise Yourself: 

Your better at what you do and you could probably do the job in less time than others and at a fraction of the cost; but how would your clients know if you are not getting yourself out there? And that is why you need to advertise. Get yourself on Freelance Job Platforms and showcase your work and testimonials from clients you have worked for.

Say It Right: 

A lot can be saved if you can furnish all the details about your services: your specialization, writing samples, previous clients, your payment channels, and setback times. This helps the employer a lot while skimming through freelancer profiles, not to mention it saves you a lot of time too.

Manage Your Body Clock:

Research says that we humans are most productive in the morning hours, your productive hours may vary and you should milk most out of them. Make a habit to perform your challenging tasks in these peak hours and you will surely save a lot of time.

Freelancers on the Rise: Data Scientist

Time and again, the job market has always bestowed its interest on particular jobs deeming them to be sexy. Data Scientist is the recent entrant to this list. This new career has been making waves in the industry for past two years particularly because of its high earning potential and its relevance in today’s world. And their also has been a considerable rise of demand for the Data Scientists in the Freelance market. Though it’s not long since the technical freelance jobs have gained the traction, Freelance Data Scientists are making huge bucks in the freelance market for their specific skill set. 

So What Does a Data Scientist Do Actually?

A Data Scientist is the guy who performs Data Science. His job is to extract value from the data that has been accumulated by the companies for their business, be it: Customer behavior, Competitor behavior, Sales surge etc. A Data Scientist uses his skills and technology on this vast data to generate value for the business folks by creating awareness and clarity about their business.

Let us take an example of an E-commerce website .Suppose you visit an e-commerce website and continue to surf through your requirements: Some Clothes, Laptops, and Books respectively .You bought a laptop from the e-commerce site. Now, when you enter the same e-com website after two or three weeks, you will be finding a column suggesting accessory requirements for your laptop .This column will also be featuring Clothes and Books suggestions based on your previous browsing history which might have been bought by the previous users who have gone through similar products. This is a win –win situation for both consumer and seller .They are saving your time by showing the products you might be interested in and also are successful in enticing you with their products ; final goal : selling their products.

Your behavior is recorded by the e-com site and stored in their database based on the information provided by your cookies in the web browser. But you should also note that there are millions of people surfing the website at the same time. This generates huge volumes of data which has to be studied, optimized and processed to follow the trends and generate the same process which is profitable to the company. The process of making this whole business simpler is often termed as Data Science.

The above example is just a speck in the whole picture that Data Science can accomplish. No doubt it is the one of the most in-demand freelance jobs in recent times.

Top 4 Myths About Freelance Career and the Truths Behind Them

So much has been said about the rewarding career of the freelancers: about their super comfy lifestyle, the demand for the talented ones, their awesome pay and what not? So do these claims hold their water?  Are the pastures really green on the other side? 

Yes and No.

Yes because they are true. And No, because freelance is not everything about the ups, there are lows too. There are so many myths in the air that we would like you to clear now. So, read on:

Myth 1: You are free all the time.

Reality: Just like the word string ‘free’ in freelance doesn’t mean free work, it also doesn’t mean you are going to be free all the time. This is more of a misconception because of the unconventional timings of their work. A freelancer is no freer than the full timer; it’s just that they choose their own timings.

Myth 2:  You make a lot of money.

A freelancer doesn’t make a lot of money, at least not all of them. Yes, some bright ones do, and that is because they lasted long enough in this field to find ways that could score them best returns for their work. But if you could give your best work and find ways to sell your work, you could stand in the chance to make some huge bucks, now that’s the best part.

Myth 3:  No Boss, No Deadlines, and No stress.

No, No and No.
Flexibility in work doesn’t necessarily translate to a stress-free job. Make no mistake you get to do what you love doing but that doesn’t mean you are devoid of Boss or other regulations. You are responsible for your client and you work for his requirements and you do have to stick to the deadlines. But you can choose your client based on your preferences and can avail the flexibility of choosing your timings.

Myth 4:  You don’t have to hunt for jobs, they come to you:
Boy, this is the best of the lot should I say it’s the worst? I am sure almost all of us have gone through the job-search period in hope of landing the job, right? Now imagine those periods attached to each other; that’s how tough it is for the fresh freelancer who works on their own. Enrolling yourself on Freelance Job Platforms can be a good start. Of course, it becomes easy and things start to open up when you gain a foothold in the industry but the tides are rough at the start, beware of them.

Here Are the Reasons Why Should Seriously Consider Hiring Freelancers for Your Business

Be it a start up or small to medium business, you would have felt that heat of your competition by now. Running a successful business has become a challenging affair resulting in cost cutting and a call for improving employee efficiency. And most of them have already started laying the tracks in this direction by hiring freelancers. And there is a sound rationale behind their decision that can help you too!

Here are the reasons why should seriously consider hiring freelancers for your business:

Highly skilled People at your disposal:

Not everybody can go about Freelancing their work. The cream of the crop who are too good at their job are the ones who opt for a Freelance career. On an average, the return on investment on a freelancer is very high when compared with his 9 to 5 counterpart. With so many Freelance Job platforms out there, you could easily get to choose your pick depending upon your requirements. These platforms take special care for you by listing out the complete profile of the candidate with their previous works and ratings.

Less time & faster work: 

If you are into a line of business where sudden tasks spring out which needed to be done as soon as possible; freelancers should be your best bet. By the time you post an AD and go through the hiring process and finalize your full-time employee; you can easily get your task done by hiring a freelancer.

Scaling is easy:  

Moreover hiring a full-time employee can incur you lots of additional costs and commitments. Work or bench, you will have to maintain your team if you are too dependent on the full-timers. In case you scale down hiring the new ones is both times consuming and tiresome in equal measure. Whereas you can easily scale-up or scale-down when you get the freelancers on board.

Budget Flexibility and low overhead costs: 

Higher ROI of hiring freelancers can help you get the best bang for your buck. As the scaling becomes easier too, you get to enjoy the flexibility as far as budgeting is concerned. Moreover, you will be getting rid of all the overhead costs work space, equipment, employee benefits and more. This will ultimately help you in improving the quality of work from freelancer as you will be able to spend your funds on the better resources.

Most in-demand Jobs in 2017: Technical Writing

(We are starting a new series that discusses the less known yet high in demand jobs for the year 2017.)


Having gained a considerable traction in the last few years, the demand for the Technical Writers is at an all time high this year. The fact that this year’s industry requirement is three times the current availability is an apt indicator of the accrued demand for an able Technical Writer.

The Why?

We are being stormed by new technologies & innovative products that are replacing the old ones every year, but at the core of all these changes, one thing that remained constant all along was the necessity to communicate them to the customers effectively. There are many accounts of some of the brilliant products failing just because the turgidity in the manual that could not come to the help of the consumer. A proper documentation is as critical as the design and development and industries have learned it the hard way. The early 2000s witnessed a huge bump in the employment opportunities for Technical Writers as most of the big players choose to outsource their documentation tasks and since then the demand has always on the positive side scoring a healthy 12% growth rate every year.

It is slightly ironic that for a job whose origin can be traced to a lack of writing skills in engineers, 70% of current Technical Writers are found to be Engineers. Yet the beauty of this job is that it is a blend of technical and creative skills making it an easy transition for the folks in either of the fields: Technical and Creative; be it for a Fulltime job or a Freelance one. The greenery of these pastures has led many of the professional in the allied professions to consider taking up the ‘Technical Writer’job.  According to Glassdoor, the full-time pay for fresher hovers around 60k $ stretching as a much as 100k $ for an ace writer with good experience. While the Freelance side is filled with veteran folks with 20-30 years experience, they reportedly earn around 100k $ making it a highly rewarding profession.

(Each of the articles about the job is followed by the “How to” guides charting the road map for aspiring professional in the field, so watch out this space for our help guide for an aspiring Technical writer)

A Basic Guide for Freelancer Jobs in Content Marketing

Not long ago, the paid advertisements were a rage in online marketing. The rush has reached a tipping point and soon began to whimper to all time low in 2015.The Ad blocking software had become the ultimate weapon of people against the ads. The 200 million Ad block software subscriptions, as estimated in August 2015 have got a lot to do with the decline. No doubt, it’s terrible news for businesses which rely on paid advertisements. But as it goes in every other field, this decline in paid advertising has given away for a more effective form of advertising: The Content Marketing.

In just a few years, ‘Content Marketing’ has become the new buzzword in the marketing industry. Rightly so, because it works! It is estimated that the companies which adopting content marketing have recorded 6 times the conversion rates than their competitors. So if you are a freelance writer, there was never a better time to show your writing chops. All you need is a slight push and couple of hacks to get your next big gig in Content Marketing.

Unlike traditional writing, Content Marketing is 20 % content creation and 80% promotion. No doubt that the content has to be fresh and relevant to your audience. Even more, the emphasis has to be put for the promotion. So, here are some handy tips that can help you:

Learn to Optimize:

It all starts with optimizing your content for the audience. As soon as you come up with a blog idea, search up the keywords,(short and long tail) their search volume, the competition, using tools (free, mostly ).This gives you a fair idea about your strategy before composing the blog article. Learning basic SEO practices helps a lot.

Content Promotion channels:

Now that you have optimized your content, you can start about promoting your content. You can start with sharing your content on your social media profiles for starters. Almost everyone does that so you have to go deeper. Engage with the native forums of the subject group, communities in the social-media and other similar platforms. Network with key people in the subject area and request them to share if they like your blog post.

Promote yourself:

The upside of a career in this field is that your work is given a lot of importance than your experience and academic qualifications. This field also gives a privilege of promoting yourself creatively. You can discuss and highlight your work to promote yourself making it easy to score clients.

Parting thoughts:

The first cardinal rule in a freelance job and for that matter, any job is to make you client happy. Now that you are looking for a job, project yourself as a man that can solve their problems. So first you have to understand their problems which can range from the necessity of blogging frequently, optimizing content for search engines etc. Project your past work experiences that make you the best fit for the job. Horses for the courses, my friend!