Freelancing might not be a millennials thing, but a full-time freelancing career is. For some people, it is quite challenging to decide if they should make it a full-time online career or pursue it as a part-time job for passive income.
Freelancing has its taste of good and bad, but once you do it right, you get great perks of freedom, money, and peace of mind. You can work from anywhere having no boss, rules, and no fixed timings.
But have you ever thought, despite having such a fruitful and productive career choice, why only a few make it to the top and get success in a freelance career?
The reason is simple; Freelancing is not just getting online on freelancing platforms and doing projects. You need much more than your skills to reach goals and targets. You need to pass a lot of hurdles before living a dream life.
If you’re planning to choose Freelancing as your career, then there are a few factors you should consider. We are going to explain those factors in this blog post.
Can Freelancing Be A Career
Yes!! Freelancing can be a career, but there are a few characteristics that you must possess to be successful in your journey.
Sincere about your work
As I mentioned above, Freelancing gives you freedom, but freedom never comes free. You need to be self-disciplined. As an online freelancer, you can easily get distracted, but you have to be sincere about your work and always focus on it.
You might have read, “Time is money.” But in freelancing it’s key to success. Always complete your projects within deadlines. Make sure you have good time management skills; if you don’t have one, then work on it. Because as soon as you move ahead in your freelance career options, you will get stuck in multiple things. These skills will help you stay organized.
Self-motivation
Companies arrange events, trips and reward their employees for keeping them motivated because demotivation drags them away from creativity. In Freelancing, you work alone from home, and many factors demotivate you.
All these factors, including family problems, the bad day, not enough earnings, can easily drag you away from your work. So, it’s better to keep yourself with things that keep you motivated. You can watch movies, photos, or listen to motivational music, to keep pushing you for more.
Future Planning
Undoubtedly, planning is the first step toward success in every field. Similarly, if you want to be a successful freelancer, you need to be an efficient planner and plan about all the projects, which projects to accept and reject, project deadlines, and much more.
Make yourself use-to with project management software that will help you keep track of your work, to-do list, income, and client details.
Communication Skills
As a freelancer, your first job is to search for clients for your services. For that, you have to choose an innovative marketing strategy. But once you get a client, you will need good communication skills to satisfy your clients with your work.
Every time you interact with different clients, you have to keep your ego aside and learn to take criticism; otherwise, it’s going to be the biggest hurdle in your successful freelance career.
Money Matters
Before leaving your full-time job, make sure to save sufficient money. It might take some time to start a good earning as a freelancer. It will not let you discourage. Most people make earnings secondary when they have passion for something they do, but you can’t ignore earning in Freelancing.
Once you made up your mind to choose a freelancing career options, you need to be confident and charge for your services accordingly. Analyze your competitor’s profiles and decide how much you’re going to charge for the specific service.
The Pros and Cons of Freelancing
The Pros of Freelancing
- Flexibility – Freelancing provides you more flexibility than your singular jobs. It allows you to map out your schedule instead of working in specific hours. This flexibility helps you maintain a good work-life balance.
- Be your own boss – In Freelancing, you’re your boss. You make all the decisions, from the working hours to the project planning. You will only need to be able to handle business if you want to be successful.
- Money – You will see a small increase in your salary yearly in traditional employment, but in Freelancing, you can demand more once you establish yourself as an expert in your field. The more you work, the more your income will be.
- Build Skills – As you will be your boss, it will push you to expand your abilities and generally increase your skills.
The Cons of Freelancing
- Irregular Income – In Freelancing, you don’t get security in terms of regular income. It is considered the biggest disadvantage of working as a freelancer. As a freelancer, you always think ahead and worry about your next job.
- Lack of employee benefits – Companies offer some compensation in terms of health insurance, etc. In Freelancing, no such perks are available, and you will have to go it alone.
- Distractions – As a freelancer, you mostly work alone from home, which can be excruciatingly distracting. Due to this, your quality of work may suffer.
- Admin Tasks – when you are a freelancer, you are a business owner, and you’re bound to carry out all the admin tasks along with your work. These tasks include chasing invoices, business finances, etc.
Wrapping Up
So, you’ve gone through all the factors that you must consider before choosing Freelancing as a career. Sharing these traits doesn’t mean that you don’t have the abilities and guts to become a successful freelancer.
We shared it so that you make the right career choice before leaving your full-time regular job. You can do it part-time along with your routine, full-time job and slowly convert it to your full-time job and with proper planning and hard work.
If you still have questions about your freelance career, let us know we will respond to you shortly.
