What is Freelancing and Why Does Freelancer Fail?

Today, freelancing has gone mainstream as employers rely more on independent workers to sustain and grow their businesses. Freelancing is getting extremely popular all over the world, people who are not familiar with this new mode of work ask, what is freelancing?. Let’s discuss this in detail.

Freelancers are the ones who are self-employed. They do not work for an employer in a 9 to 5 job, Monday to Friday. They are different from the current cubicle crowd. In the cubicle world, workers are given assignments to complete and chase the next assignment. Freelancers never stick to just one task. They find contractual jobs, convince the client to hire them and once they get the job done, they get paid and move to the next contractual job.

Reasons of Failure Freelancers

Freelancing requires both soft skills and hard skills in order to succeed.

Freelancing also requires the art of persuasion, it requires one to communicate effectively to provide a solution to the problem stated in the client’s project placement. It requires an effective selection of words to convince the client; why you are the right choice for selection.

About 56.7 million Americans freelanced in 2019. This number suggests, Americans are spending more time freelancing. People prefer freelancing because they prioritize lifestyle over earnings and this lifestyle brings balance in life and provides more opportunities.

Freelancers prefer getting skills training over a four-year college degree and that makes sense too. Freelancing is all about skills and with the help of technology, freelancing has just gotten easier and more effective for online workers. More people feel secure with freelancing than ever before.

According to a report of Freelancers Union’s “53 million” report, here are some interesting insights into freelancing.

• Freelancers contribute an estimated $715 billion in freelance earnings to the US economy.
• Twice as many freelancers have seen an increase in demand in the year 2018.
• It is estimated that 80% of non-freelancers are willing to do work outside their full-time job to make extra money.
• Earning extra money with work-schedule flexibility is the top driving force for freelancing.
• 69% of freelancers give credit to technology for making it easier to find freelance work on freelance marketplaces such as Fiverr, Guru, Freelancer.com, and UpWork.
• 77% of freelancers believe, best days are yet ahead for freelancing.
• 65% say, freelancing as a career is far more respected today than it was three years ago.

Many freelancers, especially in the subcontinent, struggle to ace at freelancing because they acquire good computer skills such as graphic designing, web development, content writing, and many others but they lack communication skills to express themselves and sell their services. Because of the lack of communication skills, they are topped off by their competitors who can speak well and sell their services.

According to my 2 decades of freelancing experience, freelancing is all about communication skills. There must be a reason why this soft skill has always been in demand and ranked as one of the top 5 skills in 2019 and 2020 according to LinkedIn.