Past, Present and Future of Freelancing

Gone are the days when getting a good job was the only dream of average working class.

Now we dream about a job that does not have any restrictions of working hours, work location and still pays handsomely. Freelancing gives us this opportunity to work from anywhere anytime and without having a boss. Apart from a good pay, it also gives you a unique and strong network worldwide and a capability to make your own brand or product successful. These advantages are countless, but the matter of the fact is, freelancing is being more popular than ever.

In a survey, 70% of freelancers accepted the fact that the best days are still to come in next five years. Some quick facts about freelancing:

• Countries with highest number of freelancers (Decreasing order): USA, India, Pakistan, UK, Italy, Philippines.
• 65% of freelancers have their full time jobs too. They freelance for 2-5 hours every day.
• Designing is the most popular niche having highest number of freelancers.
• Total number of projects outsourced to freelancers is increasing by 20% every quarter.
• Total money earned by freelancers in 2016 is $1 Trillion.
• Total number of freelancers is increasing by 9% every quarter.
• IT and programming experts are 41% of total hires.
• 25% of today’s freelance jobs did not exist 10 years ago.

Freelancing is a hot topic of discussions nowadays. A decade ago, it has a limited reach to very few, top of the class experts. But as the web technologies emerged, it is now getting new heights every day. Anyone with an internet connection and a pc can become a freelancer. There are hundreds of reasons people are attracted to freelancing, few of them are below:

• Location independent: You can work from any corner of the world. It gives you the freedom to work from your home. Needless to mention you can work from anywhere provided you have a pc and internet. This is the major factor people prefer freelancing over a traditional full time job.
• Time independent: You are not bound to work in a specific time window. You just need to complete your project within the timelines. You can work anytime morning, evening, night whenever you are comfortable.
• Be your own boss: Being a freelancer means you are your own boss. You can maximize or minimize your work on your own wish.
• Make good money: As a freelancer you can decide your own rates and working hours. You can also select the work you actually want to take. Also, you earn in international currency. You will earn much more than a full time job while doing the same work.
• Good network: In some time, you can easily make a good network of top experts round the globe. This network will eventually help you to setup a base for offline freelancing in future.
• Skills you learn: A freelancer is said to be a one man army. Despite of being a lone wolf, you act as a whole organization. Marketing, networking, time management, finance are some additional skills you learn as a freelancer over the time.

There are hundreds of other reasons that freelancing is preferred in comparison with a full time job. Most of us have heard this term ‘freelancing’ many times but don’t really know what is freelancing.

Freelancing and freelancer: Freelancer is a self-employed person who offers his services to several small, mid-size businesses. A freelancer can work with multiple clients on multiple projects at the same time. USA individually has more than 55 million freelancers and the total money they made in 2016 is $1 trillion.

Few years ago freelancing was not so common and popular as it is now. The reason is internet and IT was not as efficient as they are right now. Freelancers still managed to get regular work in that time but their reach was limited to their cities. They had to make a network to get ongoing work and it was the biggest challenge in freelancing. Hence the number of freelancers and freelancing jobs was very limited.

But now offline freelancing became less popular. Several online websites started to provide a platform for freelancers and clients. It is actually quite simple to become freelancer nowadays. You still need to be an expert in your skills but finding and applying for jobs is easier in comparison to the olden days. To help make it even easier, while applying, follow these simple tips to get freelancer jobs.