Here’s what you need to know before starting freelancing. I’ve seen a lot of how-to freelance blog posts and videos on YT where they only show the bright side of it, and not the whole picture. Here’s 3 hard truths to keep in mind before starting freelancing. These include:
You might have seen a lot of videos and blogs in which people talk about how amazing freelancing is and how you should definitely try it out and you can become your own boss even here at M-EDUCATE, and you might have felt that you should also try out freelancing. Okay, but yeah, Not a lot of people talk about the downfalls, the pitfalls and the problems with freelancing, and that’s what i’ll be talking about in This post.
All right, Let’s get started!
So today I will be talking about freelancing. There are three things that I want to talk about, that I want to point out that I want us to understand before you get into freelancing before you try to take this as your own Career. Okay, let’s start with the number one point: okay, and that is the fact that
- You are your own boss.
It’s one of the best parts about freelancing, but it also becomes a problem, as you’ll have to constantly reach out to people, get more clients, upskill yourself. Since it completely depends on you, you can’t just take a day off and relax(it’s harder for me atleast) when you see that there’s one more client that you can pitch to. You get to set your own rules, you get to set your own working time, you get to choose when you go out for for a vacation, okay, it depends completely on you. It depends completely on where you want to take your life. There is no cap on how much money you can earn. That’s a good thing. The bad part about this is that you will Always have to hustle. You will always have to make sure that you are upskilling yourself. and always. You have to make sure that you are going after and getting new clients. Okay, because again clients don’t stay here for forever. Okay, you have to make sure that you are getting in front of people so that more people can get to see and hire. You also have to keep explaning yourselfe like, This is the kind of personi am . This is what I do. So people will at least be thinking, So I should definitely approach this person and ask if he would be able to do my work. Okay, so this is all that you have to do. You have to take the initiative. You have to hustle really hard every single day. It becomes really. It becomes really difficult for me at least to just be like okay i’ll just take a day off. I won’t work and i’ll just chill for some time.That’s not really possible. Okay, when you are freelancing, you have to make sure that you first of all take care of your expenses. Okay and secondly, you have to make sure that you are going after and reaching out to newer clients, and also at the same time, it’s really important that you have a community online, that you have some sort of an online presence. That’s also a really important part. Okay, so this is the number one point you are your own boss. That is a good thing. At the same time, it’s a bad thing. because you get to decide how much you want to work, you get to decide how much you want to chill and that at times can be really stressful for a lot of people, because they just don’t want to take in the pressure. Okay, a lot of times, you will feel that there are no clients and You are just at your home. You don’t have any one that will be paying you for this month. Okay, there will be months in which you won’t have any work. There will be months in which you will have a lot of work: okay, so uh. This is a very irregular schedule that happens with freelancing. So just keep this point in mind.
The number second point that I want you to understand is that
There is no security
Your client is not liable to get an insurance for you unlike in a job where you get a health insurance and other benefits. You will yourself have to get these securities. Also, since no client will work with you forever, you have to reach out to new people. Some months, you won’t get a single project while others you might get tons of projects.
this is also really important. Uh again, as I said, clients do not stay forever, so what you have to do is that you have to constantly approach new clients and see if you can work for them right, that’s really important to understand. There’s no security means that you won’t be getting a paycheck every single month. and in the beginning, you won’t be Getting anything. , you will be underpaid, you will be spending a lot of time and just doing some free work, maybe in the beginning. So this all is very stressful. When you don’t get a paycheck after every single month, you just feel discouraged. you feel that you should be quitting it. You feel that this is just not the thing for you or even if you do get a paycheck. It’s just really low. Okay, a lot of people complain that I worked so hard and I just got paid like 100 dollers for the entire month. That’s a bad thing, but what they do not understand is that this is an exponential curve in freelancing. as you are working, as you are learning new things, you will be able to charge them more. Okay and that’s also a really important point that i’ll be talking about in the coming points. so yeah second point is the fact that there is no social security. There is no security for freelancers. There are ways that you can secure yourself by getting some insurances, to make sure that your bills are paid when you don’t have the money, because it can definitely happen. Okay, It’s completely irregular for freelancers. So just keep this thing in mind. The third point is the fact that you have to
Understand your self worth
If you don’t know how to properly price your time, clients will easily take advantage of you. This has happened with me as well. Learning to say no when the client pays you less is also something you need to develop. a lot of times, especially in the beginning. You will find that you are getting underpaid or you’re working for free and then afterwards, once you are at an intermediate stage, you can start charging people, But at that point you need to understand what is your self-worth? How much should you be asking for per hour, or how much should we be asking for a value based pricing? so this is really important for you to understand, and the only way for you to understand this is by staying aware. by having a group of people who are freelancers and just talking to them, just Sharing your recent orders, and how did you fulfill those orders? so all of these things, you have to make sure that you are talking with people that are also freelancers. So that’s a really important point to keep in mind understanding your self-worth. It’s really really important, because if you do not understand your self-worth, it doesn’t matter if you are working for a new startup or if you are working for A fortune 500 company, they will always take advantage of you, so this is really important for you to Always keep in mind: how do you understand your self-worth i’ll? Give you an example of what you can do? Okay, just take a pen and paper and write down every single expense that you have once you do that you can then start to understand. This is what I Spend my money on, and so then it becomes really simple for you to think about budgeting, and then you can take a look at how much do you want to save? How much more do you want to earn? it becomes Really lucrative for you to just think that you will make this much money and then you’re like i’ll make much more money. if you don’t have a cap, you will Always feel unsatisfied in freelancing. So yeah, that’s what I feel about these three points. I’ll just revise what we talked about so far in this post. we talked about. You are your own boss, it’s a it’s a boon and a bane at the same time. Secondly, we talked about that There is no security. , that’s also a big point to keep in mind, and third thing to remember is the fact that You have to understand your self-worth. , so that’s it from me guys, . Let me know what other topic you want me to write about in the comment section below make sure that you share to your social and to your friends,.
