Making Freelancing Better than Conventional Jobs

How do you feel about your current 9 to 5 job? Do you enjoy your hi-position and wage? But in the other side, you feel there’s less freedom to express your ideas and opinions. You work as told and for the sake of the company. You are limited by your working environment and suffering for not having enough time to be yourself.

Maybe for one time between your daily jobs, your mind popped up a thought of becoming a freelancer and start having an autonomy of your own future. You thought that you wouldn’t need to work as much as you’re told, you have the time in your grasp and you can use it the way you like. Further, you dream of having your rates higher than you do now.

Well, there’s nothing wrong daydreaming. And those in your mind can be yours as long as you know how to set yourself to reach them. When you start your freelancing for the first time, unless you already have lots of connections in your subject/major/specialty, you need to bust your hands, legs, eyes, brain, shed a lot of blood, sweat and tears or maybe dribble to build your profile and trust. You may need to give out free samples, lowering the rates first, even working more than 8 hours a day. You will need to take care of your own auditing, cash flow, maintain your clients. At first, it feels worse than your old job, because you’ll handle everything by your own. This is when I say that it is not impossible to have yourself work less than you used to be in your old office job. But, you’ll have to fight for the luxury first. And if you’re determined, the effort will pay itself more. From here on, what I like being a freelancer is that the effort I make effects my every future and I like the feeling that I’m responsible for my future. I still have a whole lot to learn though, but I’m seeing my path to success!

 

The same thing goes along with how you will have to spend your time starting from scratch your freelancing career. Even though I’m not freelancing as my main source of income, but my online marketing stuff works almost similar to freelancing. I don’t have a boss and no one tells me what to do next and which is better to be done. I must have myself to know what must be done and what must not and can be delayed. Learning to figure out those things takes the most time! As what I’m doing now, I spend my hours maintaining my blog, building community, meeting post schedule, replying to emails, comments, and discussions in order to build renown, profile and trust. I begin my day at 7 AM and I connect to the internet doing my schedule until 10 AM. And then I take breakfast while watching Oprah or Three Wishes (I’m a bit of pessimistic by nature, so there’s a lot of fight inside my head ). At 11 AM to 12.30 PM I go to the gym and practice (I need to gain weight, people won’t see me behind a pole! ). Go home, take a shower, and 13.30 I’m back in front of my lappie. Next is lunch on around 16.00 and half an hour later to 00.00 it’s back on business. Almost forgot! Cut off half an hour for my dinner :p ! I try not to sleep overnight because it will screw up my schedule, wake me up late and all of the day become ineffective. So it counts about 12-13 hours of work. And conventional jobs are just around 8-9 hours. Worst case scenario is 10 hours of work (report to the authorities now!). So it’s way more work hours than an old job. But I enjoy doing them, it feels great when doing things you like and in charge of your own actions.

Like said before, you cannot start with hi fees, unless you have your own clients’ waiting list. Most of the freelance start-ups will have a lot to sacrifice before they earn.

Everything has its contrast. A glowing career in freelancing offers you benefits the other one may not. You can choose to reject the projects you don’t want because only yourself gives you orders. You can have more time to control which you can’t on your old job. You can do your tasks everytime you want to and take breaks as you like. Actually, it’s not the breaks that I like about being autonomous. But I really appreciate the ability to arrange my time without depending on too many work schedules or someone else’s interests.

I’m not saying that online freelancing is the best job in the world, it may not be suitable for some people, though. But if there is ever a bit of desire in your soul and you haven’t got a lot at stake, I encourage you to try throw yourself in and give it a try! You’ll find freelancing being your own business instead of just having a job. It’s not easy to achieve, but it’s very rewarding.