Quick Guide for Freelancers to do Well in Recession

During the current recession, many of people may find themselves out of the game and lose their jobs any time, especially with the big recession when companies are losing clients and looking for reducing employees. This article tries to give a solution to find another better way to get more money and more clients, and gives tips to start your freelance career and give resources sites that can help you get more jobs and clients.

Introduction

When Peter lost his job earlier this year with the massive layoffs at the beginning of this year, he got no job, less money and much time to speed in front of his computer searching for jobs and applying for recruiting sites. For someone who spent more than 20 years of his life as a full time employee, it was not in his mind to think about being a freelance when he thought to give it a shot.

Peter started to google for freelance jobs over the web, guess what? Peter was lucky to start his first freelance job and started to get more clients and more money from his freelance job. He could also spend more time in work as he is actually working from home and saves the time that he used to lose in driving to office and in big companies routine.

Actually, Peter story is not real, but the facts are. I made up this story based on true events and experience from people that experienced both working as a freelancers and full time employees.

Living as a Freelancer

Living as a freelancer is not an easy career. Freelancers are self employed and try to get more clients and projects to be able to continue their lives, which mean higher risk factor comparing with setting in office and get paid.

When you are employed in a company, you do not have to find projects, set deals or develop relations with clients, you only do your tasks and jobs. On the other hand, freelancers can be considered a small company as they get new clients, develop business relations, set deals and work in the project as well.

When you work as a freelancer, you do not have eight hours working limit. With the risk of unstable clients flow and market status, you need to get the most out of your projects and clients, so you try to invest more in your time and work for longer hours to be save in the bad days.

Since most of your deals are made through the web, you become under another risk to lose your money or meet a client who do not pay try to get extra work for free, so you have to be prepared for such really silly clients.

Along with the above risks, being self employed will make you be able to get more profits out of your job. Most company that is looking for freelancers are looking for less cost than a big company can provide, as big companies calculate over head costs on each project such as the offices, clearing , security and assists…etc.

You can give less prices than big company does and get more hourly rate than you can get out as an employed in a company.

Also, freelancers are more independent and able to take their own decisions as they do to belong to a company structure or routine. You have the choice to work or not to work, choose the type of projects you find more challengeable or even spend more time to learn new stuff that can open more opportunities for you.

Can You Live as a Freelancer

People who lost their jobs like Peter will have no problem to try freelance life till they find another job. But if you are already employed, you have to think more before taking this important decision unless you can return to your job any time which is not available for everyone.

You have to be able to live the freelancer’s life and got the talent to develop business as well as developing tasks and technical stuff. Also, you need to choose if you are one of those people that like to get higher positions and titles or focus on getting your own independent company and clients.

Before taking such a serious step, you have to have enough money support to relay on till you get enough clients and projects, although building relations and projects are not easy and losing it are. So, you have to be careful when building relations because bad impressions can destroy you before you start.

One of the advisable tips before getting into the freelance job is to try couple of projects in your free time after your full time job or in weekends. It is a big load but helps you to know if you can succeed in your new life and avoid part of the risk.

Tips Before Getting Into Your Freelance Career

Before you start the freelancer life, there are some tips that can help you avoid getting into troubles and help you build good business. These tips are:

Start as a company

Most people trust companies than individuals, because companies have more resources and more professional attitude. Build for yourself a website that includes your resume, brief about you and samples of your work. This will help clients to know about you and see samples of your work easily.

Develop relations

The relation developing process starts with your first job proposal, make your cover letter professional and focused to let the client knows that you are the one and encourage the client to look at your work and resume.

Most of the freelance relations start with a small task but you can drive more work with gaining more trust from the client and provide more services.

Develop business

Doing your task in a professional way is the most important part in this process, so the client can trust you and give you more tasks.  The right developing process lets the client thinks that you are real professional such as receiving the requirements and materials and know exactly what the client needs. Also, make sure to deliver the client the project in a professional arranged way, the client does not have the time to search for files or learn your job to be able to understand your matrix.

Timing

It is one of the important point to consider, meeting deadline and manage time is very important and give your client an impression how they can depend on you and relay on your time in their plans. You can use program such as MS Outlook to arrange your emails, deliveries and milestones.

Payments

One of the issues that make people do not want to work as freelancers is managing their payments and the chance to meet bad people who do not want to pay. You need to work with this issue carefully as some clients start to test your ability to be tricked from the first interview. It is always good idea to have an in-advance or down-payment amount of money that ensures the client is serious enough.

Freelance Resources Sites

The biggest resource for freelance projects is the web, and fortunately there are increasing number of the sites that provide freelance projects and connect among freelancers and project owners, some of these sites control the process among both freelancers and clients.

Upwork

Freelancer

Gofreelance

Freshwebjobs

Guru

Twine

Conclusion

With the increasing number of freelance sites, freelancers got more chance to get clients and people have more chance to get into the freelance career. The freelance career can help you get more money and challenges than you can get from your full time job and it can help you getting money when you are affected with the recession and bad market times.