and Why these are the best times to get into the gig economy!
When 2020 was started, no one saw a global pandemic coming and what havoc it brought to ordinary people’s lives. A lot of people lost their jobs. Globally, both direct and indirect impacts were felt on livelihoods. This led to the declaration of it as a pandemic.
Most of the salaries were slashed, people were forced into work from home culture, and everyone took a toll during the transition process. There was an impact on economies due to countrywide lockdowns.
This situation acted as a catalyst to the already booming Freelance culture. What the 2020 pandemic did it provide a sense of possibility to many 9 to 5 individuals to taste work from home potential? We have carefully curated the following information to help you understand. Why it is not that difficult to take the leap and how one can take a calculated risk and achieve multiple streams of income to avoid any uncertainty of the future.
To provide a perspective on the rise of Freelance culture. Google workforce data for 2019 was share by Bloomberg, Google had 102000 employees on their payroll while Google had work outsourced to freelancers for a whopping count of 120000. Which is 120% more than their permanent employees.
How much do freelancers earn for typical jobs?
There were so many stories that made headlines. Few were very interesting to share like Danyal Saleem, a graphic designer who used to make USD $20,000 per month in a country like Pakistan. Where average monthly earnings sometimes is less than $100.
Kate Quinn was a nanny before selling voiceover services, and she usually makes $310,000 annually.
You need to pick one skill and be super awesome with it. But you can always learn online even if you don’t have any talent. There are so many online courses available that can allow you to get income driving factors in your resume.
You can either choose a skill that is always in demand or master the super exclusive craft that pays you well.
For the USA alone, Freelancers earned more than 1 trillion dollars in 2019. By the year 2030, more than 80% of Americans will choose freelancing over traditional jobs.
There was a survey done by Indeed, and it was found that over 57 million people provided freelance services for an average of 20 hours per week and generated $797 per week on average.
Some people go at $245 per hour on platforms like Upwork. Whereas small task freelancing could go as low as $5 per task called a Gig.
How can one get high paying online jobs?
With the rise of social media, promotions are relatively easy, and anyone can showcase their expertise and get enough exposure to get some business going for themselves.
There are multiple platforms which act as a mediator between employee and employer. These platforms provide organized structure and segmented aggregation of services with proper rating mechanism. Some popular platforms are UpWork, Freelancer and Fiverr, etc.
Freelancer.com is the largest freelance jobs platform, with over 31 million registered users. This Australian company has established itself as the largest outsourcing platform.
UpWork was previously known as Odesk; in 2015, Odesk and Elance merged to form Upwork. With 17 million registered users, upwork is known for its reputation. Each freelancer registered is a skilled expert, certified, and often verified by the admin. Upwork allows each freelancer to set their hourly rate.
Fiverr founded in 2010, has over 7 million registered users, has a different way of working wherein a freelancer creates a gig starting from $5. Fiverr’s unique proposition resulted in the rise of the gig economy. Wherein, any freelancer can create a detailed list of actionable deliverables for a specific cost. It allows employers to know about the expected outcome in advance. And freelancers can get the desired amount instead of per hour model.
The best place to start for any new freelancer enthusiast is Fiverr. As it will deliver short-term results with limited abilities;
one can easily create and understand the process of freelance work delivery. Based on experience, start working on per hour rate based on any of the platforms, or market themselves over social media.
What skills can you get the best paying freelance opportunities?
We live in a generation where demand is so high that if you have any skill set and promote it well, then the sky’s the limit. However, we assume some of our readers to be new to freelance industries. Hence we have segmented mainly into three categories of jobs
- Programming
- Creative
- Optimization
- Marketing
- Customer Services
Depending upon the interest, anyone can choose any of the categories to begin with. Here is a review of each category.
Programming freelance work
Recently business insider published a list of 20 high paying freelance jobs. In that report, 60% of jobs were related to programming. Blockchain being on top-paying skill for 2020. Check the datasheet below for average prices for the services related to these skills.
Creative Freelance Work
This is among the most outsourced work during recent times. Video and podcast culture is showing steep upward trends. This has provided an excellent opportunity for various creative people. There plethora of service that people require like content creation, content planning, content strategy, voiceover services, audio and video editing, animation, and many others.
Optimization Related Services
Optimization is your final product is very much important; lately, you have a website; it will require speed optimization, image optimization, search engine optimization, content optimization, and many other services.
One top-rated service is called Conversion rate optimization service; it involves optimizing landing web pages where a user is influenced to perform the desired action like filling a form, calling a number, and making a conversation through chat or subscribing services.
Copywriting is another essential service that has gained superior traction in the last couple of years.
Marketing Services
The rise of Covid19 forced traditional brick and mortars, retail stores, or any other business to move online for their web presence. Web presence requires an additional effort in marketing. It involves the creation of marketing material, its promotion, and analytics.
Social media and search engines are everywhere in today’s world; everyone is searching or finding things online. This has risen as a compelling business generation medium. Let us showcase some services that can help you gain a substantial side hustle or maybe a concrete step towards freelance earning models.
- Website Design
- Branding material planning
- Online Reputation management
- Social Media Marketing
- Pay per click advertising
- Affiliate Marketing
- Remarketing
- Email Marketing
Virtual Assistant and Business Support Services
Setting up a business online is one thing, and managing is a whole lot of different problems to solve. Virtual Assistant and Business Support Services like paralegal work, data entry work, call center services, market research, Microsoft office related work, and many others
How can one acquire skills for best earning remote works?
This is the most important habit that one needs to accept while choosing freelance as a career that one needs to target to grow their learning continually. Without upgrading, your knowledge can make your obsolete quite fast.
So be it learning new concepts or upgrading the current level of knowledge also needs a mindset to learn through online mediums,
We strongly recommend going for Paid Courses compared to Free resources available on youtube of any other free website. Paid coursera are designed to cater from start to finish, while youtube always keeps you suggesting related videos, which works more towards distraction and often unreliable.
Websites like Coursera and Edx are known for its quality content, and it can provide a mindset towards actionable service delivery that can help you earn online.
Freelance facts and Figures
Freelancing can be quite a rewarding career, mainly when focusing in a field that needs desirable skill sets in today’s world – such as internet development, social networking advertising, content writing, and search engine optimization.
Even though several men and women kickstart their freelance profession without formal schooling, it’s more probable that freelancers will possess credentials unique to their skillset.
As stated before, a few more reputable platforms like upwork can assess the freelancer’s qualifications to make sure that there are skilled workers on their website, offering their services.
The subsequent freelance figures show more details about the critical trends of freelancer’s learnings.
- 45% of freelancers who work full-time reported in taking part in more advanced courses and training than during their period as a full-time traditional worker.
- 53% of college-educated freelance workers assert that skill-related training are quite helpful for their jobs.
- Compared with 43% of freelancers who mention that their real college education is beneficial.
- 66% of full-time freelance workers upgrade their skills regularly to ensure they remain competitive with their peers because the markets grow and progress.
- 70% of freelancers working full-time took skill-training in the previous six months, compared with just 49% of full-time workers who are not freelancers.
- 53% of freelancers assert that price could be a barrier for them obtaining education since they’re more inclined to cover their training than conventional workers.
- However, 27% of freelancers reported that their customers have already helped cover the price of current skill-related training.
- According to freelancers, 21% of their learning is free.
What comes together with unconventional freelance tasks lifestyle is a non-traditional work-life balance.
Nearly all freelancers work from home, and so will have more challenges regarding scheduling a working day than having fixed times and workdays.
Interesting Facts
There’s an increase in co-working freelance spaces for independent workers to discuss and use a professional ecosystem to improve productivity. Below are a few more interesting facts in today’s work-life balance freelance figures.
- 72% of part-time freelancers agree their work-life provides them the lifestyle they need.
- 84% of freelancers working fulltime assert they are living the lifestyle they need.
- 42% of freelancers claim this lifestyle provides them the essential flexibility they want for personal reasons, which would restrict their accessibility for routine work schedules.
- 70% of freelancers working fulltime report that outsourcing is not as stressful as conventional work. The ordinary freelancer in the USA says being fulfilled 63% of their time.
- 84% of freelancers who work full-time assert to be fulfilled by the present position they hold.
- 64% of individuals who freelance reported that their health is improved since stopping their conventional occupation.
- 87% of millennials reported they would like to become a freelancer as a career or side hustle.
- 70% of freelancer workers manage to perform four jobs at the same time.
- A little less than 4% of freelancers will work over ten jobs at one time.
- 25% of freelancers assert their favored workspace is their house.
- 2% of freelancers would instead work in coffee shops.
What we should expect by choosing freelance as a career
As stated above, from the freelance figures, there’s an upward tendency of workers switching into the freelance lifestyle. The projections for this particular industry appears promising, while there are a couple of caveats in any business growth that may also result in saturation.
Furthermore, with technology improvements come more automation, which might well impact freelancers later on; however, following facts by survey tells a different story.
- Over half of freelancers surveyed (64%) say that no cash amounts will take them back to conventional 9-5 work.
- 67% of freelancers working full time expect their earnings to grow within the following calendar year.
- 48% percent of freelancers see this work lifestyle as long-term.
Conclusion
Freelancers understand that automation introduces a challenge due to their future, with over fifty percent of those freelancers researched about automation are worried about the effect it’s going to have on procuring jobs. Earning money as a freelancer isn’t a joyride.
You might wind up earning considerably less than your daily job. You might end up working 16 hours (or longer!) a day.
What it provides you, nevertheless, is freedom. And we all are seeking this freedom. We need flexibility and the choice to select the work. Freelancing can provide exactly that.
The above freelance figures demonstrate that individuals involved in it also reveal interest in their growth.It is a pleasure to work as a freelancer and the flexibility is a plus, while customers love the increase in productivity, and freelancers support economies.
Nevertheless, there’s still some work to do on enhancing faith and closing the gender difference.
However, Freelancer is a way forward for most individuals and companies globally; learning new skills is super easy, and one should not miss this chance to earn more and learn more.