Disadvantages of Freelancing

Freelancing:

Freelancing – it has its own craze; its own advantages and many people dream of having a successful and a full-time freelancer. Surely there are many advantages of freelancing and I am one of those people who love to enjoy these advantages of freelancing. But there are many disadvantages too, which people do not often like to talk about. In this article, in contrast of the advantages of freelancing, I am going to talk about some of the disadvantages the freelancing world can bring with it.

Disadvantages of Freelancing:

Following are some of the very common disadvantages of freelancing:

1. Establishing Your Name as a Freelancer:

To setup your freelance business, is very much similar to setup an offline business and it does take time – no problem at all, right? Though the problem starts when it eats up your precious time and you get fed up and give up all the hard work and valuable time you invested in establishing your name as a freelancer. The disadvantage here is the enormous amount of time you need to initiate the setup of establishing your name as a freelancer. Many people gave up on the brink of tasting success. Patience is the key here; along with the hard work, dedication and commitment.

2. The Surprise Factor:

If you are working at the bidding sites, you may get a little surprise thing, like I experienced. You start your business, bid at many projects, but you have been really unlucky and no one seems to accept your offers. One day, the luck gods start loving you and your 3-4 pending applications get approved and all your clients are now waiting for you to complete their projects. That will be a little ‘Surprise Factor’ and you will have to cope up with a lot of work in a certain amount of time. Unless and until, you successfully pull off this mission impossible, your ratings and feedbacks are likely to be suffered.

3. Competition:

As everybody loves to become a freelancer; hence, you may face a lot of competition too. An important thing to note here is that majority of these transactions are carried out in the dollar currency, and always remember that you will be facing a global competition which include many Asian competitors as well, where the dollar is (when converted), on average, 40-90% greater as compared dollars in America. So, good for Asians, that the earning $1 sums up to somewhere 40-90 units of their currency; Americans and British people need to compromise on that.

4. Management:

This is one of the greatest disadvantages of freelancing – management. Think of a daily job; either you work for an organization/business or you manage the work in there. But in Freelancing, you need to actively work for clients and manage your business. This may often prove to be a very hectic task.

Some of the basic tasks that a freelancer needs to do are:

1. Work – To complete all the projects.

2. Manage deadlines – To manage and keep track of different deadlines. The difficulty increases when you work with multiple clients.

3. Work of a customer relation manager (All the talks and discussions with your clients)

4. Manage and keep track of the receivables and payables.

5. To ensure that all the things work in coordination and with the necessary flow.

6. Managing different freelancing accounts – This problem starts when you use multiple websites for getting projects.

5. Lack of Benefits & Perks:

As you are the owner of your own business (a business with the never ending work, I should say), you are deprived from all the benefits and perks of a usual job. Vacation pay, medicals, insurances, holidays, paid sick leaves, bonuses etc. do not exist in a freelancer’s world.

6. Inconsistency and Variability in Income:

Huge ups and downs are common trades in freelancing. Budgets are usually disturbed and a freelancer is generally not able to cope up with these large swings and variability in his income – especially a freelancer with a lesser amount of revenues.

Despite all these hassles and troubles, freelancing may prove to be a very effective and viable way to succeed. I am a freelancer as well and am happy with the job in comparison to the other hassles and issues in a usual office job. You may not enjoy the spice of that extra affair with your hot ‘personal’ secretary in your office, but still the advantages involved in this profession are worth the sacrifice. For a person to decide upon choosing this career, it is necessary to evaluate his very own situation under all these advantages and disadvantages and decide accordingly. Best of luck!