Freelance jobs: What you need to know before considering this path. The truth about the misleading p

This article is not about the sugary picture of freelance jobs portrayed on every corner of Instagram or Facebook, but rather an opener to what a freelance job in reality is. Everything described here is based only on personal experience from what we learned and expected from freelancing.

The idea of freelance jobs initially had a very great potential, which was to free (this is the root word for a freelance job, right?) many people from the stagnant nine to five schedule, to allow people to spend more time with family, to have their own schedule and, moreover, to uncover the creative potential of an individual. I guess it all sounds like an advertisement that you have heard numerous times, am I right?

Well, the idea was, and still is, wonderful, but, in truth it has turned into the opposite reality for people who chose that path. Please, don't worry, this is not going to be a horror story that will shut down all the wishes to go beyond the cubicle and the office space, but this is what it is and it has to be told in parallel to the sweet advertisements about self - employment.

I am providing this information as a caution as well as a message to all people who got blinded by the attractive pictures of freelancers travelling the world and posting breathtaking images of their work spaces, quoting smart phrases of famous people and saying how unreal it all is. So let us take a look through the microscope on freelancing and zoom in closer on some of the angles.

By now already, please understand that the above images of someone holding a drink have nothing to do with the life of a freelancer. I am talking about every day life. This image, if that is the real image, depicts only a minute of the day. But what about the rest of the time?

We tried to work while travelling and we can tell you that this is almost impossible. A freelance job means to work for different companies and getting paid per project, and more rarely, per hour. This means that people that hire you put time as a priority. What does it mean to you? They want you to do the job when it is convenient for them, and not for you. But wait, didn't someone just say that having your own schedule is the whole idea of freelancing? Yes, as I stated before, the idea is to have your own schedule, but the actuality is that your schedule depends on people who hire you.

Once, we were in an airport and had several spare hours to work on a project we were hired for.

By the way, that project was for a decent company, who served such travel agencies as Expedia. They hired freelancers to write an introductory on travel destinations around the world. Even though the company verbally stated that they have a "free policy" on when to finish your assignment as long as it's done within 48 hours after you start to work on it, in reality they wanted the projects done as soon as you start. So after we worked on the project for a few hours at the airport, where the internet was available and they could monitor the work progress, we boarded the plane and flew to our destination. We did not have the internet while flying, but continued to work on the project so as to upload the completed work later. After we landed and connected to the internet right at the airport, the representative from the company had already sent us a message, asking why the project was not finished as he saw it was started. 10 hours had not even passed when this question was raised! We explained the reason and their response was absolutely careless. Didn't you say we can finish the project within 48 hours?

After several days another message came regarding our time off. The message was about coffee breaks! Their system could be paused for sometime and during that time you would not be paid. Logically, the pause can be as much as you want: if you want to take a walk, lunch, stretch or have a coffee break just pause the system. Apparently our coffee breaks were too long for the company so the "big eye" message was sent to us again. Our collaboration did not last long with this business and that was ok with us! The compensation that they paid was fair, along with strict monitoring, which actually eliminated the whole purpose of freelancing for us.

A dominant number of employers who hire independent contractors will not provide you with the freedom you want or have been dreaming about. Take into consideration this fact. Employers want to get the job done as soon as possible and if they want to press you they will. The freelance market is getting ridiculously large and thus if you can't do the job immediately or on demand, then they will not hire you, or will quickly replace you, as there is a line of people who are willing to work 24 hours. They are the next untold reality of freelancing - cheap laborers ready to do anything for any compensation.

If you have already gathered certain popular online platforms for freelance jobs like Upwork.com or Freelance.com, you might have had the following question in your mind: Do people really work for $5 per hour (minus the website's fee, of course) or write one thousand words for an original and unique article for someone?

Don't worry, we also have this question in our mind and, unfortunately, the answer is that some people do. This gap of cheap employers and the same category of freelancers creates a discrepancy in the freelance field, making truly talented people struggle to find projects, defeating the time and the quality they spend on them. Extremely high competition and low pay is what freelance jobs are about nowadays.

We came from the fields not related to IT, web design or photography, so here I am talking to people who don't have years of experience and degrees after degrees in the above fields. But we do possess other qualities that, in our opinion, are also valuable in creating, writing or managing, and the examples of the qualities are: our exceptional language skills (for example, ability to write deep, structural and grammatically correct passages), responsibility for the quality of the product, ability to quickly analyse, a broad knowledge of subjects, travelling experience, and so forth. In reality, it appears, that these qualities are not enough to even get an entry-level freelance job. For $5, the employers demand a degree in the particular field, years of experience, references, knowledge of endless programs plus relevant academical papers, as samples. Isn't it too much for such pay? It appear not, as there are freelancers who are willing to work for such compensation.

Instead of taking you out of the daily hassles in the office, a freelance job brings stress and questions about your qualifications, which are, in many cases, simply underestimated. We used websites created to search for freelance jobs, only for very few projects. We searched and applied to a profuse number of projects and didn't hear any reply. These jobs are not a livable source of income, and to believe in the cliche slogan that "you have to work for low pay a little bit to build up your reputation", is an arcane for naive newbies who are willing to pay fees after fees for the privilege to use these searching platforms and generously share the profits. Please open your eyes now!

Finally, I can't not mention the heavily propagated courses about remote jobs and freelancing that are on social media and supported by the "real successful stories".

Sometime ago, I saw one video on YouTube about how to work two hours a day and earn thousands of dollars. This video had six million views! I watched the video and at the end signed up for a free online workshop. As many other viewers, I joined the workshop in the hope to gain valuable information and secrets of freelancing. At that time, I was still thinking that other people knew more than I do and they genuinely will share their knowledge. The presenter used Facebook as an example of how to get your talent out. It was very simple according to his words: just write an attractive article, use key words and ask your friends to share the article on their page. This part took only 15 minutes of his workshop and the rest of the time, the guy stressed on the importance of his course in your career as a freelancer, and how your life and success will change after the completion of it (and of course, paying the appropriate fee). I am sure you have seen something like that around. How did you feel about these courses? Did you feel resentment? I am glad you did! Our intuition never lies. I never took the course, but instead I monitored similar courses on social media and found out that they are nothing but selling pitches for "social media marketing" which has been unashamedly copied and pasted by hundreds of sneaky people, who captured the wave of the social move toward freelancing and decided to make money out of it.

These courses are not going to teach you more than you already know and read. The content of their lessons is very basic and does not enrich valuable knowledge for the amount of money you pay for it, nor does it brings instant and quick cash as promised. Everything in freelancing requires talent, time and personal dedication and no course can teach you that.

To wrap up this hot subject of today and give a positive perspective to people who want to be self - employed and be a happy freelancer, ask yourself what is the purpose of freelancing for you? Do you want more personal time? Family time? Or do you want to show your creativity or find recognition? After answering these questions, try yourself in what you have passion for, even if it is not in "trend" and no one does it. Because this is exactly the path that will lead to the desired direction for you. It might sound very broad and simple, but this is what brought us into the right direction and toward what we do now. Until we started doing what we like, we invested a lot of effort and time in something that brought no internal satisfaction as well as no financial support. Be patient and believe in yourself and yourself only!

Happy Freelancing to Everyone!