How to become a “Freelancer in India”?
In the growing trends of employment, Freelancing is something that many have started to adopt for a living.
It's all about how you stand out and brand yourself in the skills that you're passionate about making you grow as a freelancer.
The freelancer market experienced nearly 46% growth in the first and second quarter of 2020 (Q1-Q2).
COVID-19 played a crucial part in the outcome.
Many people lost their jobs, experienced pay cuts, few even worked without any pay for months.
We all are affected by COVID-19 directly or indirectly. The main factor that bothered many of us “income to run our day-to-day lives”. Freelancing has helped many individuals generate income to support themselves.
If you ask do Freelancing is a booming career pathway?, the answer is YES!
There are almost 57 million freelancers out there in the US who make an average of 18$/hr.
What influenced them to become full-time freelancers?
Let us start by understanding what is freelancing & if you want to become a freelancer in India.
Do read this article to the end wherein you can get many insights on How to start your career as a freelancer and its career milestones.
What is Freelancing
In a layman's term, Freelancing is working directly with a client on a particular project in exchange for a certain “Fee”.
Freelancers work independently on their own without any restricted timing on projects.
They can work at their own comfort, on their own schedule & convenience. Freelancers usually get projects and clients popularly from Ecstasy creatives, Fiverr, Upwork, and many other freelancing sites.
Freelancing in INDIA:
The future of freelancing is promising in India! Many people are willing to work on their preferences and their career aspirations.
The individuals who provide skilled services can get projects from around the world, making more money than what they make locally.
Type of Freelancing
Full-time freelancers:
Freelancing is the breadwinning profession for full-time freelancers and their main source of income is from freelancing.
They don’t take up any full-time jobs and their earnings are flexible according to their efforts and dedication.
Unlike Part-time Freelancers, they solely depend on Full-time freelancing.
Part-time Freelancers:
Part-time freelancers tend to do freelancing along with their regular job.
They tend to have their Full-time job as their main source of income and part-time freelancing as a side hustle. Part-time freelancers plan their own schedules and freelance on their passionate skills.
Contract Freelancers:
As the name sums it up, Contract Freelancers work on a certain project for a company or a startup or with an entrepreneur for a certain time on a contractual basis.
Their pay and works are defined at the time of the contract agreement.
Freelancer agencies:
Freelancing agencies are run by individuals who acquire projects from multiple clients and completes the project by collaborating with other freelancers or with their own team.
Freelance consultants:
Freelance Consultants will work for a company or project for a fixed period of time in a week/month for multiple clients.
How to start as a freelancer in INDIA
Define your Goals!
Right from the beginning start by understanding “WHY”. Why do you want to do freelancing?
Define your goals and think about how freelancing will help you in your career goals. The reasons you might get-
- To have additional income
- To work on your schedule
- To enjoy life while working and so on
By having a clear set of goals at the beginning, you are more likely to achieve them easier!
Identify your NICHÉ
Freelancing is all about providing services in which you are good at.
So, how exactly should you identify your niché?
Well, your niché is something that you are good at, which does have market value and which gives you happiness for a longer period.
A niche can also be defined as the target businesses or industry that requires your services or where the competition is comparatively low.
Define your TARGETED MARKET
After choosing your niche, you can approach different kinds of projects to establish yourself as a Freelancer.
Many freelancing agencies and websites like Ecstasy Creatives, Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer, etc can help you find the right clients for your services.
But in the longer run, you need to have a defined targeted market.
Example:
You are a Digital Marketer and you started your freelancing journey by offering various services like SEO, Lead-generation, SMM, SEM for getting clients to establish yourself as a freelancer.
Once you started generating more works, you need to limit your services to one or two which you are good at and enjoy doing them taking the right amount of things on your plate.
Have a Portfolio
A portfolio helps your clients to understand you better and to know more about your projects. This helps them consider your profile for their projects.
Establish yourself socially.
It's always better to have an active LinkedIn profile where you can nurture your content regularly with insights and other updates.
Designers usually have a Behance profile whereas Developers use GitHub as their personal portfolio. Having a personal website is an added advantage.
Basically, the purpose of having a portfolio is that you can showcase your skills to your clients.
Build a GOOD NETWORK
Having a good network will help you to have a great start and to find projects from different sources!
You can start increasing your brand value by having a LinkedIn profile with regular updates, to gain more traction, attend workshops, webinars, and Business conferences.
Once you start getting projects, you can automatically generate more projects by building a good network with your clients and a strong personal portfolio.
Reaching out to potential prospects helps you build your interpersonal and communication skills where you can brand yourself as a solopreneur.
Set Reasonable rates:
Many newbies into freelancing confuse about the price they want to quote.
It’s always a crucial decision to quote reasonable rates to the clients at the beginning, something like an estimated prediction and at the end of the project, you can give them the final rates based on your efforts and the scope of each task.
Let's understand this better.
Suppose you are getting ₹25,000 per month, you need to divide it into the number of working hours and add 20% to it (as you will get extra benefits working in a company like PF, ESI, Insurance, and more.)
For Example:
₹25,000 (salary) / 30(Days in month) = ₹834.
You are getting ₹834 a day and again divide it with 9 working hours in a day, ₹834 / 9 = 93.6.
Then add 20% to the hourly rate!
₹93.6 + 20% = ₹113 is your cost per hour.
Now you have an idea to negotiate your costs accordingly!
Client Pitching
Start pitching your services to potential clients & don’t spam them with too many messages.
Your projects should add value to them so that they can consider and contact you.
In the beginning, try to pitch to as many clients as possible in your network, social media, Ecstasy Creatives, Fiver, Upwork, and there are many freelancing platforms out there.
Workflow Management
Once after generating projects regularly, you need to have your own framework and workflow to keep a track of your work.
Project status, financial statements, Client discussions, and other key aspects of project management should also be analyzed.
Without proper Workflow management, it would be hard to be productive and you may often end with limited clients and bad remarks!
Why choose Freelancing over a Full-time Job?
The reward for efforts
Working in a company or organization, sometimes our efforts and works go unrecognized and even if you go a step further for your company, you cannot expect rewards for your contribution.
But being a freelancer, every action of yours has a remarkable reaction.
The more efficiently you contribute, the more recognition & reward you receive for your work through income, referrals, portfolio growth, and much more.
Growth
Professional growth will be limited working in an organization whereas being a freelancer, the growth completely depends on one's productivity of work, ability to manage with clients, Time-management, the efficiency and effectiveness of work & other skills.
Work-Life Balance
A survey by monster.com says that 60% of Indian working professionals have rated their work-life balance average to terrible!
Many organizations don’t bother much about their employees' welfare & personal health.
Many working employees face a lack of sleep to insomnia, depression, irritability, anxiety, and other health issues due to their working conditions and improper work-life balance.
As a freelancer, you can create your own choices and dedicate your Work & Personal life according to your wish.
Impossible Deadlines
Freelancers make their own deadlines according to the work and projects they take up at a time, whereas in most companies, the deadlines would be almost impossible and unrealistic for the employees to achieve.
Confidence
Freelancing is a one-man company!
You can be your own boss and of course, freelancing has its own challenges, but it makes you stronger and helps you to learn many things, which in turn, helps you to run your own company in the future.
Ps: If you are planning so.
Complete dependency on others at a job will create problems in long term.
Travel
Many employees spend almost more than an hour to travel office every day!
According to a survey by paycheck “Around 4.4 % of employees in India travel 1. 45 to 2 hours daily to work (One-way)!”
Working as a freelancer has its own benefits, you don't need to work from an office or any particular location. You can work according to our comfort!
Business Opportunities
The best part of Freelancing is finding new opportunities and meeting interesting people.
Many doors are open professionally, one of which is Business.
As a Freelancer, you can expand your services and have an opportunity to learn more things and maybe even build your own startups!
The experience that freelancers get from freelancing helps them to understand dealing with clients, generating projects, negotiating, time management, financial planning and much more that helps them for more business opportunities!
Key Takeaways:
We hope this blog article has been an eye-opener to your freelance journey and help you understand the freelance industry.
Freelancing is the best carrier option.
However, in the beginning, it is best advised to start as a part-time freelancing which helps you understand what you're good at leading you to an independent freelancer.
Starting your career as a part-time freelancer, you can learn many things about dealing with clients, Negotiations, finding projects, meeting interesting people, growing your business connections, collaborating with like-minded freelancers and much more.
And of course, you also generate passive income. Once you are confident and familiar with Projects & Clients then you can become a full-time freelancer
The freelancing industry has exponential growth from past years and it will go more in the future. We want to envision unconventional freelancing!,
Ecstasy Creatives could be your first step to your freelancing journey. Join us as a freelancer with us and start building your career aspiration!