Freelancing, in the eyes of a student freelancer, should be looked at as the starting point to running your own business. Freelancers have a variety of names that go hand in hand with starting your own business, such as self-employed, independent contractor, entrepreneurship, and the like. What do all of these names tell you? That freelancing is a business.
The term “freelancing” generally refers to someone who is skilled at a particular service who goes into business for themselves and sell the services to clients who are willing to pay for them. This definition fits just about all the other terms listed above. So why is that?
Freelancing should be looked at as a business of one. When you start freelancing, you are essentially opening your business and providing services to clients who are looking for someone skilled to complete them. What makes freelancing a bit different than the standard business is that the freelancer, or self-employed individual, or the independent contractor, or the entrepreneur, does all the work–not just the creative work, but the administrative work such as accounting and record keeping, and the salesman who seeks out clients and scores contracts. Talk about wearing many hats.
Speaking of hats, when you are a freelancer, you often have no staff, no one there that you can delegate work to, no one to help you land clients. That is all on you. So its important for the freelancer, no matter if they are a student or not, to understand you are running a business, and you are taking on all of these rolls, not just the creative.
So as far as freelancing goes, you can sell your services in a wide range of fields. From photography to set building, to graphic design and web design, to software development and game creation, to illustration and animation; many freelancers have made a living doing what they love to do for clients who want their services. The fields you can freelance in are endless (and well worth another post on it later).
Freelancing is also often related to someone who is in-between jobs and looking to supplement their income, however I feel that this is an outdated thought on the subject. There are thousands of freelancers who have made this their permanent job, and don’t have the intentions on searching for employment. But, just as there are thousands of freelancers that make this their job, there are just as many who are only in the freelancing field temporarily.
The idea of freelancing has exploded in recent years as many individuals who are growing tired of their day jobs start looking into other ways to being gainfully employed. And there is good reason for the explosion. Freelancing offer so many benefits like flexibility, creative-choosiness, among being able to control your own income. But it also includes its own share of disadvantages, like having to struggle to find where your next meal will come from at times and learning how to be the accountant, salesman, boss, project manager, etc over night.
What is the point of this post? To be a brief introduction into freelancing and to clear up some of the fuzzy meaning when it comes to the student wanting to pursue something that exactly black and white. Did I cover everything? I didn’t even scratch the surface. But hopefully it did clear up the one issue that most people struggle with: you are now operating a business when you start freelancing.
When you tag the idea of “business” to your freelancing, it changes things a bit doesn’t it? Makes you take what you are doing more seriously. And with good reason. There are thousands of freelancers, possibly even millions of them just in the United States alone, all of which understand the importance of running their freelancing endeavor like a business.
So is freelancing still that big scary word?