As a student freelancer, I’m sure you have come across the feeling of not being good enough. You don’t feel like you are as good as other freelancers who are competing for the same business you are. It is a natural feeling most student freelancers get, as they feel like they are inexperienced and not sure how to find and obtain clients.
For the starting student freelancer, estimating how much to charge a client for a project can cause anxiety if you aren't sure what you should be estimating. It's easy to say "it will take me 20 hours to do this project" then just multiply it by your hourly rate, but you could be forgetting some very important factors. For instance, is your client easy to work with? What about how much admin time (i.e. invoicing, emailing, phone calls, contract setup, etc.) will be involved? Will your client need a lot of education along the way or are they fairly knowledgeable about the services you are offering?
I think society as a whole hasn't yet embraced the idea that students can do amazing things before they even get their diploma. Students who often have an entrepreneurial mindset or innovative and exciting ideas can find themselves discouraged due to the lack of respect by those around them. It's not that their friends and family don't think they can do great things, or that their professors don't support their ambitions, but because of the fact that they are a "student" or that they are "young."
One of the things that have been keeping me so busy during summer break (well, since I finished school) is playing "catch-up." I feel so behind in the constantly changing things involving freelancing, design, and the web world that when I got done with school, I felt as if I didn't know anything anymore. Why is that, especially when student freelancers often just spend all school year learning new things?
With the economy like it is and the fact that jobs are becoming harder and harder to find, more students are wanting to turn away from the future rat race of finding a job and become self employed as a freelancer. That is great and all, but are you cut out for it?
In this economic climate thousands of freelance students are finding it tougher than ever to land their perfect job. After studying for many years and racking up a huge debt it can be utterly demoralizing to find that once you’ve graduated from University, you’ll be fighting it out with hundreds of thousands of other qualified and eager graduates in the search for work. Law and medical graduates have it far easier than most as it is common for Law firms and Hospital boards to actively target the University campus in search for talent. For the rest of us however, if we want to survive after University in a market saturated with qualified graduates, then freelancing represents an exciting opportunity to get some experience in a specific field and yet maintain control over your own life and finances.
When people often think about freelancers, most of the time the types of work they do are design work or writing work. This often casts a preconceived notion that if you aren’t a designer (or web developer) or writer that you can’t be a freelancer. Well, I am here to tell you that there are many fields in which the student-wanting-to-freelance can freelance in. In this article, you will see that the sky is the limit in what you can offer as your freelance service. And this article isn’t all-inclusive--let your imagination take you to freelance places you never though could be possible!
Glad you asked! For most starting student freelancers, the definition of freelancing has a fuzzy meaning. Is it a way to make money? A means to get a job? Or something entirely different? With freelancing being this magical world that some very brave souls venture into, what can the student freelancer learn about freelancing?
Have all this extra time on your hands now that classes are over, but don’t know how to best put it to use? Here are three ways that I am putting my spare time to good use to improve myself not only as a student but as a freelancer, and I am sure that at least one of them will help you as well.
All I talk about on this blog is why you should freelance as a student and what you should do to help your freelaning. Truth be told, being a student freelancer sucks. Wondering why that could be after all the posts I post here saying how awesome it is? Well let me tell you the three dirty secrets student freelancers don’t tell you.
