There is a huge chance that you have already heard the term Freelancing before. If not (I doubt it), then in simple words, freelancing is being ‘self-employed’. You build things for people and get money in return. The freelancing world is growing enormously as more and more people are connecting to the internet. This means that if you’re planning to pursue the world of freelancing, it won’t be very easy, however as long as you have the skills, you’ll definitely make it. We’ll talk about some of the pros and cons in this article.

Pros of Freelancing

1 – You own your time.

This may be one of the greatest gifts of freelancing. You get to decide how to manage your time. You should note that If your freelancing career excels, it means that you might have to put in more hours of work than when you are doing a job at a company. However, you still get to decide your own work schedule and adjust it when any sudden circumstances arise.

2 – You get a greater chance to grow

Working at a company as an employee is definitely great. However, most of the time the recognition that you get out of your work in a company is internal and remains in the company. Working as a freelancer however gives you the full credit that you deserve. If you handle a project perfectly by yourself at a company, you’re adding value to the company’s portfolio. If you handle a project for someone as a freelancer however,then you will be adding value to your own portfolio, which will definitely help you grow much faster in your field.

3 – You might learn a lot in a short period of time

Freelancing might require that you accept a wide range of projects. There is a great chance that every project that you accept requires a new set of skills from you. You’ll have to learn these sets of skills in order to proceed with the projects. Why would you have to accept projects that might not be 100% in your domain of expertise though? The answer is simply because you might not always find projects that fit your abilities 100% and you definitely can’t afford waiting for too long without acquiring any new projects (unless you are a millionaire). In my career as a freelance developer, I had to learn a great number of new technologies to survive. Almost every project forced me to learn something new, which seemed hard at the moment, but was definitely helpful for my career.



Cons of freelancing

1 – Dealing with terrible clients sometimes.

There are a lot of great clients out there. However there are always the bad ones too. There are the clients that might not pay you the full amount that you request, clients that are very demanding and are never satisfied no matter how good your work is, and the list is endless.



2 – Income Instability

If you’re new to freelancing or even an expert at it, your income is never stable. You’ll go through times when you don’t have any projects at hand, and other times when you can’t accept new projects due to your full schedule.

Final words.

If you are considering working as a freelancer, then you can use some online platforms like freelancers.com and others. However, it might be better if you look into other places online too. You might find plenty of projects posted on platforms like reddit (there are great subreddits for freelance work) and others. We will dedicate an article about where to find freelance project in future. Subscribe to stay tuned. Good luck !

