Freelancing can be a good thing and also a bad thing in certain aspects. Freelancing, however, opens the door for many people to make a living outside the traditional means.
Not everyone is satisfied with their job, their role within a certain company, and many feel underappreciated. And while the normal thing would be to ask for a raise, change roles, leave the company for another, and even work something else entirely, the sad thing is that not everyone has this option.
If this is one scenario that you can relate to, then maybe a sound option would be to explore the freelance world.
Freelancing, on the other hand, isn’t perfect. There are many aspects of it that people would gladly change and still continue down this path. You can save your time and energy with turbotax.intuit.com as they can help you with all your personal and self-employed tax work. With all that said, the number of US freelancers alone is in the tens of millions, almost 58 million to be precise.
And while the numbers are slowly, but surely, growing, we’ve decided to tell you all about the pros and cons of it. This article will be very detail-specific, so you should read through all of it.
With all that said, let’s get started with the pros first.
Pros
It Gives You the Choice of Choosing Your Clients
Probably one of the best things regarding this type of work is the endless options in terms of client choosing. If you manage to rise to the upper echelons in the industry, many people will be more than eager to hire you for their next project.
Also, if your clients are satisfied with your work, they might choose to hire you again, and again, and again, and even become your permanent clients. The world of freelancing is so amazing that you dictate who you’ll work with.
It Gives You the Choice of Choosing Your Own Work Hours
Flexibility is one yet another box that ticks “pro” on our list. Flexibility is a highly sought-after factor when entering this line of work.
By flexibility we mean the ability to work as much as you want, work in the hours that suit you best and still make a lot of money. Since you will mostly be working with people from different time zones, or not depending on the client, you can arrange to work at a specific time.
This doesn’t necessarily have to be 9 to 5 or 7 to 3, and it doesn’t have to mean an 8-hour workday. You can even use Traqq’s time tracker to ensure that you don’t work beyond your required hours. This way, you can still maintain work-life balance.
It Gives You Independence
Since we mentioned 9 to 5, it’s also safe to point out that you can work wherever you want. This type of work doesn’t require you to have full-time status, meaning you can be an amateur with no experience and work from home.
Indeed working from home is one of the biggest pros in the industry, which ultimately is a thing that people want. If you would ask an ordinary office worker if they would swap their boring cubicle, 9 to 5 job, they would instantly do it.
And while they certainly can do it, they choose not to because of the following reasons.
Before we go ahead and continue explaining the cons, you can visit Freelancejobopenings if you’re interested in freelance work closely related to languages.
Cons
Taxes Can Be a Problem
It was only a matter of time before taxes showed up. While not essentially a bad thing, since everyone has to pay their taxes, it is something that can be a hard pill to swallow.
Employees don’t care about filing taxes on their income since their companies do it for them. On the other hand, freelancing is a unique type of work that requires you to be responsible enough to pay your taxes.
Also, in the United States, there is a thing called self-employment taxes, which should essentially concern every freelance work out there. These taxes are required by the United States government to be paid quarterly, and you cannot miss them.
While taxes can certainly be categorized under the cons section, not every country has the same tax laws regarding freelance work. So before you even do them, make sure you know the ins and outs.
Lack of Employee Benefits
For all the freedom this type of work offers you, the lack of employee benefits is probably the single most important thing that bothers workers.
Since freelancers are essentially categorized as self-employed, this means that you don’t get any employee benefits, like most employees.
While this is certainly a bad thing, you can always use various investment strategies to make up for it. For example, a lot of freelancers open savings accounts and dedicate a portion of their monthly income for later years.
Trouble Finding Clients
We talked about paying your taxes like a good citizen and we also talked about the lack of employee benefits.
But the biggest and most frustrating thing related to freelancing is trouble finding clients. Truly, freelancers have to work on various projects to earn a good chunk of money at the end of the month.
Ask any freelancer out there and he will tell you that work comes and goes. Finding work at the begging is super hard since so many people choose down this path competition can be a pain most times.
With this type of work, it’s the question of how long not when. It’s not easy to make it in this line of work, but once you do everything will be as it should.
Some people have spent months without any work, only later to find a client whom they will work for years. Truthfully speaking, never dishearten if you struggle to find clients. The most important thing is to dedicate yourself, work hard, and your first client will arrive sooner or later.
Once you rise up the ranks in the industry, you will be contacted daily for specific projects, and you will have to turn down some people.
Since this type of work occurs only on specific freelance marketplaces, it’s also a good thing to point out that you will have to create an account on one. Each platform also has its own pros and cons, which is a wholly new article of its own, so it’s best to research before signing on.
