In an article that deals with the reality of working from home in general, I dealt extensively with this unusual pattern of work, and we noticed that there are people who work from home without the Internet as they transfer professions to their homes instead of offices. But what we care about is working from home with the Internet, as this channel connects you to the world without the need to travel and work for them .. there .. on the other side of the globe.
What do we mean exactly when we say self-employment? It is simply getting the work done and carrying out the tasks required of you independently without having to be committed to a specific company, group or person. The concepts of freedom and independence are closely related here. The main criterion is non-commitment to a particular party. Therefore, any work on the Internet is not free work, and this type of work is not required to be exclusively online.
That is why we call the name of a freelancer a person who works in a field that is usually assigned to an employee in a company to do it. You are a freelance designer, programmer, or translator instead of working for a company with the same work. That is, the independent is the one who does not always stick to a particular party.
Usually, the novice passes into a state of mix between self-employment and a job. He does not give up his traditional job that brings him the most income, except that in his spare time outside of working time he wants to "try his luck" with self-employment. Of course, when he works as a designer for a company for a fixed time and has a manager and a salary at the end of the month, we cannot call him independent here, but outside this system when he searches for projects to implement from his home and without commitment here we call him independent.
Before you start
If you work as a designer, programmer, and web developer for a company then you are called a designer, programmer, or web developer, but if you decide to go ahead and work as a freelancer, you have become an entrepreneur because you will take care of managing all aspects of your work. Before starting this journey, you should take these basic steps:
Create your own identity, get to know the fields you want to work in, and even if you want to specialize as much as possible within your field, the writer specializing in articles of mathematical analysis is different from the general writer. Know your passion and customize it.
Create your own workspace, you will most likely be in your home, whether your bedroom or an extra room that you can take advantage of, later when your income improves you can rent an office or work from collective workplaces to cafes, it is up to you.
Create your own work schedule, some prefer to take Thursday and Friday as a weekend, some are satisfied with Friday, and there are some who do not take a weekend and the daily hours suffice, and some choose to take leave on the day that he has no work. The important thing is to set your schedule so that you set working hours and days to focus on achieving your daily goals.
Obtaining the necessary tools to work, at least you will need a computer and an internet connection, and everything else that follows your business, whether paid or free programs that serve you in communicating and following up your work.
Searching for free labor markets, and there are a large number of foreign platforms and recently some Arab platforms were launched, such as Independent and we explained everything about it, registering in it and uploading your previous work in your profile.
How freelance platforms work
Freelancers generally find work in two ways, either by searching and direct contracting with project owners and this takes a lot of time and may not find any work, or by using freelance platforms that represent markets in which project owners present and submit their requests. The freelancer simply enters the site and finds various requests in front of him, chooses which project he can do, submits his proposal in a detailed manner that includes what he will present to the project owner and the financial offer that he wants to pay for that and the period he can complete it.
Freelance platforms have the advantage that the best offer is not the cheapest, but the best in every sense of the word. Usually, project owners look for experience, quality of previous work and evaluations of the freelancer to make the decision to appoint him to carry out the work, and this is a positive point in your favor to keep you away from the price competition and the war that sometimes takes place to the point that the offers are very close and separated by one dollar sometimes.
Of course, because the free job platform provides you with these opportunities, it charges you a commission from the value of the project. Think of it as any affiliate marketer who brought you a project to implement it and paid him 15%, for example, it is a modest number in front of what you would have cost if these sites did not exist. You will have to search for project owners like a needle in a haystack, communicate with them if you find a way to communicate, understand their request and submit your proposal and then implement it with the possibility of a large fraud because you cannot guarantee your right, which is another advantage that these platforms offer.
The successful freelancer has a clear business strategy in his mind through which he determines the number of freelance platforms that he wants to deal with, the methods of searching for projects in those platforms and the criteria that he sets, whether in terms of time, budget or specializations. Interest in it.
The pros and cons of cross-platform freelancing
Plenty of projects: At any moment you enter on any freelance platform, you will find thousands of new projects that their owners are looking for whoever achieves them for them, and with some sorting, you will find several offers within your interests and experiences and according to your own preferences, all of them are potential projects that you will win for their implementation, and the most important thing is to contract with the owner. continuously. This is perhaps the most important feature that makes you work independently through these platforms instead of personally searching.
Low cost: The first thing a freelancer complains about if he wants to work on a platform is the commission, which he describes as high, but later when he becomes a professional and realizes the truth of the matter, he laughs at himself, how is a percentage like 15% so insignificant in front of what he would have cost if he decided to search for the customer alone please About guaranteeing his right.
An easy-to-enter marketplace: For beginners, these platforms make it easy for them to enter and try their luck, as registration is free and easily you can create an account, add your business and start searching for projects.
Whereas if you decide to freelance without a platform, you will waste your time exploring ways to search for business owners and you may find yourself asking another freelancer to send you some of his clients and pay him a commission!
Greater opportunities .. Very: If you live in a small city, the chance to find owners of projects in a traditional way is greater than if you live in a big city. But what about the world outside your city limits? There the whales lie while you are enjoying the sardines in your city. Yes, there are also skilled fishermen with large fishing vessels, but the bigger opportunities are always better than the limited ones, even with the increase of your competitors.
One customer .. a customer tree: Because you are a businessman, as we talked earlier, you know the importance of building a long-term relationship with your customers. This relationship will be based on the quality of your business and your commitment to delivery on time and implementing the required accurately. When the entrepreneur is pleased with your work, he will definitely repeat the contract with you and even advise you of his network of relationships, and there is no need to assure you of the strength of this type of marketing with recommendations and praise and its impact on others.
And all freelance platforms operate with an evaluation system where each freelancer has in his personal file a record of the projects he has implemented and a separate evaluation in several aspects for each project, these evaluations form a crucial element for the project owner to choose you instead of another independent that has not yet been tried.
But it does not mean listing such advantages and others, that self-employment is free from defects, of course there are some flaws, but many freelancers were able to overcome or adapt to and manage them.
Although freelance platforms provide you with a large number of projects that you can implement, but this also opens the way for project owners sometimes to ask for impossible things, which we describe as bad projects. Either the set budget is too small, the demands are too many, or the duration is unreasonable.
Of course, freelance platforms work to combat this thing by restricting the accounts of project owners who open new projects and do not award anyone, this is an indication that the entrepreneur is not serious about his request, no one will create a social network for you for 50 dollars, it is clear that you are entertaining.
Bad projects are related to their bad owners as well, although the platform guarantees your right and therefore will not be directed at you, but you will find that his dealings completely differed and he began asking for many amendments or urging you or asking for things that you cannot do. One of the worst things is that it does not give you your right as a freelancer to evaluate your work or evaluate it less than the truth. This is a problem with the platforms being easy to access for all ... freelancers and entrepreneurs alike.
Price war: Because the offers are all exposed, you will find independents fighting your offer by offering lower prices than you, even if with one dollar, hoping that the project owner will be sensitive to the price and choose them instead of you. And sometimes the problem comes from an honest motivator, for example an independent who lives in a low-cost country can accept the implementation of projects at lower prices than another independent who lives in a high-cost country. This is both a problem and an advantage.
Payment problems: We all know that this is the biggest problem facing freelance work online through the platforms, where it is bound by certain electronic payment channels, usually PayPal, which does not support all Arab countries, especially in terms of withdrawing money.
Here, the traditional freelance business is distinguished by the fact that the customer pays you directly or with a transfer if it is from another city and in the same currency of your country, so you do not have a problem when the exchange rates are different because the payment on the platforms is in dollars. But from personal experience and because I live in Syria, which I do not think that your country is subject to sanctions and a blockade greater than us, I advise you not to leave this obstacle in front of you, you will find a solution for it.
Communication problems: It is not always better, online communication is better, especially with the time difference between countries, which sometimes reaches more than 6 hours. If you send a question about a specific information that affects your work, you sometimes need to wait so long to get a response, because it is unreasonable. To answer you at six in the morning. There is a point in the language factor in communication. If you are dealing with foreign customers, many Arabs still cannot respond to a letter written in English. You face any problem with communication even in the field of dialects, you will understand well on the accent of your countryman, and a small phone call will solve the biggest problem that dozens of letters may not solve due to lack of understanding.
