Fun Facts about Freelancing
Let’s begin this article with an interesting story.
The knight, on top of a horse in a chess game, is inspired by a class of soldiers in real time warfare called lancers. This is because they used to handle a weapon called the ‘lance’ which essentially was a long pointed javelin to kill soldiers on foot. A lancer was a very important member of the army formation. This designation is still used in the Indian Army — ‘Lance Naik’
In the medieval times, a lot of kingdoms regularly fought with each other and one territory was annexed by multiple kings. This made it difficult for soldiers to allege to one king, and thus they started fighting for anyone who paid them the most. This was the beginning of the people working independently to earn money or to gain experience without having an allegiance to anyone.
In 1820, a book named Ivanhoe, written by Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott described the word ‘free-lance’ for a ‘medieval mercenary warrior who had no allegiance to any king or lord’.
Freelancing almost has the same meaning today, barring the element of battle and war. In very simple words, freelancing means to work independently for any project or organization without being committed to any employer. Before the information age, people who did all sorts of temporary work for employers for a certain amount of time and moved on to the next were also freelancers.
Freelancing in today’s day and age is not just a way to earn money. It gives you ample opportunity to gain some experience in a particular field so that you can turn that into a full time career. For example, many new ventures hire freelance writers to write blogs for them. Many of them hire artists as freelancers to design their social media posts, logos and other creative campaigns. This not only gives these companies their required designs and posts at a lower cost than hiring a full time employee, but also gives freelancers the opportunity to add their experiences in their portfolio and step into the careers that they want.
- India currently ranks 2nd in the freelancing workforce after the US
- Indian currently has about 15 million people associated with freelancing.
- The value of Indian freelancing market is estimated at $25–30 Billion by 2025
- The average hourly rate of a freelancer in India is about $18 or Rs.1313(approx)
- India witnessed a rise of 46% in freelancing from Q1 to Q2 2020
WHY IS FREELANCING GETTING SO POPULAR?
There is no doubt that freelancing has become so popular in the professional space today. The sheer variety of prospects that this industry offers is huge. Let’s look at some of the interesting reasons why freelancing has become so popular
1. More number of women are turning to freelance
The primary reason why women are taking up freelancing projects is because of its flexibility. Many women who are full-fledged don’t have to stop working if they decide to take a break. The daunting problem that many women face in the form of career pauses and bouncing back after that can now continue working and even strengthen their skills and experiences by picking up freelancing jobs. That’s probably why the vast majority of respondents to the FlexJobs freelance survey (73.78%, to be precise) are female freelancers.
2. People freelance to supplement their income.
While freelancing can be taken up as a primary career option, people majorly pickup freelancing to earn that extra pocket money. Many people regularly freelance to have the additional income coming, while others have set short-term monetary goals that they fulfil through freelancing.
3. Freelancers work — a lot.
Freelancers that get habituated to the ecosystem end up working a lot. The more work they do, the more in demand they become. With the advent of startups almost everyday, there are some freelancing jobs readily available for freelancers. According to the survey, most respondents freelance the equivalent of a full-time job (15.67%). Others freelance 16–20 hours, or what would be similar to part-time hours (10.71%). But the most popular answer (26.14%) for how many hours a week freelancers work is 41+ hours — which is actually more than a full-time job!
4. Freelancers are at all career levels.
The very nature of freelancing is that there is no one organization that a freelancer commits to, hence there is no concept of hierarchy in freelancing. Every career level has equal opportunities to freelance as it is only based on tangible work experience. Freelancers can be found in all career levels, from entry-level (11.51%) to owner/executive/c-level (12.07%). The majority are in the intermediate category (32.13%), while 11.59% are in senior-level management, and 18.78% hold management-level freelance jobs.
5. They freelance because they want to.
People choose freelancing not because they have to, but because they want to. In fact, 44.78% said that they choose to freelance rather than have a traditional office job. The second most popular response (23.91%) of those surveyed said that they choose a combination of freelance and traditional work. Many young professionals are turning to freelancing as their primary career option as it has a lot of flexibility and independence than a long term employment offers.
6. Freelancers are in it for the long haul.
Just because freelancers can work when they want doesn’t mean that they don’t take their work seriously. When asked if their freelance lifestyle was something they anticipated doing for the long-term or short-term, 60.25% of respondents said that they planned to freelance for the long-term (more than five years).
7. Most freelancers are working from home.
With all of the technology at their disposal to work anywhere in the world with a good Wi-Fi signal, many freelancers still choose to work from home. The vast majority (84.54%) said that they work from their home office, while only 4.55% said that they work on-site at a client’s office. Only a few (2.75%) work from a co-working space, and as much as a white chocolate mocha sounds delicious, only 1.33% work from their local coffee shop. That’s why, for most freelancers, there’s really, truly, no place like (working from) home.
