Freelance or Freelancing is continuing to grow and it’s perks are heavily advertised as being able to work from home, being able to big earn money doing what you love and spend time together with your family. Who doesn’t want that right?
People are surprised when I tell them I still have a full time office based work while I also do part time freelance gigs.
It sounds daunting and maybe it sounds like I probably don’t have a life but I do. I still work Monday – Friday for 8 hours in an office. I’m not someone who works at home full time, rather I only spend 20 hours a week for my freelance work. I always make sure to keep my weekends work free and I spend the weekend relaxing with my friends and my family.
I’m usually awake for 16 hours a day, 4 hours spent on my freelance, 8 hours for for my full time and the rest for travel time and other things I do like gaming or eating.
I’ve stated in this blog post my advice to full time office based workers who want to try to earn extra income by having a part time freelance like me. I also give advice for full time office based worker who wants to jump into being full time freelancers.
For office based workers who want to try earning some extra money by doing freelance work here is my advice.
1.) Look at your schedule. Do you still have any time remaining to rest or any free time to do freelance? In my case my house and my office are. not very far from each other and this was a choice I also consciously made when applying for full time jobs.
Some people spend 4 hours already just in transit for one way, so unless you want to risk your phones getting snatched by working while literally commuting it just won’t work. If your office and house is also pretty far it’s not like you can drive and work at the same time as well, so you need to put that into perspective as well.
If you don’t have time to do freelance work there are other ways to earn extra income like maybe if you cook a lot for your family and your officemates are already bored of eating from fast food chain you can offer to sell your food. Or maybe you can invest in in cellphone loading business since people always seem to run out of load at work in my experience and its always hard where to buy load.
2.) It’s all about time management, set your priorities. Remove the things in your schedule that you think isn’t really that important. In my case there are days when I have commitment to my clients when I sacrifice gaming. I believe giving a good service and doing my promises for my clients are more important than the games I play.
3.) Take care of yourself. I didn’t mention this in the video but I make sure I get 7 hours of rest. There are days when it can’t be helped that I’ll get lesser rest but as much as possible I make sure to rest well and eat well. Our body is our investment as well. Getting sick spends money so it’s pointless to sacrifice health over extra income.
For office based workers who have already tasted the success and freelancing and who want to try shift to full time freelance work here is my advice.
1.) Remove the “It’s easy” mindset because you will be disappointed if you are suddenly with the numerous challenges of being a freelancer. Clients don’t fall from the sky and a lot of people are already competing on who can close deals. It is not easy but it is not impossible as well. It takes a lot of planning and hardwork.
2.) Have a plan. Research what service and what industry you want to work in. What is your specialty and what is your unique selling point. Set up your payment methods like Paypal and Payoneer. Plan and research which platform you are going to use. For newbies I recommend Upwork and getting hourly based jobs because the payment is almost assured as long as you do a good job. It is Upwork who handles the payment for you. Upwork also have a direct bank deposit option incase you don’t have Paypal or Payoneer set up yet.
3.) Have savings worth 3-6 months. Some people are lucky to be able to land a client within the first month of their shift from full time office based workers to full time freelancers but not everyone has the same story. In my case in 2016 when I tried to shift from an office based job to full time freelancing, 3 months after I resigned I still didn’t have any clients, or clients didn’t pay me for my services and basically scammed me. I realized it wasn’t easy and then I had to apply for an office based job again. It was a lesson learned for me, and I am pretty happy that failure taught me to try again which is what I’m doing now. Although I still have an office based job I’m still earning from freelancing. I just make sure there is a no conflict of interest in my job and in my freelance that’s why I keep them separate and treat them equally and respect their times.
Overall my advice for those who want to try freelancing is to also keep on learning and to keep an open mind. This industry is continually changing. New niches appear, new platforms rise up and now with Social Media there are more ways to reach out to potential clients. For my ultimate advice, make sure to know your worth. Our lifetime is very limited and we use it up every time we work, make sure you are working on something you are passionate about and surely your success will be inevitable.