Introduction to Freelancing

If someone asks you to describe world renowned inventors in one word, that word would be of course„Curious‟, a fundamental trait that distinguishes an inventor from the rest of the world. As cited by Albert Einstein, a famous scientist and inventor, nothing but his curiosity enabled him to achieve success. Throughout history innovators and inventors have brought novel ways of doing things and then came the miracle, the „Internet‟, a global data communication system. A revolution, that brought the world together just in a click. The fastest data sharing source around the globe, the internet, is attributed to the birth of various new fields today, Freelancing is one of them. In this chapter, we will have an insight about freelancing, its scope and its benefits.

What is Freelancing?

Definition: Introduced by Sir Walter Scott, the term „freelancer‟, was used to describe a „medieval mercenary warrior‟, indicating that „the lance‟ is a person who is not sworn to any lord‟s services. A more recent definition, however, defines a freelancer as follows:

A freelancer is someone who is self-employed and not committed to a particular employer for a longer period of time.‖

Freelancers may work in a variety of areas by sitting at their home at their own pace, selling their services on hourly, daily, or task basis, not as regular employees by one employer. Freelancing is nothing, but just a flexible way of selling your expertise and professional capabilities in the marketplace via the internet.

Scope of Freelancing

The expansion of online businesses has attributed to the availability of freelance opportunities in the market, making freelancing a field of enormous demand. According to the Statistics published by the United States Department of Labor, approximately 7.4% of the US workforce (10.3 million workers) is on independent contracts. The report also indicates that because of cheap human resource available in many developing countries around the world, offshore outsourcing and crowdsourcing have also become frequent. In the last three years, US companies have increased their outsourcing by 22% on the internet. As a result, freelancing is widely expanding and its mounting scope is manifested in the areas of writing, editing, indexing, software development, proofreading, website design, advertising, open innovations and many others. With ever escalating prospects of online businesses, the golden opportunities in the field of freelancing are going nowhere.

Benefits of Freelancing

Today freelancing has evolved as a complete industry, bringing with it several benefits. A few are highlighted below:

Master of your own actions

Freelancers work at their convenience. They choose their own bosses, have a choice over the type of task to take up and usually have more freedom over their work schedule, which employees in regular employment merely enjoy.

Source of income for part-timers

Freelancing is getting popular amongst students, housewives, unemployed and part-timers, who want an extra source of income to meet their needs.

Variety of assignments

Freelancers usually enjoy a greater variety of assignments, than people in regular employment, which may help them increase and refine their professional skills.

No boundaries, No limitation:

Freelancing is the only industry where employee and employer can work together from anywhere around the globe with no legal, contractual or geographical boundaries. Freelancers may not even see their employees most of the time but it might become a point of worry sometimes.

One of the fastest and flexible way of getting a job done, meeting your desires and earning your living, the area of freelancing is very vast and not all of them can be explore in one go. In this book, our focus will be on exploring the field of freelance writing and getting a deeper insight on it.

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