Freelancing; Is it right for me or nah?

For this week’s journalism class I had to read “Freelancing as Entrepreneurship and Consulting as Business Models” from “Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship.” This chapter talks about freelancing and a little bit of everything that one has to do in order to be a freelancer. In this blog post, I will talk about If I would like to be a freelancer, what qualities I have that make it seem enticing, what seems difficult about being a freelancer, what advantages I see about it and what this chapter made me think about that I never thought about. Enjoy!

Some of you may not know what Freelancing is, but do not worry! Virginia is here to help you. According to the chapter, Freelancing is a “means of entrepreneurship that is ideal for those who don’t what the commitment and rigidity of a full-time job but want to work in the industry on their own terms” AKA what Virginia seems to suddenly want to do.

Here are some advantages of being a freelancer.

1. It is easy to create a platform/website. I mean, you are reading this from my website. I think that from everything that I learned from this chapter this is the easiest and cheapest thing one can do on their path to becoming a freelancer. You just have to come up with a name for the blog and a theme, and that is it. TA-DA you have the platform to be a freelancer.
2. It is easy to have content. If one already knows what they want to do then it is really easy to create the content. For example, I created a mobile responsive website with two of my friends called “How to Adult.” In this website, you will find things that one doesn’t really learn when they go to school like for example “how to fix your car” or “how to make baked potatoes.” For us, it is really easy to come up with the content because, as I like to say, we know what we don’t know; we know what we didn’t learn in school. Anyways, enough about my website, *cough* check it out here *cough*.
3. You are your own boss. You can choose who to work with and how to do your work. Some people, like me, like working from the confines of their homes, while others like going to a coffee shop or to offices. Some like to work in the morning, while others like working in the afternoon. However, this doesn’t matter at all because, WHEN YOU ARE A FREELANCER YOU CAN WORK HOWEVER YOU LIKE TO.

Things that seem difficult about being a freelancer, AKA disadvantages.

1. If your client fires you, you are screwed, and I am not kidding about this. If your client fires you then you don’t have a job, and if you don’t have a job then you don’t have money, and if you don’t have money then you cannot buy the potatoes that you need in order to make the baked potatoes you just learned to make from the “How to Adult” website. Now being serious, if your client fires you, you probably won’t have the protections of unemployment insurance, and that means that you will not get money for being fired, and then that leads to the potatoes problem, again.
2. Networking. uhm, yes.

After reading this chapter, I learned A LOT  that I didn’t know about freelancing, like some of the pros and cons. Learning all of this made me think if I would like to be a freelancer or not. I like to believe that I have a lot of the qualities that one needs in order to be a freelancer; I am a hard worker, determined, creative, and funny as heck. The truth is, I would love to work doing the thing that I like the most, which is giving my honest opinion about stuff. Now, I can only do this if someone would like to pay a really honest, sarcastic woman that loves bitmojis. (lol)

Thank you for reading!

For more advantages and disadvantages read this.

 

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