Before answering this question, let me introduce myself, I am Umar Rahman and in this article, I am going to discuss freelance and bidding and its prospects of earning.
I myself have been working as well as providing freelancer bidding training for more than 12 years and I would like to share my experience in this regard.
Most of the people know about ‘freelance and bidding’ but are afraid of working as a freelancer because they have two main concerns.
So in this blog, we will check the reality and try to delve deep into these topics.
Before we talk about the above two problems, let’s know what is ‘Freelance and Bidding work’.
Freelance and bidding works are those types of jobs that are done by the individual as well as the agencies.
There are several websites in the world which provide a platform where job provider, as well as job seekers, meets together for projects. The website is the medium where both come together.
Job provider or the employer posts their job description in the website and then the service providers or job-seekers make bidding with best prices and with their previous experiences and portfolios.
The job-provider checks their profile and previous credentials and then selects any one of them and assign or award the job.
Once the job is awarded, the job seeker or service provider starts the work and after completing the work he assigns the completed job provider. The job provider checks if the work has been done properly or not. If he or she feels that the work is not done as per his description, he sends the work for further modification. Once, the work reaches a satisfactory level, the job provider pays money and takes the work.
Since the job-seeker and job-provider, both are sitting in different places in the world. So obviously they don’t know each other. They meet through third-party freelancer websites.
So, there are two major concerns involved.
As you can see, from both sides it’s not safe. So what’s the solution?
Here there comes a concept called ‘Milestone payment’. This payment system helps both, freelancer as well as job-seeker.
As you have seen in the above scenario, if the job seeker pays in advance, there is no guarantee that after taking the money the job-seeker will complete the work. Same way if the job-seeker does the work; there is no guarantee that the job-provider will pay the money.
So, the solution is that before starting the work, the job-seeker asks for milestone payment from the employer. The job provider pays the milestone payment. This milestone payment is deposited into the freelancer website. Once the job-provider deposits money, he cannot take back the money. He can take back only if the job-seeker cancels the payment because of some reason.
On the other hand, the milestone payment cannot be taken by the job-seeker until the job-provider releases the money after he is satisfied with the work.
This way, both freelancers (job-seeker) and job providers both are safe.
Now that you have understood how the freelance system works and also how its safe payment system works. Let’s get back to our original topic.
Let me provide an answer to the first point.
Yes, it’s a fact that if we compare the competition of the previous few years with the current year, the competition has increased. You can see people making 20, 30 or even 70 biddings for one project. So of course, with time, the number of freelancers has increased. And ultimately the competition has increased. But, on the ground, it’s not always true what we think.
Let me share my experience in this regard.
Around 12 years before I had started freelancing work from ‘rent a coder’ and ‘script lance’ websites (Both were later taken over by freelancer.com company) also. That time I hardly used to get 1 or two projects in a month. Because that time the number of job-provider were very few.
Later, I started working on getafreelancer(later it was renamed to freelancer.com). In this also, we would get hardly 2-3 jobs.
To understand it better, let’s take one example.
10 years before, the average job for ‘Wordpress work’ pending in freelancer.com used to be 200. Below, I am providing real-data from the way back machine website.
[As per April 2010, total WordPress jobs were 191]
If you would bid daily that time, it was hard to get job because the number of jobs were few. Even though the competitors were less, it was hard to get job why?? Because, the job-provider were less.
[As per April 2017, total WordPress jobs were about 872+25]
[As per Feb 03,2018, total WordPress jobs were about 6431]
[As per June 12, 2019, total WordPress jobs were about 3300+]
Now take another example: –
If you check freelancer.com, you will find that the total average jobs of WordPress are more than 1000. And if your profile is good, it’s not hard to get at least 2-3 works per month.
So from the above statistics, you can see that if the competition has increased the number of job-provider has also increased and the number of jobs has also increased.
So, the myth that the competition has increased heavily and it’s very hard to get a job, is not correct.
Yes, time to time the competition has increased but tell me any field where there is no competition?
As compared to this field, the competition of other fields is higher.
2. Second concern was that the price for projects has dropped and it’s not worth the work done.
From my own experience, the price in freelancer is always lower as compared to the project taken outside of freelancer. It’s not new.But ultimately you will get a good price in two ways.
a) Once your profile becomes more credible, you will get a better price.
b) If your customer likes the work, the customer starts giving the projects from outside of the freelancer and that time you will get a fair price.
So ultimately it’s a matter of hard work and patience. If you think that just after creating the account you will start getting work from the next day, it’s not possible. You have to have patience and improve the profile then no one can stop you from getting the work.
I hope you like this article, if you have comments and queries, don’t forget to ask in the comment box.
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