My failure as an online freelancer

Since the pandemic hit in 2020, I have been researching online for a variety of ways to earn money, believing that I could find a secure way of earning online in this era of the Internet, as a freelancer working on a totally flexible schedule.

Previously, I heard that in the era of the Internet, it is possible for everyone to succeed, by selling their skills or gaining popularity, namely followers. This is unarguably true, as I have seen many content creators making a living online, and many online platforms which pay for easy works (seemingly easy as it turned out).

I read many articles, blogs, and even signed up for some paid classes. These classes were very cheap, as they were supposed to be only trial classes, and served as adverts of the full classes, which cost significantly more. I did not sign up for any full class because the quality could not be guaranteed and the prices were high. What was more, the trial classes were nothing other than adverts.

The articles I read were all about successes, although some were adverts for classes, too. The titles and contents were especially eye-attracting, such as "Earning Up to $1500 Per Month by Writing Online", "Earning an Average of $100 Per Order by Translation Online", "Making an Extra of $1000 Per Month, No Experience Needed", etc. Getting rich seemed simple--just by replicating what other successful people had done. Their methods did not look complicated at all! The adverts may be more or less exaggerated, but how can bloggers be deceptive of their own experience! I decided to try a wide range of methods, because I did not know which would fit my strength.

Indeed, the miracles of success are true. But what about failures?

In fact, I forgot one simple yet fundamental rule: the 20%-80% Rule. Namely, in any field, the top 20% experts can earn 80% of total revenue the field can bring about. The remaining 80% will fight for only 20% of the revenue.

However, it was virtually impossible for a novice like me to reach the top 20% with little training and time devotion into the field. More than likely, the articles I kept seeing on blogs are from the top 20%, as the voices of the remaining people, the "losers", had mostly gone unnoticed, but it did not mean that failure is uncommon.

I realized that I was horribly misled by these success stories when I first started on translation. As a bilingual person in English and Chinese, I regarded myself fluent in both languages, and started looking for online translation jobs. However, translation requires training, and very high degree of proficiency in both the source and the target languages. I failed to pass the proficiency exams of many websites. Later, I turned to find some online writing jobs, which were commented as "suitable for novice", "lucrative" and "little experience required" by many bloggers. I wrote my first article, and tried to sell it out on a platform, but it was rejected until I lost my patience. Needless to say, other trials, while taking a lot of time, eventually achieved nothing.

As a college student, my aim is not to earn enough money to make a living. With parents' support, I am under no pressure to earn money on my own. However, I want to be as economically independent from my parents as I can, and cover up the costs of leisure activities with friends. Therefore, I started working on my own time. This is one of the reason for failure. Because I did not have sufficient motivation to work, neither was I impelled by any external factor, I did not spend enough time in finding a suitable job and devote effort into it. Another reason was my lack of professional skills. To get the most out of any job, one need to be an expert in the field. However, I have little edge over other people in every aspect. Although I can apply my knowledge in certain subjects to work as an online tutor, there are many more qualified and experienced tutors than me, so it is hard to earn by "selling" knowledges, too.

Although I almost failed ('almost' because I managed to earn some money online in the end, but that was not worth the time commitment), I cannot to say that it is wrong. In fact, I encourage people to give it a try.

It should be kept in mind, however, that earning money by freelancing is not supposed to be a happy process. Although the schedule may not be subject to any constraint, earning money has to sacrifice something, which can be leisure hours, pleasure, or others. The process may be tedious and you may have to do something you would never want to do otherwise. At least, for me, I would not spend hours of my time listening over and over again to an audio file and google any words or terminologies I do not understand and then transcribe it into sentences if all these were not for money.

Therefore, although freelancing online can be fully flexible and bring about some extra income, the time and effort commitment cannot be ignored. With this in mind, one should consider carefully before deciding whether to freelance online or not, on his/her spare time. After encountering failures, and discovering that the time and effort I put into online earning does not equate the payoff, I decided not to freelance online, at least not for a while. The time I have spent in online freelancing, looking for different resources and websites, and reading all the blogs of successful examples of online freelancing could have been utilized much better by improving my skills and broadening my knowledge.

I would say that skill development is by far more important than looking for jobs. Only when one have some strength that most other people don't, can he or she earn money using with the strength. I was too eager to earn money but unwilling to spend time and effort developing my strength, which is why I found the process so hard and painful. It is such a simple rule: The better your skills, the more likely you can get better opportunities which has higher pay and you will find it enjoyable. However, I only noticed how lucrative some freelancing jobs can be and how successful those bloggers are, without seeing the hard work they had put into their jobs. Nor did I question whether I like the job, other than its monetary compensation.

In this era, there are certain freelancing jobs that requires little skills, such as posting short videos to TikTok or YouTube, to gain audience and earn money. Such jobs are not technically demanding, but because of this they are very popular among novices, and competition can be very fierce. To be successful is not easy either. Perhaps, developing an irreplaceable skill is the easiest route.

This is my reflection towards online earning after encountering setbacks and frustrations. I have to admit that I did not have the right attitude towards online earning, and I was too anxious to earn money but unwilling to complete any arduous procedures. Most fundamentally, I did not realize that making money, regardless of the method, is a hard, frustrating and even boring thing that I does not like to do if I do not need to make a living. Perhaps, this is the greatest payoff I gained from online freelancing over the past year.