What Stops you in becoming a Freelancer? (A Filipino Freelancer newbies struggles)

Because of this pandemic, there’s a lot of people who were unfortunately forced to stop working and some lost their jobs. That’s why work-from-home set up is now part of our new normal. Freelancing industry already exists even before this pandemic happens. Some see this as an opportunity to shift career, some as an opportunity to work again, like full time mothers who choose to give up their working career in order to take care of their family and some see this as an alternative from the job that they lost because of the pandemic.

In the Freelancing world, the term “NEWBIES” is also used. Newbies means “an inexperienced newcomer to a particular activity” . That’s what we are, yes, that includes me. Some might think that freelancing is easy, well let me tell you, it’s not! There’s a lot of things that we have to learn in order for us to understand how this industry works. So, here are the top three struggles that we, the newbies might encounter and what we can do to overcome it.

1. Confused on where to start.

First of all you have to find your Niche. What is NICHE? According to Google dictionary (again), “it is a comfortable or suitable position in life or employment”. In other words, it is a type of work that you’re comfortable to do with or you think you are good at. You can start by using your work experiences to determine what kind of freelancing job you want to pursue. You cannot just say you wanted to become a Virtual Assistant, because virtual assistant is a broad term. There are different virtual assistance services that we can choose and offer. We can be a Virtual Administrative Assistant, we can be a Virtual Real Estate Assistant, we can also be a graphic designer, or a web designer, all of these are defined as Virtual Assistance because we are assisting a certain business owners virtually. There’s a lot more to choose from, we just need to be resourceful on how to determine the right niche for us. We can use Google, YouTube and Facebook to enhance our knowledge about freelancing. There are tons of articles, videos, Facebook pages and Facebook groups that offer a free tutorial on how we can start working from home and become a freelancer. Always remember that we should not put ourselves into something that we will not enjoy doing in the long run and if we love what we do, it will reflect on our attitude towards work and to our finished product.

2. Do not have a laptop, computer and internet connection

We all know that laptops and computers are not cheap and having fast internet connection also comes with a higher monthly payment. But these are the top requirements when you want to start your freelancing career. Each freelancing job requires different computer specification (computer specs) and fast internet service. I know that not all have computers and internet, but it shouldn’t stop us. Like we always say “if there’s a will, there’s a way”. Most of the time when I read inspirational stories shared by successful freelancers, they usually say that they have started freelancing using a second hand laptop or an old computer. But that didn’t discourage them, instead they used it as an inspiration to look forward to the day that they can afford to buy a new laptop or computer that they want. We have to have this positive thinking that “I want this, I can do this, I will be successful in this!”. Hard-work and perseverance is the key.

3. Lack of confidence in Speaking English

I notice that this is the main reason why some newbies are always looking for online jobs that don’t require talking all the time. But guess what? I am one of them. During interviews, I can understand each question clearly, but I can’t explain very well what I would like to say. It’s funny right? But this is true and I am not ashamed about it. But what can we do? Again, be resourceful. There’s a lot of YouTube videos that could help us in proper pronunciation and diction and also videos teaching how to have an accent whether it is British or English accent. We just have to practice and practice and practice. Let’s just believe in ourselves so that we can overcome the fear of speaking in English.

It is hard, I know. But remember that we are only starting and with a good attitude, determination and eagerness to learn, we can achieve our dream to become a successful freelancer someday. Who knows you can be the next Virtual Executive Assistant to a CEO or you can earn as much as $500 or more as a Social Media Manager? In our “Can Do” attitude, we can go far, besides we have to start somewhere right? Cheers to our next adventure NEWBIES!