Freelance writing seems to be a career that is consistently booming. The main reason for this because thousands upon thousands of websites are created every day looking to employ people to write content on them. After owning a several websites, employing freelancers to write for me and freelancing myself out to write for others, I thought I would give my opinion on the matter whether freelancing is really a career to pursue or not – here are the main pros and cons to freelancing.

 

 

#1 Freelancing is Very Competitive

The main problem you will find with freelancing is that there are lots of like minded people also thinking about pursuing a career in freelancing. Therefore, if you are looking to freelance in a relatively big market segment, you are going to need to impress the employer in order to get their attention and to get the freelance job. If you are looking to freelance as a specialist in a certain area, you will have more leverage but you still need to impress the employer and prove just how much a specialist you are in that niche.

 

 

#2 Flexible Working

The best part to freelance work is that you can do the work when you want as long as it is done to a schedule that you decide with your employer. For one of my websites, this means that articles must be up every Friday. Therefore, the freelancers have the freedom to write the articles any other day of the week and at any time just as long as they are up by Friday. For many people, this freedom of when to do the work cannot be matched.

 

#3 Getting Your First Freelance Job is Difficult

To get a freelance job, you need to display the experience you have as a freelancer. However, if you have no freelance experience and are applying for your first freelance job, how are you meant to get your first job if most freelance jobs require experience freelancing? Putting that long sentence aside, it can sometimes feel a ‘catch-22’ situation. Therefore, in order to get your first freelance job, try to offer out your services with a USP (unique selling point) – if you do not have much experience, make up for it by being very cheap so that there are less reasons to not hire you and more reasons to hire you.

 

#4 The Sky is The Limit

Once you have started your career in freelance blogging, it will take off: quite literally. This is because your CV is growing every time you publish a new article online. The more articles you publish online, the more experience you have as a freelancer which means either:

1. You can charge a higher rate per article for your expertise and experience.
2. Get more work at the same rate you are currently working too.

Either way, it means you will be making more money and getting closer to making that step to being a full time freelancer. At first, part-time might be the best and most sensible step. But, once you have had enough offers, you can then commit to changing your career completely.