Every few weeks a Facebook page promises to make you a freelancer in 30 days for Tk 5,000. Prothom Alo's technology section started something more useful in April 2022: a free weekly training series written by an Upwork Top Rated Plus freelancer. This is the first lesson, with a few Bangladesh-specific notes of our own.
Get the words right
Freelancing is not a profession. It is a way of working. A freelance graphic designer is a graphic designer who works for clients instead of an employer, and that is how you should describe yourself: by the skill, not by the word "freelancer". Outsourcing is what the client does. When a company abroad, call it A2Z, needs some design work done quickly and hands it to an outside person or firm rather than hiring staff, A2Z is outsourcing. You, doing the work, are freelancing. Saying "I do outsourcing" gets the relationship backwards and marks you as a beginner.
Where the work is
Most freelancers find clients on marketplaces, and the ones with a track record of paying are upwork.com, freelancer.com, fiverr.com, peopleperhour.com and guru.com. On each you create a profile around a skill, apply for jobs that match it, and get hired when the client judges you capable; then you deliver on the client's terms and deadline. Beyond marketplaces, many experienced freelancers find clients directly through LinkedIn, their own website or Facebook groups. The work itself ranges from writing, graphics and web design to development, audio editing, 3D animation, data entry, lead generation, social-media marketing and SEO; the job sections of the marketplaces show what is in demand this month.
Full-time job versus freelance
An office job gives you fixed hours, colleagues to lean on and a salary. Freelancing gives you your own hours and none of the rest: you do every part of the job yourself, negotiate with the client, and often work at 2 am because that is 4 pm in New York. In exchange, a skilled and patient freelancer usually earns more than the equivalent salaried job, and can grow into a firm that employs others. But it takes time to build, and it rewards only those who can commit to it.
The honest bit
The author's warning is worth repeating: hundreds of capable people fail at freelancing because they try it in spare hours around a full-time job or studies. If that is your situation, do it, but expect little. To become what the series calls a "rockstar", treat it like medicine or engineering: keep studying, keep practising, get good at written and spoken English, learn to market yourself, and collect good reviews by being professional every time. First, check whether the skill you have is in demand on the marketplaces; if not, learn the nearest one that is.
Bangladesh is already one of the largest sources of online freelance labour in the world. The next lesson in the series asks the question most people skip: can I actually do this?
