Not many people who decide to start out a freelance career see a freelancing program as a business. Personally, I am one of those people who thinks negatively of freelance: that it is not a good career option because it does not give stable returns. After two sweaty job interviews from two big companies in my place, I soon learned that freelance is not what I thought of before – it can be a good career!

Even if I had earned my degree as an electronics and communications engineer, I already have some good IT skills to boot. I was even assigned to do program using macros and Visual Basic for Applications while I was a maintenance engineer in my last employed job! Before that, I gained years of IT experience from my previous jobs.

So when I started freelancing only over a year, I found myself equipped with the right skills. I actually need to upgrade my skills a bit more so that I could meet the demand for work such as PHP freelance work from online freelance sites.

I also realized that I needed to change my employee-mindset. I read business-related books and articles which actually changed how I think. I started to adapt how successful entrepreneurs think!

Here are some lessons I’ve learned over these months:

  • Freelancing is good business: I applied to new jobs around town. Little did I realize that towards the end of last year, things will turn out differently because of the global financial crisis. Had I accepted jobs in electronics or semiconductor sectors or continued my last job, I would probably end up unemployed or find myself on extended forced leaves (and earning a part of my small paycheck). Being on freelance early is an advantage to me – that time, there were a few freelancers because most people were still employed, and that at the time when the news about the global financial crisis finally hit, I have already developed skills and knowledge in freelance web design and blogging.
  • Freelancing is leadership and management: I am glad I got a year of experience leading a team of people in my previous job. I got leadership training and hands-on experience and coaching on how to handle people. I also learned how to plan and make day-to-day decisions. That kind of experience was what I really needed to be survive and be successful in my freelance career even if I see myself as a one-woman team.
  • Freelancing have periods of feast and famine: Freelancing always had its own time. There are months were there are more jobs than I could personally handle, and there are some instances where I don’t get opportunities to jobs. However, I learned how to find other ways to earn. In my experience I earned good deal of money from blogging and this had brought food on my table for sometime, while learning new IT skills.
  • Freelancing is constantly changing: This is very much true. What makes it even more difficult is that I chose to be an IT freelancer – where I had to always upgrade my skills to the new technology that are in demand, unlike freelance writers.
  • Freelancing is race against time: The saying “time is gold” definitely applies to freelance work. I am only paid for the time I spend on the job. There’s no sick and vacation leaves for me. There are no bonuses too. However, I had to keep a balance between work and play.
  • Freelancing is a lot of social networking: I realized that I need to keep in touch with old friends, classmates and office mates: you never know when the next project knocks softly waiting to be done. Almost always, word-of-mouth marketing is the one that guarantees opportunities just because of a friend’s recommendation.
  • Freelancing is a growing career and needs lots of people skills: Little did I know that it is even possible to lead and manage a team of freelancers. Although the arrangement of team freelancing is not as rigid as that of the office, I realized that career growth is also possible by working with teams.

Choosing freelance as a career is not really a bad option, as others might see it. In fact, learning to see it as a business is something that’s really helpful, even if one loses his stable job.

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