It’s a question they always ask whenever I tell someone what I do for a living. Usually followed by the next question: How did I make $5000 a month?
Well, you see, the thing is, $5000 USD may not sound like much in the US, but in a country like Sri Lanka, it’s considered a lot. Actually, it’s about 10 times the salary of an executive who works at a high-paying government job.
What they say about freelancers earning more than average workers is absolutely true.
Some people (mostly lazy ones) say that you can’t control your success. Well, that’s not true.
As a freelancer, there are a couple of things you can do to improve your chances of finding success:
#1 Work Hard
#2 Learn New Skills
#3 Keep Improving Your Skills
“If you want to be truly successful invest in yourself to get the knowledge you need to find your unique factor. When you find it and focus on it and persevere your success will blossom,” – Sydney Madwed.
Ever since I discovered Skillshare and Udemy, I’ve been learning a lot of new things. I enrolled in as many courses as I can find and I sort of got addicted to learning. It’s been the best investment I’ve made in my life.
Freelancing and being self-employed is not as glamorous as most people make it out to be. It comes with both advantages and disadvantages.
If you’re thinking about getting started in freelancing or going back to a day job after struggling with freelancing, give this post a read for a list of pros and cons of being self-employed. Hopefully, I can help you make a decision.
If you’ve seen pictures of digital nomads traveling around the world living a laptop lifestyle. Or Facebook posts saying freelancing is a lonely road. Let me reassure you, it’s all true.
Freelancing comes with many benefits and also downsides. However, I see it as a healthy balance of both. It’s certainly much better than the downsides of working at a day job. Here’s why.
Most experienced freelancers will likely tell you not to rely on freelancing marketplaces to find work.
It’s good advice because those sites, like UpWork, pressure you to compete with other freelancers and lower your rates to win jobs.
But, the truth is, we all have to start somewhere and the chances are even the most experienced freelancers have used a freelancing site at some point in their career to score a project or two.
The first freelancing site I used was Elance (now UpWork). I didn’t get many jobs on this platform, but I used it to connect with clients and build long-term partnerships. At the time, there wasn’t too much competition on Elance so landing a job was easier than it is today.
If you’re looking to switch to a better career this year, the first thing you should do is find and develop a skill.
In this post, I’m showcasing some of the top freelance skills you can learn this year to start a new career and earn more money as a freelancer.
My previous post about the highest paying freelance jobs outlines the categories for earning the highest income as a freelancer. The list below goes to the barebones of those categories to suggest specific skills you should start developing right away.
If you’ve read my book or followed the getting started guide, you’ll notice that one of the first steps I suggest for beginners is to find a marketable skill that has good demand.
For this list, I gathered data from two surveys (from Flexjobs, Indeed, and UpWork) to find the skills with the highest demand.
If you hate Mondays and feel bored out of your mind while at work, you’re not alone.
It’s natural for you to feel bored and unsatisfied even while doing something you love. This happens when you keep doing the same type of work over and over again every day.
After a while, you’ll get so used to the work you do that most part of it will happen in automation.
Just like driving a car or brushing your teeth in the morning.
When it comes to your job and work, the boredom creeps up when you’re not challenged enough.
In order for work or anything in life to be more interesting and engaging, it needs to be challenging. Not too challenging. Just a little to ensure that you get to activate your brain and keep growing.
Finding this balance is not that tough. Here are a few things I did to make this happen.
