I've been working as a freelancer for a few years, and while I had the pleasure to experience all the good things that come with this work style, I also had to cope with the bad things and with all the responsibilities you get once you decide to work from home and have your own "business".
While being a freelancer is a dream a lot of people have, a dream of "I can finally stay home, take as many breaks as I want and not have a boss", it's way harder than you may think, and there are always problems you need to deal with, either related to your work or your personal life while making sure you invest enough time into making progress.
I'm not saying that freelancing sucks or that I regret my choice. I wouldn't be able to work at a normal place, at least not with people I don't like. I'd rather stay home and take care of myself than to go to a job with a bunch of lazy people that only care about getting paid and going home as fast as possible.
But I need to admit there are parts about being a freelancer that I don't like, parts that I need to accept in order to keep working and make a living out of what I do. In this article I'd like to share those things with you and give you some little information about why being a freelancer is not as great as you may think.
You're your own boss, but you're also responsible for everything
The idea of being your own boss is what makes a lot of people think about freelancing. You can work on whatever you want and, most importantly, whenever you want. There's no one to yell at you for taking a break when you felt too tired or for eating way before everyone else.
I have to admit this is awesome. I also have to tell you that it sometimes sucks. While being your own boss seems amazing, it means you're also responsible for everything you do and for everything that happens within your "business". Even if you're only a blogger, you don't have others to take care of your website, to take care of how it looks, how it works, if your newsletter is working or if your font is good enough for your visitors.
You may hire some people to do all that for you, but you'll need a pretty big amount of money for that. Most of the time, you'll have to take care of things yourself, and if you thought you can just sit down and start writing on your new blog, you're wrong. Good luck setting everything up.
Even if that's not the case and you work on a website like Steemit or Graphic River, places that offer you everything you need to just start working, you still need to learn how to manage your time really damn well.
You see, if you're the only employee and your own boss at the same time, you'll have to do everything yourself, and that involves a lot of work. If you only work for two or three hours a day on a website like Steemit, you may be able to maybe write one or two short articles, but that won't always be enough.
You'll need way more, you'll need to talk to people, get new ideas for your content, make sure that what you create is high quality, make sure people like it and you respond to all the comments you get. You also need to spend time consuming content and constantly learn new things in order to have more ideas about what to write.
If you're not able to do those things, you won't make money. I know people who are freelancers and work for more than 12 hours a day, some because they love it while others because they have to.
Being your own boss sounds like a lot of fun if you only think about it, but when you have to actually do it and when you have to take care of all the things you're responsible for, it's not as great.
You only get paid for your work
When you work at a normal job you can spend some of your time having fun and maybe "tricking" your boss into thinking you're actually working when you're just playing on your computer or taking break after break.
That changes when you work as a freelancer. While you are your own boss and you can take as many breaks as you want, you're also responsible for the amount of money you make. At a normal job you get paid at the end of the month just for doing what you're supposed to.
When you're a freelancer, you get paid only for the things you do. If you work for two hours a day creating maybe one bad design package for Graphic River, don't expect to get any money for the next year. If you work on Steemit creating one short and bad article a day, don't expect to get anything for a long time.
Working for yourself means you're responsible for the amount of money you get. The more you work, the more income you'll have. There's no "I'm tired, I'll take a 3 hours nap" option. Sometimes you'll be able to do that, but it means you'll spend 3 hours doing nothing, and that's 3 hours of lost money.
It's great to be your own boss, but not when the money you receive are in direct ratio to the work you put in.
You need to constantly learn new things
If you have a static job somewhere at a company, you may be able to do the same thing for years without having to improve your work or learn a new skill. Let's say all you have to do is press a button 200 times a day. You can do that and you won't need to spend your time learning how to do something else.
However, when you're working as a freelancer you need to constantly be learning new things. You need to learn how to work better, how to use different websites, how to communicate with people, how to use all kind of services, how to organize your work, how to come up with new ideas, and so on.
When I was in school I worked, with my class, at a factory every Tuesday for a few hours, and I can say, the only thing some employees were supposed to do was carry boxes. That was their job, and that's what we needed to do as well. If we would've been employees we would not have needed to learn anything new for a few years.
But since I decided to be a freelancer, I had to learn many things in order to keep everything going. I had to learn what Copyright is and when it's applied, how to write articles, how to use Photoshop, Excel, Evernote, how to use PayPal, how to code a little bit, how to use HTML & CSS in my day to day life, how to automate little tasks, how to keep track of my progress and many more things.
It doesn't seem like a lot and you can certainly learn all those things in a few months, but combined that with having to work for at least 8 hours a day, read, spend time with some of your friends and make sure you're constantly making progress. It's not a pleasant feeling and it's really stressful.
So, if you ever consider being a freelancer, then make sure you love learning new things, because you can't work from home if you don't know more than you're supposed to.
You're the one choosing your clients, but you're also the one dealing with them
If you ever worked with clients in your life, you know they sometimes may just be a pain in the ass. That's one of the main reasons I work for websites like Graphic River & Creative Market where all I have to do is post my work and whoever likes it can buy it.
At a normal job you may be forced to work with clients, but even if that's the case, you won't always have to deal with them. It really depends on your job, but most of the time you'll just have to do what you're supposed to and your boss will make sure the client is happy.
As a freelancer, if you want to work with clients, you have the benefit of choosing the ones you think are great to work with, but if you're wrong, and they're a bunch of jerks, you're also the one who has to deal with them.
You can easily search online for testimonials of people who worked with bad clients and see for yourself how stressful can be to work with a person that constantly tries to make your work more for less money. It's not always the case, but one or two bad clients can take all your motivation away.
You're not as free as you think
As I mentioned above, working as a freelancer doesn't mean you don't have any responsibility. You actually have more than a normal employee. You need to take care of everything and make sure your "business" is doing well. You want to make money, right?
That means the free time you think you'll have once you give up on your normal job will be invested in taking care of the things that go wrong. You'll need to fix everything that's broken, to read the documentation of a lot of software and services you use in order to find what's wrong and believe me, you can't work from every place you desire.
Some people can just take their laptop, go to Starbucks and work from there for a few hours, then go home and spend the rest of the day with their family, but that's not always the case.
Most of the time you'll be stuck inside your house working for hours without being able to get out. You need to take into consideration the noise you'll have to ignore while working outside, if you can get enough internet to do what you're supposed to and if you can actually finish your tasks from a store.
If you're a writer for example, it may be easy for you. All you need is a laptop, coffee and a pair of good headphones. It's enough for you to write a few articles for your blog or to maybe talk to some people online.
However, what if you work on something way more complex? What if you work with 3D software or as a game developer? If that's the case, a small and easy to carry laptop won't be enough for your work, unless you're only talking to your clients. Plus, when you work on those kind of things you need to focus a lot, and you can easily get distracted in a store.
You also can't always carry your laptop with you in your vacations and work from there. Again, it depends on the kind of work you do, but there are always things you need to take into consideration when leaving your home. Are you sure you won't lose your laptop? Are you sure you'll have enough internet? Is that laptop enough for what you do or you'll need something better? Can you completely focus on your work where you're going or you'll need complete silence?
While freedom is one of the main reasons people want to become freelancers, you're not always as free as you think. Responsibilities make everything harder and you always need to think about what you want to do before taking a break or before deciding to work from outside your home.
Feeling sick or having problems isn't an excuse to stop working
Just because you think you can take a break it doesn't mean you can actually do it. As I said above, your income is in direct ratio to your work. You don't get a fixed amount of money at the end of the month, unless you're working with other companies or if you have clients that regularly pay you.
If that's not the case, then you need to constantly work in order to receive something in return. If you stop working, you stop receiving, and that's not good for you.
Because of that you'll need to work even when you're sick and you always need to think twice before giving up on what you do to take care of your problems. I lost many friends because of my work, and I can't say it was always worth it.
While you can take a break whenever you want, you'll see that it's not always great to stop working. The more rewards you want, the more you'll need to work, and if you can't find ways to make everything easier or to automate a few tasks, you'll be stuck in your room for hours every single day.
Keep that in mind whenever you think about freelancing. If you get sick, you can't be paid for taking a break until you feel better. You need to work so you can get paid.
Conclusion
I only mentioned a few bad aspects from the life of a freelancer, but there are many more to talk about. I'll just stop here because this article is already too long and it may become really boring.
I'm not trying to stop you from being a freelancer, and I'm not saying you need to be "special" to work from home. Everyone can do it. I just want you to think twice before choosing this path and make sure you're ready to deal with all the bad aspects of this work style.
It's really fun and it's really rewarding, but it also requires you to make a lot of sacrifices. You'll sometimes have less time to do the things you like compared to a normal employee and if you think you can take as many breaks you want, you'll discover that breaks are fun, but harmful to your income.
If you think you can deal with all the things I mentioned above, and if you truly want to be a freelancer, then go ahead. I hope you like it as much as I do. However, if you're not 100% sure, then just keep your normal job and work as a freelancer in your free time, just to see how things are going. Who knows, maybe in the future you may quit and focus all your time and effort on freelancing.