1. Clients Come to You
Instead of you chasing clients, clients come to you. There are over 300 marketplaces for freelance services filled with millions of buyers who want simple things like proofreading and editing, as well as more complex assignments like business consulting and pretty much everything in between you could imagine.
2. You Can Start Small
Your clients are looking for simple assignments (initially) rather than complicated ones. This is especially important to the baby boomer who may have never freelanced before. Building your confidence on small, simple assignments (usually less than an hour or two for you to complete) is the way to quickly build your freelancing prowess.
3. A World of Opportunity Opens Up
Rather than a local market, your freelance prospects can be anywhere in the world. The big challenge with starting a freelance business is the size of your "pond" of prospective clients.
Why limit your prospective clients to just the city you are in? Today, if you tap into international freelance marketplaces, your skills can lead you to assignments around the world. And these marketplaces can keep you working when there is a downturn in your own country's economy.
4. Rapid Reputation Building
Your reputation builds at the speed of light. Your clients rate you on the work you do, so you can quickly build a reputation online. As other buyers see your reputation grow, they seek you out.
5. Greater Control of Your Freedom, Time, and Location
More companies than ever before are turning to freelance talent. They love the flexibility it gives them, the bigger talent pool, and the ability to hire people with more specific skills. And they usually don't require you to show up to a place. You can typically work on your own schedule from wherever you'd like to do the work. And you have more control over deadlines than ever before.
Let's look at some scenarios…
At one of my seminars I met a woman named Rachel who had been a schoolteacher all her life. I asked her how her retirement would look and she told me "All I want is M&M money." When I first heard that, I was thinking, wow—that's not a lot at all, it's only about 50 cents or a dollar. "All you want in your retirement are M&Ms? Really?" I asked.
Well, she didn't mean those little round candies. For her it was massages and margaritas! She wanted to work a few days every month and take the rest of the month off. And rather than draw the money out of her savings account, she wanted to earn a little bit to help fund her relaxation. All she needed was about $300 extra per month for that. Finding a site that offered a lot of proofreading assignments was all she needed to keep those M&Ms coming, and she was happy.
Then there was Marc, a lawyer who was very concerned about this whole freelancing thing. He said he could be sued if he gave advice to somebody in a state that he wasn't licensed in. What he didn't realize is that online networks protect freelancers from this kind of problem. No matter what your profession, you can give general information (law, medicine, etc.) online without worrying about repercussions.
Protections were attached to these online jobs about 20 years ago and have worked well since. And now this lawyer is not practicing law online, but is giving business advice to startups based on lessons learned during his decades-long law career. The going rate for this kind of work hovers around $25 per hour. However, for an online job that taps specifically into Marc's expertise as a lawyer, he could expect to see a higher pay scale, ranging from $50 to $150 an hour.
By Winton Churchill
Editor's Note: Discover how to help fund your dream life of freedom—play when you feel like it, earn when you want—and take your income with you anywhere in the world you choose to go at The Income Revolution Forum.
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