Welcome to the World of Freelance Working!

Welcome, and may this mode of an exciting, alternative career be the right choice for you!

Why am I calling 'freelance' work an alternative career choice?  It is certainly not something new that we, the new generation, has suddenly discovered out of the blue!  People have been successfully working for themselves for decades, and never have there been so much hype about this choice, till now!

It is the present generation of Bangladesh actually who have suddenly found 'freelancing' or 'outsourcing' to be the fad of the decade, and there's ample reason for that.  Compared to the local talent we host in our country, the job market is tiny, catering only to a percentage of the population.  Our offices and institutions may be able to house thousands of teachers, doctors and engineers and give them a salary suitable to their potential, but it is really hard to do the same for job-seekers who have talent in more unconventional sectors.  Thousands of our graduates who are skilled and talented do not find jobs that can challenge them enough intellectually.  There are only a limited number of websites to be built, only a number of mobile apps to be designed for the Bangladeshi market, only so many places where we can write!

What Exactly is Freelance Working?

"I want to learn freelancing!"
"How can I become a freelancer?"
"Please teach me freelancing work!"
"Can I be a freelancer?"

One way or another, all these questions above are incorrect, or misunderstood.  As with the present fad, everyone wants to "be a freelancer" or "learn freelancing".  Nope! You've got it all wrong, actually.  "Freelancing" is not something you learn, it's more like a career choice that you are making in your life.

No, you do not actually learn freelancing, you embrace it as a career option.  You use your skills and your area of expertise to become a freelance worker, because that's only a medium of working and earning.

Who can Become a Freelance Worker?

Can you become a successful freelancer? Do you have what it takes to excel in this field? Let's see!

What exactly would you need to start your career as a freelancer? First, let us compare this career with a traditional job search. For a traditional job, the first thing you would need is a degree - a graduate or a post-graduate degree, or perhaps, higher. Without a few certificates in your resume, you won't be able to get an interview call, let alone a job. The first and sometimes, the only, thing that companies look for in a candidate in a degree, with a good CGPA, from a good institution.

For the world of freelancers, a degree is not important, not so much. A client sitting in USA does not care whether you graduated from a public university or a private university; most of the times, they don't care whether you graduated or not. It's not important to them, not at all. They might, in some cases, ask what your educational background is, but they would never ask your CGPA. At least, that has never happened to me yet.

How I Entered the Freelancing World!

The freelancing world was not in my plans. I was completely happy working for JAAGO Foundation, an NGO based in Dhaka that worked to educated slum-based underprivileged children around the country. The work was awesome, and I loved it! 

I worked at JAAGO for 1.5 years - from July 2011 to December 2012 - as the Assistant Manager in the PR & Publication Department. I fell in love with the institution, with the people, with the environment, and especially with my work. It was only the daily commute that was literally killing me. 3 hours on the road everyday - 1 hour in the morning and 2 in the evening. It was exhausting, and I was tired all the time! I left the job at the end of 2012 before my daughter was born the next year. 

The next few months were for my daughter, and my daughter only. I wanted to go back to JAAGO - or at any other job - after a few months caring for my new-born. It was completely unthinkable for me to leave my new child and go back to a 8-hour job soon. 

What Do Freelance Writers Write? - Part 1

If you are thinking of starting your freelance career online as a writer, you are in for a huge treat! There are literally hundreds of different kinds of content writing opportunities for you to try your hand at. From the easiest to the most complicated, I have put together a list of all the different kinds of writing jobs that you can find online.

(N.B. I primarily work on Upwork, and these types of jobs are the different ones that I have faced or experienced so far. There can, of course, be hundreds more that I am not yet aware of. Besides, it is better for me to explain the categories that I am experienced in personally.)

I am just going to list all the jobs and explain them in this particular post. Later, in separate posts, I will expand on the ideas for your convenience.

What Do Freelance Writers Write? - Part II

Continuing from the last post...! 

7. Grant Writing 

I am personally not a fan of this particular kind of job, as it can be quite tedious and not very fruitful. If ever hired for a Grant Writing job, you will probably be working for a Non-Profit Organization that works for the underprivileged and the poor. Your main job as a Grant Writer would be to research companies that give out grants to organizations working for the underprivileged and apply for them, relentlessly. 

Introducing UpWork!

UpWork is, till date, the best online marketplace there is for freelance workers. While others may disagree to this, personally, I am more comfortable on UpWork than anywhere else. 

UpWork began as oDesk, but later merged with Elance to create a new platform - combining all the old clients and freelancers from both platforms. I had accounts on both of them but only one completed job on Elance. From the very beginning, I concentrated on oDesk and till now, I only have one account on one single marketplace.

Some people - freelancers, mostly - would argue that UpWork is strict. I agree with them, but I also think that it is necessary for UpWork to be a little authoritarian if they want to maintain their good work. I also think that they are a little too lenient towards the clients than to the freelancers, but I see that they are trying to change that. In conclusion, I have no complaints towards UpWork; I have complaints towards some of their clients, though, and I think they need to be a little stricter in choosing their client profiles as they do with freelancer profile.

Transcription - How to Find the Right Job?

My last post was about the basics of "Transcription" - which can be considered the easiest and the simplest kind of job for a writer. For this post, I rummaged through Upwork to find recent job posts for Transcriptions to create examples. 

I'll talk about each of these job posts in this post (they are all different from one another).

Job Post#1: 

This is one of the simplest job posts you can find on Upwork, perfect for beginners. Transcribing a 6-minute YouTube video won’t take more than 30 minutes in total, and you get paid $7. The payment is low but if you are good in your transcription, you might get a 5* review. 

Another bonus point: it is a YouTube video with a link. You can listen to the video in advance and see if you can understand the accent and the words.

Transcription - How to Create a Portfolio?

With transcription, you don't need to be a very good writer or have excellent grammatical knowledge, but  you do need a lot of patience and a good ear. Sometimes, it is quite hard to understand exactly what people are saying in their videos, seminars, memos and interviews; it is harder to put them down in words. Unfortunately, that's the job of a transcriber. 

When we listen to people talking, we often skip words or sentences but it doesn't matter, because we understand the gist of what they are saying. However, when you are the transcriber, you have to focus on each and every single word they are saying, and put them down in writing. 

A transcriber's best friend is a good audio/video file with clear voice and understandable accent. That doesn't always happen, so you need to be prepared and well-practiced in different kinds of accents and tones. There's no better way to increase your proficiency in transcription than practicing. The more you practice, the faster you get. Besides, this is a great way to create some samples for yourself. If you have enough samples to show a potential client when applying for a job, you have a higher chance of getting the job. 

Transcription - Using the Right Software

The hardest way to transcribe an audio/video file is to listen to them on your computer or any other device, and then write them directly on a doc file. This will take a lot of time and effort, because you'll have to manually pause and un-pause your audio/video, and write the words down. Trust me, transcribing anything this way will take thrice the usual time.

On the other hand, there are a lot of free and amazing software to help you. The free versions usually have some limitations, but you can work with them fine.

With transcription software, the work can become much easier and take less time. In this post, I am going to give the names and the links to some of the transcription services that you can find to download (both free and paid), and use in your projects. I have personally used three of them a few years ago, so I can add my personal experience.

Transcription - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

If you have more questions about transcription, hopefully this post can help answer them.

Q. How much should I charge for transcriptions? 

A. This is actually a tricky question. Transcription isn't a very high-paying job; in fact, you'll probably be working at a minimum wage rate. It's the clients who decide the rate or the budget, so only agree if you are okay with the rate.

A professional transcriber might charge around $75 to $100 for per hour of audio; as a beginner with little experience, you might want to start at $20 or $25. In fact, the standard pricing for high-quality transcription should be somewhat around $50.

[My first job as a transcriber was for $5 and I had to transcribe a 40-minute audio file. So, go figure!]

When you have more experience, a faster typing speed and have some positive reviews under your belt, you can gradually increase your rate. However, do remember that we live in a non-native English speaking region so it doesn't matter how good your skills are, we are going to get paid lower than people living in the USA or UK.

Articles - Writing Articles as a Profession

There's literally no end to jobs for an article writer these days! You might think people don't read much now, but at this very moment, thousands of articles are being written and published at this very moment. Including this one. 

There is no better way to import a limited amount of knowledge via a well-written article. In a single article, you can write about the accumulation of world politics, or simply describe the content of your breakfast. If you are a good writer, you can write an article about anything, anything at all! If you are a great writer, you can write ten completely different articles on the same topic. A simple title or a concept is all you need to end up writing a 1000-word article. It all depends on the client and the type of articles you have to write, as well as the budget and the client has allocated for the project, 

In the first article of the series, let's first talk about the different kinds of article-writing jobs that you can find on the marketplaces. 

Articles - All About Bulk Articles

"Bulk articles" refers to when a client will ask for a large number of articles on a particular topic from a writer. This can be from 10 articles a week to 150 articles every 5 days. The articles are ideally 500 to 1000 words long, or more; they are also related to a particular topic, usually a topic closely related to the product or the service the client offers. 

Freelancers on marketplaces aren't the only source of bulk articles that client go to. There are hundreds of writing agencies that supply articles in bulk, at a very reasonable price. Most of the time, all the client will do is supply a title or a niche, or explain their business to the writer and you'll have to come up with 100 to 500 articles based on that. 

Sounds hard, doesn't it?

Articles - Writing for Blogs, Part 1

There's a reason I always prefer writing articles for blogs - they mean similar-kind of work for a long period, with a decent interval between each submission. Most bloggers or clients won't require more than 2 or 3 articles per week; sometimes, when the blog is an old one, they only need a single article per week.  

Practical matters aside, writing for blogs is fun, more if you are genuinely interested in the topic you are writing about. 

When you are writing articles - or content - for a blog, your work needs to be of a high quality. Businesses depend on the quality of their blog articles to boost sales or attract new customers. They cannot risk a mediocre-level writer for their own sake. Blog articles pay well, but you need to spend a lot of time and attention on those articles. You need to consider yourself almost an expert on the topic, or at least very interested in the topic you are writing about. 

Articles - Writing for Blogs, Part 2

To be continued after the previous post.....!  

3. Writing and maintaining your Client's Personal blog  

Both in our country and abroad, a lot of people are investing time and effort on a passive income source, via their own blog. They start a blog, monetize it, spend money on the SEO so that it reaches the right people, and then give a writer the job to continue working on it. If you are the writer hired for the job, you have to maintain a constant flow of articles on related topics.

Unfortunately, I can't add examples here because the job of a ghostwriter is to write behind the shadow of the "original" writer. You get it, right? If a professional chef has his/her own blog with recipes, they won't want other people to know that a ghostwriter is providing the articles, not themselves!