Survival
Yes, freelancing is hard. it’s much more difficult and less steady than the good old paycheck.
The Traveling Web Developer
Every week I meet a new web developer or content developer or social media freelancer online who tries to make traveling their number one priority in life, using their freelance work to support it. That’s pretty hard to argue with, kind of a dream come true for many of us, a reordering of your priorities to being able to see the world while having an income at the same time.
I’m sure not all of them are as successful as they claim, but many are thriving. WordPress development seems to be a popular choice here. You can get $1,000 to $10,000 to build a site that takes 1-4 weeks if all the stars align correctly.
And there are a lot of WordPress sites to be built. That could all change, but for now a laptop, lots of free software, and a Mai Tai is all you need. And instead of a boss, you have clients. People get very creative in mixing travel with freelancing – Winnebagos, third world countries, cabins in the mountains. This could also possibly be done when creating a startup and being a real entrepreneur, but it’s much more difficult. I wouldn’t recommend it.
The Traveling Travel Blog Blogger
This growing sub-genre of freelancing seems to be growing quite quickly, a lone person or often a couple will start a blog about their travel experiences, logging each day with words and pictures. They try to use the revenue they make from selling ads and their travel photos to finance the journeys.
It sounds like another dream come true. It’s difficult to see how you could make enough to live on just blogging, unless you were really good at it, but I’ve seen hundreds of these lately. Most admit on their websites that they supplement their blog income with money from travel-related sponsors, building websites, and even taking jobs on the road (like teaching English or working as SCUBA instructors).
Whether they make much money or not, power to them for the choice they made.
WHAT WOULD SETH DO?
Seth Godin is another one of my favorite pundits on several topics but definitely a bold leader in talking about differentiation, hacking the core and freelancers. He has a great way of explaining the problem with positioning yourself as a freelancer. Basically, Seth’s theory is that if you’re performing any job for someone else that is not extremely unique, your employer or client is incentivized to replace you with someone cheaper.
Why? Because they can. Why shouldn’t they?
It’s just smart business. He covers it in his book We Are All Weird. Another way to drive the point home is to look at offshore freelancers. Almost any replaceable skill can now be found in India or the Philippines for $5-10 per hour. So it boils down to offering a service or product that is either in higher demand than supply, or that you yourself are able to offer cheaper.
We have a giant contingent of freelancers in the workforce marketplace now, due to large companies drastically decreasing the amount of people that they are willing to hire as full-fledged employees with benefits and longevity. This makes it even harder to differentiate yourself.
The lesson here is that even in the field of software development, which thousands are flocking to currently, you must differentiate yourself. Avoid being seen as a commodity.