Why Being A Freelance Consultant Makes
Sense
It can be depressing reading the news these days. Everyday, it seems, more companies are announcing layoffs and more people are out of work. IBM even annocunced recently that they are offering to move laidoff workers to India, China, and Brazil to fill market demands. AKA they laid you off to outsource your job to cheaper countries. The moved workers will expect to receive salaries comparable with that of local workers. Ouch!
With the idea of job security pretty much non-existant, what can you do to help insulate yourself from these tough economic times?
Now is a perfect time to work for yourself as a freelance consultant. Yes it is! Here is why.
3 Reasons You Should Consider Becoming A Freelance Consultant
1. Even though companies are laying people off, the jobs still need to get done. Big companies may outsource to other countries but small to medium businesses will likely look to local consultants to fill the gaps they can’t afford to fill with full-time employees.
2. Your costs are relatively low. The costs to strike out on your own are pretty low. You can arm yourself with free and open source software to fill almost all your operational needs. I will do a post later on starting up a business using open source and free software. Health care will likely be your biggest expense.
3. Your time is your own. Imagine walking to the hardware store, eating lunch with your significant other, or playing soccer with your kids in the middle of the day! Well, as a freelancer you can do that. You set your work hours and you decide how much you need/want to work.
If you have been recently laid off or are frustrated with or feel trapped in your current job maybe making the jump to being a freelance consultant is something you should consider.
This is an area that I’ll expand on in future posts so make sure you grab the RSS feed or follow me on Twitter.
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5 comments on this post
Freelancing is great if you can get the work, here in UK recesssion is also hitting the freelancing market also more freelancers are chasing fewer contracts.
I agree it makes sense, but the reason I haven’t taken the leap is I’m not sure how I’d go about finding work. Could you post some thoughts on that?
One advantage of being a freelance consultant is that you can have clients anywhere and work from home using skype to talk to clients for free.
I like this advice. Recently, I was layed off and have been trying to get things going online. No jobs out there for me right now and besides, I’ve always wanted to work for myself! I hated my job and was waiting to find one that was in my field anyway so we shall see. Thanks for the great post!
I would say this is a matter of self discipline as well, I would find it difficult to work at home, when you can play with kids, fix something in the house or find million other things to do. what do you think?