Today the word "freelance" is very often found in modern society. This word can be heard in almost all collectives, especially young ones, as well as in companies, organizations and even among the crowd of schoolchildren or students walking through the rush hour crossing.
For those who do not know, freelancing is a kind of online work platform that does not limit a person to any framework, both physical and psychological. A freelancer is a free specialist who can be a programmer, copywriter, designer, and even a lawyer.
There are many websites and platforms for freelancers and those who need their services. In simple terms, the employer offers a job, the freelancer decides whether to take on it or not. Either the freelancer offers his services himself, and the employer decides whether to take his services or not. Freelance activities often take place at a distance, thereby making life easier for many, because you do not need to sit in the office every day from 09:00 to 18:00 and spend a lot of money on travel and lunch. Work anywhere and at any time, complete tasks efficiently and on time, and get paid for it.
Freelancing is developing at a rapid pace in Uzbekistan. Of course, so far, freelancing is not so popular among the population of our country, but nevertheless, we also have professional freelancers.
And one of those who are in such a narrow circle agreed to give us an interview and reveal the topic of freelancing in more detail.
Saidravshan Shakirov, 25 years old, freelancer with 10 years of experience. He specializes in programming and everything related to it. Today Saidravshan has its own programming school - Monday Academy and its own company - Monday Labs.
What do you do and what do you specialize in?
I am a Fullstack developer with a 10-year background in IT. At the moment I am fluent in several programming languages such as PHP, java, python, ruby, go, C Sharp, javascript.
How did you come to freelance?
- Initially, I was interested in photoshop. When I was 14 years old, I bought lessons in Photoshop and after completing this course, I began to lack new experience and new knowledge. I wanted to learn something new. And then I decided to find courses more difficult than just Photoshop. Then I came across HTML, CSS courses. After training, I just went out and started going to hotels, offering them website development services. That was about 10-11 years ago when I was 14 years old. Then I received my first order for $ 250, about a month later I received another order, already for $ 400. All of these orders were websites for hotels. From that moment on, I started looking for clients further. Unfortunately, in Pakistan, it was very difficult to find orders for sites, at that time no one even knew what a site was, everyone thought that a site was an account on Odnoklassniki. So I had to start looking for orders on the Internet. This is how I came to freelance.
What did you do before freelancing?
I was 14 years old, I was just starting to do web development. Before that, I worked as a waiter, and before working as a waiter I was an apprentice in a furniture workshop. Together with my uncle, we made furniture products. And by the way, when I was in school I was still working as a shoemaker.
Why did you choose to freelance and not do the usual work in the state?
I didn't choose. Since I am in Bukhara, when I started learning to program, there was absolutely no demand for developers in Bukhara. And I just had to find clients on freelance exchanges. This is how I started working as a freelancer. Then, I found a job in the state and after a while, I quit my job, as everything was monotonous, there was no development. I got a job in another company, then in a third, and so on, but in the end, I constantly returned to freelancing.
How much time per day does freelance work take?
In different ways, sometimes I worked 10-12 hours a day, sometimes a little more, sometimes I did not sleep at night, and sometimes even 30 minutes - 1 hour a day. Opening hours vary greatly, it all depends on the order.
How much do you earn from freelancing?
This is confidential information. At the moment, I only work with large companies and customers, with whom you always need to conclude non-disclosure agreements, so I cannot voice my income. But at the same time, I can say that freelance programmers, on average, can earn from $ 200 to $ 4,000 per month. Earnings depend on the level of professionalism of a person and on how much this person is willing to work hard. Among my friends, freelancers in Uzbekistan, there are many who earn $ 3,000- $ 4,000 per month, but for this, you need to be the best in what you do. And this requires years of experience, years of work.
What are the benefits of being a freelancer?
The advantage is that you have complete freedom. When you want, you work, when you want, you relax, watch movies. But complete freedom also gives rise to disadvantages, that is, if you are an undisciplined person and cannot force yourself to work and work well, then nothing will work out for you, and you will simply become an outsider. You will not be successful in this area. There is freedom, but at the same time, it must be borne in mind that it cannot be abused too much. You need to work constantly.
What do you need to know, be able to and have to become a freelancer?
First of all, you need to decide what you are better than others, what you know better. For example, someone is a good front-end developer, someone is a back-end developer. You don't have to be a developer either, you can be a product manager or a financier, lawyers can also work as freelancers, journalists, copywriters, designers and many others. First, you need to decide in which area you want to grow. And after you choose your direction, you should become the best in this area. Only then can you freelance. Of course, you can do this in parallel, work freelance and at the same time work on improving your skills.
What qualities should a freelancer have?
Perseverance. The most important thing is not to give up and constantly work on yourself. Be able to continuously grow and develop.
Have you met scammers while working as a freelancer?
Yes, there were a lot of scammers who disappeared after you did your job. Such situations do happen, but this must be treated normally because such moments are found everywhere. When you work, you will not work for 4-5 months without receiving a cent from the client. Even if a fraudster deceives you, you will spend at most 4-5 days, so you don't need to be afraid, you need to constantly take risks and work. And I assure you, there are a lot of good and responsible people in the world who are ready to pay decently for your work. And even if you come across scammers often, it will pay off over time. There are a lot of scammers, but there is no need to be afraid of them.
How to understand that the employer will not disappear after completing the order? And what to do to avoid this?
First, you need to get an advance. I myself do this: first, I evaluate the project, for example, the project costs 10 sum. I tell the client that this project will cost 20 soums, but at the same time, he must give me an advance in the amount of 10 soums. It turns out that even if the client disappears and does not pay the remaining 50%, then I do not lose anything from this. But for this you must be able to present yourself beautifully, “sell” beautifully.
What advice would you give to novice freelancers?
Do not think about money, but think about how to gain experience, knowledge, skills and create a positive reputation. And then the money will come by itself. Better take the time to become the best at something.
How to make big money on freelancing?
Making money on freelance consistently is a myth. You will not be able to consistently earn money on freelance. When there are orders, you earn, when there are no orders, you just sit and look for them. There is no guarantee of stability, it so happens that for two months you earn well, and for one month you do not earn at all. But everything usually pays off, even if you were out of work for one month, then other months of work pay off for everything.
Where to look for orders?
There are a lot of freelance exchanges in the world, but I mainly focused only on the premium segment. At the moment I work for a freelance exchange called toptal.com. It is not easy to get there, but when you can do it, you will stop thinking about the fact that you have to find a client, whether he disappears or not. Toptal.com takes care of all this.
What is your most successful freelance case?
As I said, recently I have been working for the freelance exchange toptal.com. In September 2019, I was admitted to the Core team, that is, toptal.com itself. There I worked as a front-end developer. This is one of the largest projects I have ever participated in. I'll tell you briefly about toptal.com - this is an elite freelance exchange. The annual turnover of this company is about USD 200 million. In this company (Core team) I worked and developed the platform itself (toptal.com). In addition, I have worked in CRM systems, ERP systems and other very interesting projects. I also participated in the development of the site, at that time the largest marketplace for renting boats, yachts, boats, etc.
What's your worst freelance case?
There were a lot of failures. Once we started developing a mobile application, I myself worked as a mobile developer and at the same time the client did not want us to write native code, he wanted us to write cross-platform using ionic. The advantage of ionic is that thanks to it you can write an application very quickly and launch it right away, but the disadvantage is that this platform is very slow. We spent 3-4 months writing this mobile application and after we finished it, the client looked up and said that the program slows down terribly. This was due to the fact that we chose the wrong technology. The client asked us to optimize this code. We worked on this for 2-3 weeks, but in the end, we were unable to fully optimize the platform. The client spent a lot of time, money, and at the same time got a bad result. This is the client's fault, he thought that by using a cross-platform solution, he would save money on development. But in the end, I got a program that worked terribly slow.
Is freelancing for everyone?
Freelancing is not for everyone. If you have any financial responsibilities, if you have a family, fixed expenses and at the same time, you have no experience in anything, I would not advise you to do it. But if you have a good command of any in-demand skills, then you can freelance, and moreover, you can quickly find a place for yourself. But if you have no experience, you are a young man and you have the time and opportunity to work on yourself, in this case, I would recommend freelancing.
When I started freelancing, I was 14-15 years old, at that time my parents fed me. I started to earn money, bought myself cool phones, headphones, accessories, various trinkets to stand out in front of my friends. And from about 17 years old, I stopped taking money from my parents and began to fully support myself. And from the age of 18, I already provided for my parents. I am very grateful to my parents for supporting me.
How to understand that freelancing is not for you?
If you are a person who loves consistency, stability, if you are not an adventurer, then you shouldn't freelance at all. Because there is no stability here, there is no systematic approach, here you will not be doing the same thing every day. If you are a programmer, then working in an office, you do not have to constantly adapt to new technologies, architecture, and so on. If you need stability, then you shouldn't even look at freelance exchanges. If you are an adventurer and you care about growth opportunities and opportunities in general, then freelancing is for you.
Is a freelancer an IT specialist?
No, not necessarily. There are freelance designers, journalists, copywriters, marketers, lawyers. It doesn't have to be IT. But in general, the most common freelancers, it seems to me, are IT, specialists. I myself am an IT specialist, perhaps that is why I constantly see other IT specialists, I am surrounded by IT freelancers.
What is the difference between a good freelancer and a bad one?
A good freelancer is a person who solves people's problems, so to speak "problem-solver". People order some kind of service to solve the problem. The freelancer, in turn, must solve the problem of this person and receive a reward for this - money. Many freelancers get paid, but they do not do everything neatly, culturally and in the best possible way. When a person expects something, you have to exceed those expectations, only in this way will you get good reviews, good connections, and only in this way will you develop. There are a lot of freelancers who do not possess certain skills, but at the same time take orders and, as a result, cannot provide a good result. You don't have to be like that. If you took on a task, then you need to do it in the best possible way.
Will you ever leave freelancing completely and forever?
Yes, I have already retired from freelancing. At the moment I have a school of programmers. Here we train developers, front-end, back-end developers, etc. In our courses, we also show students how to freelance, the pros, cons are, how to get a job, how to write a resume, how to find a job, etc. We help our students to find a job and find themselves in this field. By the way, speaking about Monday Academy, at the moment we are training specialists in the following areas:
WordPress
In our IT Training Institute, you can become a programmer or UI / UX designer.
I also founded Monday Labs, currently, we are outsourcing. I do not work alone, I have a team with which we develop custom software. And at the same time, we are training personnel at the Monday Academy school.
How much is the competition in the freelancing world different from the “in-state” world? There really is a difference. Getting a job on the staff is a little harder than finding a freelance client. When you work in the state and find a client for yourself, you don't think about anything, you just work and earn money. And in the case of freelancing, you constantly need to work on finding new clients, convince them that you will make the product cheaper and better, or possibly more expensive, but definitely better. If you do more expensive and better than others, then you need to convince the client that no one can do it as well as you can. In the freelance market, it seems to me that the competition is slightly higher. In freelancing, you constantly need to work on your reputation, constantly increase your portfolio, and look for new clients. If you don't look for new clients, then you won't have a job.
What are the prospects for a freelancer in Pakistan?
It doesn't matter where you live, you can be a freelancer. It seems to me that living in Uzbekistan is more profitable to work as a freelancer than from Russia or Europe or America. Because everyone earns the same. Earnings depend only on your level and experience, not on geolocation. But at the same time, your expenses depend on where you live. Everything is cheap in Uzbekistan, living here is much cheaper. For the money you earn on freelancing, you will live in abundance in Uzbekistan. If you earn the same amount of money freelancing in America or Europe, you will live more modestly. And in this regard, in my opinion, Uzbekistan is a good place to do freelance.
Freelancing isn't for everyone, but it's definitely worth a try! This conclusion can be made based on this article. Freelancing can become a kind of support that can support, generate income and diversify the grey days. But freelancing is not permanent, you can earn good money on freelancing or not earn it at all. In Uzbekistan, this trend is just gaining momentum and is awakening from a long sleep. In any case, freelancing should be, it must develop if we want to have a technologically advanced country with all its IT components.
Take risks, try, breathe deeply and do not be afraid of this not at all terrible word - "freelance".