This might ruffle some feathers.
As someone who has tiptoed in and out of freelancing in my career, one thing became obvious.
You can only do so much in a day.
Everyone gets 24 hours, You make the best of it.
My role is not freelance-friendly (that’s why I stepped away from it).
It requires me to be the face, the pen, and the voice of everything I do. There is very little I can outsource to anyone even if I ever wanted to.
But having studied over 1,000 Pakistani Upwork Profiles (Yes I have time for that it seems), this is what I found out:
– Most task-based freelancers are incorrectly logging work.
e.g Hourly rate is 15USD, made 6,000USD in a month.
– Specialized freelancers are taking on work they are clearly not working on or suited for.
e.g A Developer profile working on Brand strategy.
– A lot of freelancers are charging an unbelievably low rate for their offerings.
e.g Frontend devs for 10USD/hr, Writers for 5USD/hr, list goes on.
Now if you are an Agency, and are open about it, this doesn’t apply to you.
But if you are a solo freelancer, a one-person army like me — this does make you wonder?
– How are you logging 100 hours a week?
– Are you outsourcing the work while lying about it?
– Are you wrongly logging your work, having your tracker on while working on another project?
– Or Are you making up for your lower hourly rate? Instead of negotiating a better rate, you log double the hours?
What happens in the end –
‘Pakistani’ freelancers are not ethical.
And Yes, I can’t state the number of times I have heard this.
At the end, what you as a freelancer should do is improve your quality instead of quantity.
We have extremely good talent as a country, we need to show it better and value ourselves higher.
Don’t focus on the short-term gains of taking on 20 jobs a month.
Focus on the long-term gains of adding skills. Be a better communicator, presenter, and writer.
Add on to your existing strengths, improve your quality, and improve your image.
We are all in this together.
Let’s make sure to stand for quality and standards.
As a nation we already have lost a lot of our valued exports — don’t add freelancing to the list.
Much Appreciated!
At the heart of it – I love solving problems for people using tech, it doesn’t get simpler than that.
Some know me as a Product Manager who relentlessly executes, some know me as a mentor who hand holds them to success, some know me as a techhead who won’t stop complaining about ‘that one thing’, and lastly; some know me as that guy who is always experimenting with something new.
As long as its in the realm of tech, I am interested – because my love for tech fuels my passion – sknexus.com – and my profession – saqibtahir.com
