Five Reasons to Freelance While You Are Still a Student

Here are five reasons to freelance while you are still a student

Becoming a freelancer helps you to increase or develop your entrepreneurial skills

Whether or not your dream is to become an entrepreneur, freelancing will automatically help you to become one.

Working for yourself is the best thing you can do for your personal and for your emotional life.

• First of all, your personal life will benefit from earning the money necessary for you to make a living without any help from your parents.
• Second of all, freelancing is more than work. It’s an emotional journey similar to a rollercoaster, during which you will get the chance to discover yourself and develop your strengths.

Working for several clients, trying to learn more about the language you work with, developing your technical skills, writing, emailing, taking on chats like Skype or Google hangouts – all these small tasks are significant steps for your entrepreneurial life.

You will learn how to market yourself and how to sell your service like never before.

It’s a journey you take personally, by yourself; but in the digital world, people like you always surround you. You will never be alone.

Freelancing helps you to find out what skills you have and which ones you don’t

At first, you will feel disoriented, because you have no idea what to do and where to start, yet things become more comfortable. You will make decisions every day, and you will enter an internal journey that will bring the answers to your unspoken questions:

• What am I good at?
• What are my skills and strengths?
• What are my flaws?
• What can I do to improve myself?

No other job will leave you enough space or time to research and learn by yourself. You will do this naturally, although it’s not written in your job description. It’s essential if you want to survive in the world of freelancing.

Nobody will tell you that you need to educate yourself continuously to stay on top of the market and have the success that so many people dream of having.

Knowing what you can’t do only helps you focus on the natural inclinations you have. In freelancing, every project is a lesson.

It helps you take education and training to a new level – and not a purely academic one

When it comes to education and training, you probably imagine the school format: lots of information, no practice, paper, pen, and a boring teacher.

Well, in the digital world, things aren’t like this at all. When you decide to be a freelancer, you start an educational and training process that will never end.

There’s no time to relax and wait for the team to work for you.

You are your team, and you must overcome your flaws to stay on top of the market.

Learning with a pen in your hand will be superseded by sitting in front of your laptop while watching motivational speakers, coaches, trainers, or other sources of useful and exciting information.

It’s time for decisions. It’s time for you to choose your mentors, so choose them wisely!

The Internet is filled with free courses, e-books, videos, podcasts you can listen to and learn from; and if you have some money to spend, do invest in paid products or services to educate yourself. Your freelance clients will thank you. I promise!

It helps you become a better communicator and to create your own brand

As a student, you are broke. But even worse, in many cases, you are introverted, too. For an introvert, communication, self-assertion, and creating an individual profile in the world are tasks that are more challenging than they may seem.

An online world where an introvert can work is the best place for him or her to develop communication skills and build a brand.

Introverts are sensitive people who have specific skills that they don’t always see in themselves, so they need constant gratification to raise their self-esteem.

What better place to show off their talents, get paid, and even earn some kind words from people who don’t know how introverted they are?

Words have power, and they can help introverts see themselves more accurately, discover their strengths and self-worth. And in the case of written communication, develop skills that can help them in public speaking.

The digital world is the best place to create an individual reality where the personal brand can bring the fame and success that so many people want.

Freelancing helps you be more patient and more persistent in your work

If you are a type-A personality and have no patience and can’t sit still, working in front of a computer is the best way to develop patience skills.

Being patient is a highly essential skill that a freelancer needs in all his projects. Communication in the online environment is not always as fast as it can be by texting, calling, or meeting face to face.

Sometimes, the time zone is a huge inconvenience; people live and work in various schedules. The freelancer must be patient in waiting for a reply, and he or she must always be polite and respectful.

In written texts, words can offend more quickly than in face to face meetings, so watch your words.

Second of all, a freelancer needs persistence in his work. If the client wants one revision or two, the freelancer must obey and deliver the desired results.

Being persistent also means that when a client forgets or does not want to pay, the freelancer must persuade him with all methods to play fair and meet the obligations he took on.

Many freelancing websites focus more on getting paid than the quality of work, so sometimes the freelancer has a strong ally. Most of the time, the client-freelancer relationship is trust-based, so the freelancer is on his or her own.

Being persistent also means not giving up when things seem to roll downhill. One month is better than the other; one client is sweeter than the other. This is the world we all live in. There’s not much to do beyond setting a positive example and hoping for the best.

All these things are less than what you can learn from actual freelancing. For me, it was the experience that empowered me and helped me get out of my comfort zone.

I discovered that I was not alone. I could help others. I could become a professional in my field.

Photo: Shutterstock

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