Challenges every freelancer & digital agencies frequently face day by day.

There is a myth that Freelancing has less challenges. Every freelancer, digital agencies doing fight with some challenges everyday. I am mentioning about challenges below.

Finding right marketplace : There are lot of marketplace such as Upwork, Freelancer, Guru & many more. Every market place has some plus points & some minus points but if every market places take charges to get bids, membership plan and when you get work then commission. At every step these market place takes money from you so its become hard to select a marketplace where good opportunities regularly available and you need to pay less. Its a common challenge to be on right platform where you get paid but you don’t pay for your efforts.

Finding good clients : Every freelance, digital agency unable to get good clients. There are people who comes to people saying that they know everything and create the problem during the work. Many clients don’t want to finalise the scope of work then asking more work by threats that they will not pay or will give a negative feedback. In this competitive world freelancer don’t know how to finalize scope of work, payment terms, deadlines which leads to miscommunication resulted in no pay, half pay and bad client.

Finding work regularly : There are many days when freelancer, digital agency has lot of work beyond their capacity and there are days without any work. Freelancer, digital agencies who are not skilled in marketing, networking, getting review with word of mouth, references and don’t know their target audience always juggled to get continuous work. Every second freelancer is a desperate person as they could not manage continuity of leads of target audience & work with dependency on marketplaces only.

No employment benefits : As a freelancer or digital agency many times you don’t define work terms, your fee properly so you can not get bonus, entitlements. Every freelancer forget that they need to maintain their finances like a job with PF, bonuses while they believe that I am working as per my terms & timing resulted in no benefits.

Meeting tight deadlines : Due to lack of continuous work stream, unable to get regular clients freelancer & digital agency promises unrealistic deadlines. Many time when have more than two projects give unrealistic deadlines to make everyone happy resulted in clash of deadlines, incomplete work, losing projects, payments and clients permanently. Not deliver the work on deadline problem created by freelancer himself.

Financial Planning : Freelancer has limit to do a projects so freelancers has a limited income compare to big companies. Sometime delay in payment or milestone of project is not approved than need to wait for the payment.
So freelancers without financial planning face the problem to pay their regular checks for him & his family.
Freelancer has to wait to get the next client many times so who not plan finances for day to day life faces unnecessary stress, loans frequently.

Getting right hourly rates : Ten out of six freelancers & digital agencies not skilled in marketing, not have enough reviews, ratings, proper proof of work and online presence so they could not ask for the hourly rate they deserve. Ten out of five freelancer & digital agencies not have skills, knowledge of tools that required for their work domain which resulted in less pay. There is a competition from some cheap countries, freelancers so freelancers who don’t know right marketing, right negotiation can never get proper hourly rates that they desire.

I have tried to make a list of challenges based on my experience, interview of many freelancers, digital agencies & surveys. If you have any suggestions, list of challenges that is not written please let me know so I can do more good efforts to strengthen freelancer & digital agency community.