Every year, I love doing side projects apart from my usual work, clients etc – this year in April 2020, I decided to share everything that I have actually done in the last 4 years in my freelancing career publicly on linkedin to help folks in getting started
No gimmicks, no fluff, no B.S, actual work done by yours truly.
The reason I love side projects is because my entire freelancing business was a side project once and it’s been a very rewarding journey personally, financially, emotionally to have worked with over 40+ clients in the last 4 years serving startups to SMBs to enterprises.
For this, I created a simple completely free 5 day email series that has been viewed by a lot of folks on linkedin and some have taken action, some have been inspired and the overall response has been good!
Here’s an excerpt from Day 1 email and you can sign up at the bottom for the same
Table of Contents
Freelance data analyst salary
57 million. 1 Trillion $.
That’s the number of freelancers just in the US & their total earnings (in 2019)
How much do you think they will grow in 2020 now that almost 80-90% of the World is working from home (definitely the IT, Software & Data industry)?
Things are only going to accelerate from this year onwards, no one truly knows how much though.
This seems to be a once in a century opportunity, much like when Cryptocurrency & Bitcoin became mainstream since 2016 – now it’s slightly late to buy those coins for maximum ROI
The same thing is going to happen with the Gig Economy. McKinsey estimates that online platforms like Upwork could add 2.7 Trillion $ annually (2% of GDP of US)
As is customary, things that happen in the US, slowly move all over the world and in India. These changes in the gig economy, the gig mindset have been happening for many years now.
But – what’s really in it for you – How much can a freelance data analyst/data scientist earn? How much time can you save? What’s the real ROI here?
Let’s really understand how much an average or a really good freelancer can earn on a marketplace or with his authority on the vast internet, starting with Upwork.
In my client profile, I just went into the category “Data science & analytics” and chose “India” for reference and picked this snapshot for reference.
Yes, these are some people just like you & me in the Data industry on Upwork from India (images & names are blurred/removed for privacy)
They identified the demand in markets and have earned significant amounts of money charging decent hourly rates, working from anywhere in the world.
The first step of any change is Awareness.
You need to understand how big the Gig Economy is and what really is in store for your set of skills.
Note: We will only be using USD (not INR) here as that’s the true global currency in these platforms. Get used to it and always compare with market rates in USD and not traditional “packages”
The Iceberg mentality
“Upwork and freelancer platforms are a race to the bottom with the prices”
“Upwork is for cheap clients”
“Freelancing is for small jobs less than $10 or $100”
“Freelancers are broke”
I’m sure you must have heard the above or some variations of them.
Yes, of course there are people from Asia & Eastern Europe that really charge low (1-10$/hr) for many projects and will continue to do so.
But, you need to look underneath and understand what’s happening in these platforms like a Data scientist / Data analyst that’s working on the backend.
The low price jobs is a complete misconception and let me break that myth for you right away.
There are enterprises that hire for long-term contracts each of which exceed $10K – $100K (i.e. 7.5 – 75 Lakhs INR) all the time on the platform.
Don’t believe me?
Well, you can read for yourself on Upwork’s annual impact report they released publicly on Twitter
What you see online in your profile are “public jobs” only.
Public jobs are the top of the iceberg, which you can see when you start off a new profile.
Don’t be fooled by them.
There are many jobs that are “private” and only some select freelancers can get “invited” to them.
I will talk about them later in our email series. In fact, you sign up here instantly & you’ll receive the lessons
Today’s task & action – understand the marketplaces and online platforms. Register on these 2 platforms and just browse through it, make yourself familiar with it.
Choose the top ones only – Upwork & Experfy
Do not get overwhelmed, just browse through them, check only relevant sections in the Data industry.
Tomorrow, I will share the biggest mistakes that you should avoid while starting out.
Now, think about it and tell me how much money do top 1% of freelancers make working online every year, pick any platform you want.
Take a wild guess or do some research.
I’ll reveal some ideas on the number in the next lesson.
You can sign up here and you’ll receive a daily lesson on the same
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