Disadvantages of the Freelance worker
by Sergio Ordonez at 6:48 pm on Freelancing
I’m starting to get bored of all those blogs that talk about how good is to work as a freelance designer. It looks like it’s normal to get a salary of 6 numbers, work 4hs a day, and having mega clients that ask for jobs anybody would do even for free.
It’s obvious that the possitive side of any aspect of life has more audience that the negative side. This blogs live from the incomes coming from that audience, but i don’t think it’s a good philosophy to ignore it… let’s be realist, being a freelance worker has a lot of advantages, but also a lot of inconvinients.
So let’s face it, if we are more concious about it, we will have more possibilities of success…
Inestability
It is probably the most negative point, it’s the essence of the freelance worker. A month you are stressed because you have more work than you can do, and the next one you are looking for a waiter job because you can’t pay your bills.
This is very common when you are starting, if you follow the advices of the article get a job as a freelance designer in little time you will have stable clients, then you will start to really enjoy your work.
That’s why i recommend starting in this business when you are young and you still don’t have many responsibilities. If you already have a mortgage to pay, or a family to maintain it’s possibly too late for you 
Dedication
Something i always comment with my freelance friends, and they agree, is the fact that a freelance worker is a freelance worker 24 hours a day, there’s no resting, if you are not working directly you do it indirectly. The fact is that your brain never stops working, you are always looking for that idea for a design, or that marketing strategy to help you progress.
You also need a lot of work hours, but productive work hours… it’s better 1 hour of quality work than 8 hours looking at the wall.
Summing up: you must work a lot, be productive and you also can’t be distracted.
Loneliness
The freelance designer works the 90% of the cases alone, you can always associate with other designers, and gather with them like in my case, but never get to have a real associate.
This way your worries, problems, stress… stay for you.
Pressure
You are your own boss, if you aren’t able to do a task by yourself, because of your lack of motivation or capacity, noone will help with your work.
So everything depends on you, good or bad… this doesn’t help much when you have to make a creative design.
Continuous change
What works today might not work tomorrow. This is the truth which every businessman has to face, that’s why you have to be updated with the new technology and tendencies…
Multitasks
It doesn’t work only with designing, drawing, writing, painting, photographs or whatever you do, and do it right, you also must learn to be a good businessman, and know about laws and accountancy.
You also need to know, at least, new technologies and tendencies.
Speciality
It looks like a contradiction to the previous point, but it’s not. Think that when a company hires external staff it’s because the company employees don’t have the capacity to do it.
So you must know a bit of everything, but being specialist in something… if possible, in various things.
Vacations and Social Security
Forget about taking a month of vacations like wage-earner workers. Doing it is bad because you will lose clients, your future income; besides, that month you wont have any income… unless you have an automated business, like a blog, an online store… that way you’ll have a bigger margin.
In Spain, the freelance worker is considered as a "businessman", which has risks, so we don’t have the right to unemployment.
There’s no possibility of an early retirement before 65 years of age.
Now we finally have rights to sick leave.
Rentability
A couple of weeks ago i wrote an article about the price of an hour of work for a freelance worker and a wage-earning worker. My conclusion was that to obtain a monthly salary equivalent to a wage-earning worker, the freelance worker has to charge almost 4 times more per hour (in Spain):
"A designer employed in a company earning only 8€/h will receive a salary of 1.166€/month.. a freelance designer, has to charge about 30€/h."
Being a freelance worker will make you pay more expenses that in the case of a normal worker are paid by the boss.
As i always say, this kind of job is made for alternative people, rebels, risky… it’s all or nothing. If you do it well it can be the best work of the world, but it also requires many sacrifices… and not everybody is good for this.
In the next article we will write about the advantages of being a freelance worker.