In line with what we believed, and
almost a justification in itself to start the Network Freelance site, when we
asked you whether all was well in the finding work department you gave us a warts
and all picture. It’s pretty tough out there.
Now, the challenges are different
whether you’re a novice in the world of freelancing, or a seasoned professional,
but they’re still a major frustration with life in the free lane. We know from
the hours most of our respondents work, that here’s enough of it around but
securing contracts seems to be an issue. 42% of you would like more work if you
could get it. Just under a third of you actually thought you had the right
amount of work.
How do freelancers find work?
When we asked you how you find work
the results were pretty consistent. Nearly three quarters of you were big
believers in word of mouth promotion. It seems happy customers are your biggest
asset and everyone cited this method as the one being used at least sometimes
or, as in the vast majority, often. Agencies are another source of contracts,
with around 50% of people having experience of using them. The modern mediums
of online job listings and the traditional route of offline job listings were
distinctly under used, with 2/3rds of respondents telling us they never tried
these sources. Actually promoting yourself was another interesting find with
those using it always, pretty much equalling those never using it, leaving the
majority on the fence - using it sometimes.
This got us thinking, is there a
link between frequency of use and satisfaction for it as a tool to produce
work? Instinct suggests so…
The highest number of respondents
being extremely dissatisfied came from agencies and online job listings.
Offline job listings didn’t fare much better with most of the dissatisfied
responses being levelled at this medium of work gathering. But it’s not all
gloom and doom. Word of mouth unsurprisingly was a clear satisfaction
favourite. A whopping 95% of you told us that you were either satisfied or
extremely satisfied. And nearly two thirds of you were either satisfied or
extremely satisfied with the self promotion channels.
Overall then a mixed bag of results. Our major
takeaway was that people were most happy when they relied on themselves, or
their reputation to generate work. This is probably easier said than done when
starting out as a freelancer, which is another reason why we’re trying to help.
|