Freelancing with Studies: Insights and Options for CS Students!

Edited in Canva, Background by Artem Podrej

I asked ChatGPT to explain freelancing to a 12-year-old, and it came up with the following response –

Freelancing is when someone works for themselves instead of working for a boss or a company…they can choose the work they want to do and when they want to do it. For e.g. imagine you’re really good at drawing…you could draw pictures for people and get paid for it!

Based on my experience with freelancing, it is a pretty accurate explanation that does not use any big jargons. Freelancing is essentially working for yourself, usually in a cycle of taking up a project, working on it and getting paid for it, without any long-term commitment.

As per a 2019 Payoneer report, India was among the top 10 countries with 29% freelance workforce which is a decently small share when compared to US (78%), UK (59%) and Pak (47%). As per the same report, a majority share (72%) of the freelancers in India come from the age group 25–44, and they represent approx. 85% of the total freelance earnings. Since you are reading this article, there is a high chance you are an undergraduate college student in India and don’t belong to this age group. But, does it mean you cannot freelance? No, increasingly more and more students are opting for freelancing to support their studies financially while learning practical skills.

So, how to freelance?

Freelancing is not rocket science and here are three steps to help you find the answer –

Identify your prime skills

The most significant component of freelancing is claiming your candidature for a work on the basis of a skill that you can demonstrate well every time (almost!). Apparently, not all skills are suitable for freelance work. Tasks that require creativity, analytical ability or problem-solving skills without requiring a lot of involvement from clients (including their time, resources or infrastructure) are most common. These include copywriting, designing, music, programming, etc.

Usually, when freelancing with studies, it is vital to choose skills that align with your field of study and long-term goals. Most students who choose a skill that does not align with their career goals have to eventually choose one of them which causes a major shift in their personal and professional life. Below is a list of skills relevant for CS students –

1. Software Development: It is one of the highly demanded skills on most freelancing platforms. Software development includes developing websites, mobile applications, and server-side software along with native desktop applications. Under this category, you can get projects for developing end-to-end software (from scratch to deployment), or you may be asked to develop, debug or improve a smaller component that fits into a larger project.
2. Data Engineering and Analytics: It is a relatively new but well-paid category across freelance platforms. If you are good with building data pipelines, developing efficient ML models, or carrying out detailed (manual) analysis from raw data, you can opt for this kind of job. As the nature of the work indicates, clients usually look for well-demonstrated (read — experienced) freelancers for these jobs. As a student, you can demonstrate your skills by participating in hackathons, Kaggle competitions or publishing your work on GitHub or other platforms.
3. Cyber Security and Data Governance: Tech startups offering digital solutions across various business domains are rising year on year. While these founders focus majorly on the features of the product, there is a dire need for professionals who can test for and embed necessary data security measures. Further, as more governments come up with their customized data protection and privacy policies, it is essential to audit and take necessary actions to ensure their compliance on a technical level.
4. Cloud and Infrastructure Services: Most small IT agencies have in-house programmers that can handle the development activities for their clients. However, as a product or the clientele scales, they require external help in setting up the required infrastructure. While most cloud providers offer additional on-demand bespoke services, they cost significantly higher than a freelancer.
5. Digital Marketing and SEO: Nowadays, when a large population is connected to the internet, it is crucial for businesses to promote their products and services on digital platforms. It includes building portfolio websites, landing pages, content strategy, online communities, advertising campaigns and so on. This skill can be considered easiest to start with and therefore has the highest competition and average earnings. Moreover, projects in this category require continuous engagement for a longer term to produce significant results.

Prepare for competition

Freelancing uplifts from limitations imposed by age, nationality or social background; and offers the freedom to choose the type of work, time, location and monthly targets on your own. Who doesn’t want that, right? However, it means that to pursue freelancing one has to prepare for good competition. Here are some tips to be ready –

1. Select a niche: When you don’t have your first project, it is easy to get distracted and try to do anything you can get. But it is the opposite of how to prepare for a competition. Based on your skills, identify a niche area of work and stick to it. Keep learning new things and identify what is valued in the target industry. Over time, this will help you build a personal brand and longer relationships with clients.
2. Showcase your skills: Clients prefer experienced freelancers but how does one get experience without work? Egg and chicken, right? The answer is by solving problems around you using your skills. It might include a personal interest, a community problem or an existing issue in a product backed by a big company. Sometimes, when solving the problem is not possible in your niche, you can showcase your approach/solution to the problem (while considering its legal implications).
3. Build reputation: Clients want to be sure that you have enough knowledge and experience before they can trust with you with a job. In order to convince a client that you can do what you claim, you can choose one of these options — gather certifications, testimonials, referrals and endorsements from offline clients, friends and fellow freelancers. Build a portfolio, join online communities, write a blog, share your ideas on social media, give talks/presentations in your college or participate in hackathons.
4. Be consistent: Clients looking for freelancers want the most value for money (that's why they are not hiring full time employees). And because of this, cracking the initial clients takes time! It is important to remain consistent in applying for different projects, updating your profile across all platforms (freelancer.com, upwork, peopleperhour, fiverr etc.), improving your offers and taking help from others. Usually, for new freelancers, it can take weeks (and 50+ bids) before you get your first job.

Know your motivation

Freelancing can be a career, a side hustle or a learning experience. However, in the case of freelancing, none of that comes fast. It takes a fair share of time to see real progress in earning, learning or professional growth.

Moreover, freelancing is a multi-skill endeavour. What this means is that to grow as a freelancer, apart from your core skills, you need to be good at the following:

1. Communicate with clients — to apply for a project, understand their requirements, negotiate pricing, provide updates and get testimonials.
2. Manage your time effectively — to meet deadlines, learn new things and work on multiple projects at once (since you can’t wait to look for new projects until the current one finishes).
3. Marketing yourself — to reach potential clients; by building an online presence, managing your personal brand and converting your skills into services.
4. Managing your finances — to keep track of all payments, dues and compliances. This includes sending quotations, raising invoices, tracking commissions, designing budgets, filing GST etc.
5. Providing customer support — to increase possibilities of recurring/future work from clients. It includes minor improvements, technical support, content writing, helping in procurements of other products/services etc.
6. Handling mishaps — arising out of code not working in the middle of the night, client changing requirements for an ongoing project, third-party/server-related issues, client delaying or refusing payments or any random reasons best known to time.
7. Managing yourself — to ensure that you always have a balance between your studies, freelancing and social life.

Does it feel like a lot? It is, and thus, it is very important that you understand your motivation behind taking up freelancing. Whether you want to do it long-term, wish to try it till the placement semester or want to work on a one-off project; knowing why you started will be crucial for making a lot of tough choices along the journey.

Now that you know about the things you need to consider when planning to freelance, let’s jump to the big question –

Should you freelance with your studies?

Freelancing comes with its own pros and cons. When you look at one side of the coin, it offers you — freedom, flexibility, and accountability towards your future. It relieves the social pressure, helps with financial aspects, encourages to be self-dependent, motivates to keep learning, reduces unwanted distractions and makes you happy about contributing to a better world.

On the other side, since there is no boss, you have to be your own boss, i.e. you have to find work for yourself; commit to doing it properly & on time; and develop a recurring funnel to ensure you have enough work (always!). This can take up significant time and energy from the golden period of student life that you can dedicate to learning life-long skills and look for opportunities that can offer a good kick start to your career.

Further, freelancing is just like any other business. One has to keep putting in enough resources at the start to reach the breakeven point and start reaping profits. Unfortunately, because of — peer pressure, poor cultural acceptance, age (and associated pursuit of identity), inability to face rejection, low hourly wages for inexperienced freelancers, absence of financial literacy, lack of confidence and lack of self-discipline — most of the individuals starting with their studies either end up dropping out of studies or quit freelancing before the breakeven occurs.

A majority of those who stick around move towards delegating the tasks to other freelancers; resulting in lower margins, increased pressure to get more work and dedicating most of the time to managing the operations instead of developing their own skills.

Wrapping up

While the above section convinces against pursuing freelancing with studies, I do not feel the same. Solving complex problems and working on real-world projects provides the much-required confidence and financial support to build a successful career. These endeavours allow a student to learn life skills such as marketing, branding and people management that are usually not a part of their university curriculum. So, what’s the optimal path? We will discuss the same in the next article.

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