Working in the creative industries: is freelancing the road to success?

Working in the creative industries: is freelancing the road to success?

Creative industries is one of the most appealing sector for young people nowadays, with all the technologies and cultural impact around us, each year the number of graduates are rising while the open jobs are almost stable, the competition for a secured jobs is rising, we often hear parents of graduates complains about how hard is it to secure a job for their children, facing the struggle to get a secured job, young graduates tend to head toward freelancing.

The Benefits of freelancing within creative industries:

•        Flexible working hours: freelancer can work whenever they want.
•       Flexible working place: freelancer can work from anywhere they like.
•         Control over the job: freelancer can choose the job to take and client to work with, unlike working for a company while they have to do whatever they’re told.
•        Be their own boss: freelancer has all the control, they don’t have to listen to anyone other than their client and themselves.
•        Keep all the profit: no matter how big or small is the project they are working on, they can keep all the profit or allocate it to expand their business.

The drawbacks of freelancing:

•         Inconsistent workload and cash flow: an employee can rely on a steady income to pay their regular expenses, unfortunately that is not the case with freelancer, unless they are lucky enough to secure a few clients with regular work.
•         They are responsible for finding their own clients: freelancers has to undertake the legwork to get jobs, there are ways to do that, online like freelance web developer jobs, or through networking.
•         Freelancer have to do more business activities: freelancers are responsible to do all the required administrative work, sales and marketing and accounting matters.

The importance of networking within the creative industries:

Business networking is building a business and personal connections and contacts for purpose of securing more business related opportunities. It is considered a crucial skill for any entrepreneur. The creative industry in Scotland on a business scale can be considered a small community especially if you focused on one discipline such as web development, in order to expand any business an entrepreneur needs business related contacts, a freelancer needs contacts to secure more jobs, a graduate needs contact to simply hear about job opportunities.