Article Atoofa Siddiqui -36, English

Revised (expanded)

Freelancing Industry in Pakistan

Atoofa Siddiqui

2k18/MC/36

Do you want to earn independently without being employed? Then, you must get yourself involved in freelancing market, working as a globally growing industry. This industry invites you to do job according to your will and suitable time and helps you in seeking and setting your career as well as in polishing your skills.

Freelancing, basically, is a market where people do work on contracts without having any affiliation with an organization. Everyone is free to work and to get paid by utilizing their skills completely here. It’s an industry where individuals, from all over the world, who have specialization in any category, can earn easily by sitting at home in their pajamas.

In Pakistan, this industry also has become quite popular and in-used. Owing to increase in unemployment, needs, downsizing, inflation and changing attitudes of masses, Pakistan has got the honor to stand at the top of the table of freelancing race in Asia, confirmed by USA based Payoneer’s  Global Gig Economy Index.

According to stats, given by Online Labour Index of 2017 of Oxford Internal Institute, 70% of us are beyond the age of 30, that means young minds. Therefore, Pakistan has recorded an increasing growth in its freelancing industry that is 47%. We are the 4^th country across the globe that is involved in this industry on large scale.

Here, the most common, useable and prominent freelancing websites are Freelancing.com, Upwork.com, Guru.com and Fiverr.com and our freelancers are earning about 0.5 Billion US Dollars from this industry every year.

The categories that most of the Pakistani freelancers choose to work in are IT and Design. Other categories involve Microsoft Office, Creative writing, Editing and proofreading, Project management, Marketing, Research, Website and Software Development, Internet and Ecommerce and many more.

Despite of these amazing facts, indicating us a bright future, our freelancers are not highly paid. The main reason behind this is that we are lacking the qualities needed to step-in in this market successfully, to remain constant in our business and to win the trust and appreciation of clients.

First, our freelancers are not able to understand the wants of clients. Because of being weak in speaking and understanding English language and having no communication skills, they do not get what the client is demanding. They do not properly understand the things what the client is asking for his project. Therefore, our freelancers receive disappointments in return.

Second, copy culture is quite common in our country, thus making our freelancers uncreative. They do not try to think about their given projects all by themselves and just want to pick up the ideas of others. Hence, they just copy the same idea and apply it on their projects to satisfy their clients and get paid. But in actual, this behavior is not accepted by people worldwide.

Third, we do not have an access to internet countrywide and are running out of robotics. The issue of load shedding is quite common in Pakistan, thus disconnecting the internet connection and making our freelancers inactive most of the time. The other thing is that most of our freelancers do not own the modern and latest technologies, necessary to work efficiently in this industry. Due to these shortages, people are not able to work properly on time.

Fourth is most of our freelancers are involved in this market just to have a part time job too, apart from their enrolled one. But, they do not find enough time from their 9-5 desk job to also focus properly on this part time job. Therefore, they do not take it seriously because of lacking the time in a day to work for and lacking the assigned projects.

Fifth, Pakistan’s freelancers do not set their price according to the type of work and efforts they are willing to take. That is the reason why the clients hire them for such projects that are quite expensive in their own countries but are cheaply done by our freelancers. Our freelancers only take as guaranteed by such clients.

Last but not the least, unpunctuality of time is a huge problem of Pakistan’s freelancers. Due to time differences between countries and their habits of taking everything as easy, they do not fulfill the client’s demands on time and this is why, they do not get hired for highly paid projects. These are the main reasons behind the decline of Pakistan’s freelancers’ quality and enough livelihoods.

With no quality in increased quantity, we cannot stand in market as successful anymore in future. Due to having no quality in our work, we only earn about 0.5 million USD every year despite of the fact that we are the largest freelancers producing country in Asia. If we compare ourselves with neighboring country India, their annual freelancers’ growth is just 29% but they are earning 400 billion US Dollars from this market that is quite more than us.

To figure out how many of us are creative and attentive towards our work and future, QPRO, a community of Pakistan’s freelancers, coders and professionals, conducted a free test of logo design in September, 2019 to check the quality of Pakistan’s graphic designers. But, the result was quite worried. Out of 200 works, 70% people copied the ideas of logo from internet, leaving their creativity behind. And only 5% found to be creative from their minds. These stats show us a much tensed situation ahead.

The need of the hour is to think what can be done for improving the skills and mindsets of our freelancers. Though government and other private platforms, such as QPRO, DigiSkills, UDEMY, COURSERA, eRozgar, SKILLSHARE and SKILLSUCCESS has started some online courses, programs and training sessions for guiding and training the young minds and they also maintain a check on working but still all in vain. The fact is if we will be succeeded in making our youth to compete the world in quality, then this industry can heavily support the economy of Pakistan and we can produce more than 0.5 million USD revenue for helping the country in tough times and for ending its biggest issue, that is poverty.

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Freelancing Industry in Pakistan

Atoofa Siddiqui

2k18/MC/36

Do you want to earn independently without being employed? Then, you must get yourself involved in freelancing market, working as a globally growing industry.

Freelancing, basically, is a market where people do work on contracts without having any affiliation with an organization. Everyone is free to work and to get paid by utilizing their skills completely here. It’s an industry where individuals, from all over the world, who have specialization in any category, can earn easily by sitting at home.

This industry has become quite popular and in-used in Pakistan. Owing to increase in unemployment, needs, downsizing, inflation and changing attitudes of masses, Pakistan has got the honor to stand at the top of the table of freelancing race in Asia, confirmed by USA based Payoneer’s  Global Gig Economy Index.

According to stats, given by Online Labour Index of 2017 of Oxford Internal Institute, 70% of us are beyond the age of 30, that means young minds. Therefore, Pakistan has recorded an increasing growth in its freelancing industry that is 47%. We are the 4^th country across the globe that is involved in this industry on large scale.

Despite of these amazing facts, indicating us a bright future, our freelancers are not highly paid. The main reason behind this is that we are lacking the qualities needed to step-in in this market successfully and to remain constant in our business.

First, our freelancers are not able to understand the wants of clients. Because of being weak in speaking and understanding English language and having no communication skills, they do not get what the client is demanding.

Second, copy culture is quite common in our country, thus making our freelancers uncreative. They do not try to think about their given projects all by themselves and just want to pick up the ideas of others. This behavior is not accepted by people worldwide.

Third, we do not have an access to internet countrywide and are running out of robotics. Due to these shortages, people are not able to work properly on time.

Last, unpunctuality of time is a huge problem of Pakistan’s freelancers. Due to time differences between countries and their habits, they do not fulfill the client’s demands on time and this is why, they do not get hired for highly paid projects. These are the main reasons behind the decline of Pakistan’s freelancers’ quality.

With no quality in increased quantity, we cannot stand in market as successful anymore. Due to having no quality in our work, we only earn about 0.5 million USD every year despite of the fact that we are the largest freelancers producing country in Asia.

Recently, Qpro, a community of Pakistan’s freelancers and professionals, conducted a free test of logo design in September, 2019 to check the quality of Pakistan’s graphic designers. But, the result was quite worried. Out of 200 works, 70% people copied the ideas of logo from internet, leaving their creativity behind.

The need of the hour is to think what can be done for improving the skills and mindsets of our freelancers. Though government and other private platforms, such as Qpro, has started some online courses, programs and training sessions for guiding and training the young minds and they also maintain a check on working but still all in vain. The fact is if we will be succeeded in making our youth to compete the world in quality, then this industry can heavily support the economy of Pakistan and we can produce more than 0.5 million USD revenue for helping the country in tough times and for ending its biggest issue, that is poverty.