Global Freelancers Survey – Unveils the change

Survey Finds Widespread Optimism Amongst Freelancers Despite Challenging Economic Conditions

Overview

The prevailing economic slowdown and resulting job layoffs have given a boost to freelancing across the globe. To survive this financial unrest, more professionals, especially in the IT and ITES sectors are heading towards doing freelance jobs.

LimeExchange being one of the fastest growing online services marketplace for freelancers and small and large businesses, reached out to different freelancers and professionals to understand their expectations, feelings and predictions on the state of freelancing in the current global economic scenario.

In partnership with Payoneer, LimeExchange conducted the Global freelancer’s survey. The survey included many questions related to the freelance marketplace and industry like which source do you use most often to find freelance projects? What types of customers represent the largest portion of your freelancing revenues? These and many more questions on the problems and other general issues were asked in the survey. The survey was conducted over a 45-day period beginning September 2, 2009 through October 17, 2009.

Surprisingly, thousands of freelancers from across the globe who participated were new to freelancing, with 55% indicating they have been freelancing for less than a year. The global economic downturn is at least partially responsible for this influx of new freelancers, with 18% citing the recent loss of a job as their primary reason for freelancing, and another 36% using freelancing as a way to supplement income from a full-time job. Only 29% of respondents considered freelancing to be their primary job or business.

This survey reports will also provide a valuable insight over the job preferences, skills in demand, social media role, outsourcing reasons, and the future of freelancing and outsourcing industry. Our main objective of sharing with you this detailed analysis is to enhance both form and function of LimeExchange and build a better marketplace for all of you. We want to help in all possible ways to make the services easier to use, or to help you achieve your business objectives effectively.

Key Findings

The demand for freelancers is rapidly increasing as a large number of professionals are choosing a freelancing career over a full time job. The reason could be the necessity or the freedom and flexibility of working hours. The survey depicts that 59% chose freelancing vs. 29% choosing full-time employment and 12% had no preference. The ability to work from home and setting own working hours may also help to explain the optimism amongst freelancers as they believe there would be no boss around to keep a vigil on them round the clock.

People in almost every business sector are growing crazy for social media websites like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Orkut etc. as they not only help in socializing with friends and loved ones but also provide business opportunities to many. We wanted to understand how freelancers are utilizing these new platforms. To our surprise, Facebook came out to be far outpaced other social sites, more than doubling the usage of the business focused Linked in and media darling Twitter.

Freelancers can be specialized in hundreds of skills sets and provide their services to a wide range of projects. It was interesting to understand that what freelance skill sets or categories are in demand? The survey confirmed that Services, Writing & Translation and Web Development categories are some of the most popular and fastest growing project categories. However, fifty five percent of those surveyed have been freelancing for less than a year; 23% have been freelancing for one to three years; 10% have been freelancing three to five years and 13% have been freelancing for more than five years. Of those surveyed, 37% have writing and translation skills;

have web development skills; 29% have graphic and design skills; 22% note audio/video and multimedia skills; and 19% note software development skills.

The most challenging part of being a freelancer is finding the right job of your choice. There are many sources available for finding it but what’s today’s freelancers choice was most important requirement to understand. We asked freelancers which source(s) they use for finding freelancing jobs and technology fueled approaches led the way. To our delight, 27% feel Freelance marketplace is the most popular method, followed by search engines as it work for 24% of the respondents, 20% believe word of mouth referrals, and other 3% says online resources like forums, social networking platforms, and classified sites,

While the global economic downturn may be increasing the supply of freelancers, it is also driving demand, with 59% of freelancers listing "to cut costs or reduce" staff as the main reason their clients are outsourcing projects, followed by 33% who listed the need for specific skill sets and experience as the primary reason their clients were outsourcing. Small to mid-sized businesses are driving much of the demand, with 48% of respondents listing SMBs as their largest source of their income, while 38% listed startups and individuals, and 14% attributed the largest portion of their revenue to large businesses.

The survey was successfully conducted as thousands of freelance professionals from across the globe participated. The future of freelancing seems to be bright and prosperous as overwhelming 79% of respondents expect their freelance business to increase in 2010 and 15% of those surveyed expect it to stay the same whereas 6% feel it would decrease.

Another important take away from this survey was which factors are most important when deciding whether or not to register and do business on a freelance marketplace? 51% says availability of projects from across the globe, 47% freelancers believe that quality and budget of projects as they provide genuine buyers looking for skilled and committee professionals for their requirements. This clearly explains that freelancers still want a secure platform to find freelance job opportunities.

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You can also check out the complete survey details http://blog.limeexchange.com/wp-content/uploads/Freelancingsurveyresults.pdf