Right after I made the Freelancer Aptitude Test available to the public, I noticed that nobody in the entry-level group passed the mark of being in a good position to freelance. Do you think it’s surprising? I did. I expected at least someone to pass it! Then I wondered: Is freelancing good for students at all, actually?
The Freelancer Aptitude Test consists of 30 questions. I designed them so people can reveal their chances of success as freelancers in less than 5 minutes. All questions are mandatory, but not all of them are equally important. You get 0, 1, or 2 points for each question, 40 points being the maximum. The results are shown after you submit all your answers. Also, you see the interpretation after completing the test.
The questions are all based on my experience of coaching freelancers since 2017, e.g., all the CoachLancer members I’ve had over the years, and of course my personal experience as a solopreneur, “Upwork Superhero” and the official “CocoLord” on LinkedIn.
Here’s how I divided the scores according to typical categories I notice most professionals falling into:
0-25 points:
You probably need more experience or a very different mindset before turning freelance. Making that career move NOW present great risks that might hinder your progress and reduce your motivation in your first year of freelancing. It is probably better that you first focus on solidifying your professional competence in an environment (e.g. a normal job) where SOMEONE ELSE takes the business risk.
26-34 points:
You’re in a good position to consider a career as a freelancer, but there will be significant challenges in starting right now. It is better to assess if your personal traits or your confidence and skill level are your limitations. You would benefit greatly from coaching and mentoring if you MUST start freelancing now since your starting point isn’t optimal.
35-40 points:
You have the makings of a great freelancer! Start your new freelance career with confidence, work hard on developing your business skills FAST, and learn everything you can from senior freelancers before you dive in. YOU CAN DO THIS!
So far, at the time of writing this, the best score is 38/40. Almost perfect! This came from a senior professional whose only drawbacks were on the side of personal traits. This person met all the technical and most of the other prerequisites too! But none of the people with 1 or less years of professional experience, e.g. students and fresh graduates, did.
Now, let’s assume you’re a student with a busy college lifestyle of prepping and passing courses, doing lots of other things (I heard sports and partying are popular, hahaha), and trying to live within your budget the best you can.
The obvious way to improve your lifestyle is to get a part-time job or start freelancing. These days, as the job market all over the world is nothing but hostile for students and fresh graduates, freelancing sounds like a better choice. You decide to take your fate into your own hands and go for it!
But before diving into doing freelance work part-time after school, it is better to learn a bit more about what you should expect. Freelancing isn’t for everyone! Actually, most students fail miserably when starting something they don’t yet fully understand.
So, the following is a long list of things you should consider before starting your part-time freelancing career while studying.
Freedom, ah, freedom!
The most obvious part is the freedom to work whenever you want. You can do it in the mornings, in the evenings, on weekends, or whenever. Also, you’re free to work from any location, be it your dorm room, the college library, or a coffee shop. In some cases, you might realize that other students are doing freelance gigs in those places, too!
However, complete freedom comes with complete responsibility. This is the first pitfall of so many wannabe freelancers: Once you promise to deliver something to a paying customer, your client, you must be able to deliver what you promised!
This means that if finishing your gig takes a bit longer than you expected (students are especially prone to scope creep), you’ll have to skip parties, sports, and other such things. Alternatively, expect problems with your client in terms of making payments, releasing funds from escrow, or getting good reviews.
That much-needed experience
Many times, students and fresh graduates suffer from not yet having professional experience. Mere academic score and a good degree only carries you so far these days. As everyone needs to start from something, freelancing is a great way to get that much-needed practice and work experience.
Experience is eventually needed.
Let’s say you studied graphic design and did well in your courses. Then, you start freelancing and sign up on Upwork, for instance, only to see that the marketplace is swarming with other graphic designers! Some have great portfolios, charge a lot, and look very successful, whereas most (yes, most) have hourly rates around $3 or $5 and have only done one small logo design gig for $10 in their entire Upwork careers.
Then, you realize that most of those who haven’t seen much success aren’t even students! They are professionals with several years of experience and a proper employment history!
The competition in the entry-level category is very harsh. That’s why there are few chances for newbies who don’t yet have a track record visible and proven to be worth money by the marketplace’s profile page.
That’s why it is extremely important to niche down and pick a sub-niche that isn’t yet fully saturated.
Bridging the gap between theory and practice
This is perhaps one of the most educational parts of freelancing. Only when you start doing real work do you see what it takes to do it well. Well enough to be paid! The transition from theoretical learning to practical application can be hard, but freelancing provides a unique opportunity to bridge that gap. By working on real-world projects for clients, students gain a deeper understanding of industry standards, workplace expectations, and the day-to-day responsibilities of their chosen profession.
The main problem here is your starting point. When not yet knowing those industry standards and other expectations, you’re extremely prone to making mistakes. And you’d be making all those mistakes right in front of your paying customer. You’ll encounter situations where your problem-solving skills are tested to their maximum, you’ll have difficulties communicating with clients, and so on.
Learning your profession while freelancing can be much harder than you might think. But you will get exposure to different industries and business sectors, which will help you develop your skills perhaps faster than in a day job setting. This is mainly because you’re leading your own work all the time without any supervision. This, in turn, means that freelancing isn’t for people who need constant hand-holding since freelancers don’t get any.
Without prior experience, knowing what is happening can be puzzling.
All this exposure to real work will help you understand how your industry works and perhaps help you make better career choices because of it.
Learn how businesses work
Assuming you get some freelance work, manage to execute a couple of gigs, and have happy clients, you will learn how the business world works. You’ll realize what kinds of people buy what kinds of things, why they buy them, and so on.
This offers an excellent opportunity to develop soft skills, negotiation skills, communication skills, and project management skills. You will learn very quickly how to deliver what you promised in order to survive the competitive freelancing market. One of the key parts to master soon is expectation management.
Many times, when I’ve considered hiring a fresh graduate, people tend to get a bit unrealistic about either the delivery or the budget. Sometimes, a junior developer, for instance, puts a ridiculous price tag on the work, thinking, “Someone is finally talking to me, this is my first client, now I will get rich!” Not knowing about market rates, commonly known unspoken expectations about the work’s quality, etc., can backfire immediately.
Getting greedy makes you look like this. Humility wins!
See, for instance, how these freelance developers and designers failed miserably in their efforts in trying to do small-scale subcontract work for me. Expecting really basic things like bug-free web pages seemed to be too much…
Making that sweet moneeeeey!
For those who need money to survive their student days, the financial part is, of course, an important aspect of freelancing. Tuition fees, housing, textbooks, laptops… none of them are free. From this perspective, freelancing may sound like a dream come true… until you realize what students make as freelancers.
Honestly, it isn’t much. There are lots of people who start with very tiny rates and increase their earnings as they progress as freelancers. But in most cases, it takes years! This is why. You’re basically doing three big things at the same time:
- Finishing your academic studies
- Developing your professional competence
- Building your first business
To do all of them at once is an insane challenge! That’s why, next to no student makes good money when they start up. It pays off only if you work smart, work hard, and keep it going. Many quit when they thought freelancing was a shortcut to success but realized it would still take years to get anywhere decent in terms of earnings.
Most people who take things realistically try to get past the first two phases so that someone else covers (most of) the costs. Scholarships for studies and internships for developing your core professional skills. Developing your own business (yes, that’s what freelancing is, and you do it on your own without any relevant experience) is a big challenge even for most experienced professionals!
Did you, for instance, consider setting up a business name such as a Limited Liability Company? I bet not. Because you’re “just freelancing”, right?
Sometimes students don’t get paid even peanuts. It’s a harsh reality.
The smart ones seek help in the form of mentorship from the start. Unfortunately, those kinds of smart students are not many in a hundred.
Of course, if you happen to make some extra money by freelancing, the victory feels sweeter than perhaps in any other case. Celebrate the small wins! One big benefit of this is that you give yourself a chance to develop financial management skills such as budgeting. You’ll learn a thing or two about taxes, too, I bet. You might even consider investing some of your savings. That experience might play a big part in getting ahead of your peers.
Either way, freelancers, even experienced ones, suffer from unstable income. Sometimes, you get your hands full of decent gigs, sometimes, you make mere peanuts. That’s where these mindset hacks might come in handy. In short, the sooner you realize you don’t need to compare your income month by month to the salary of a day job, the better deals you start making.
Building connections
One more great part of doing freelance work as a student is that you end up doing networking early on. This can turn out to be a critical step in your career, and you might take it sooner than others.
Networking in this context means that you probably meet:
- Clients (obviously) who might refer you to their friends
- Other student freelancers in different fields
- Senior freelancers as mentors
Making those connections early on can be a significant factor in your professional growth. You might get internship or employment opportunities besides freelancing gigs from your network. You never know!
So, it’s important to stay awake, stay connected, and see what others are doing. The only risk in this is losing yourself to networking, hustling, and all that “business stuff” without making much earning or learning anything deliberately.
Stay focused even when networking.
Constant balancing
Nobody said freelancing is easy, especially for students. If you had a busy life before, freelancing expands it by an order of magnitude. What you will need to get very good at as a student is time management. You can’t miss deadlines promised to your clients. You can’t miss school. Your post-curriculum activities, e.g., playing for a college sports team, will follow a certain schedule, too.
Balancing everything improves with practice!
Doing all things at the same time is demanding, and it can get quite exhausting. As someone who started as a part-time developer in a tiny software company after Year 2 of college, I could never have imagined running my freelance business at the same time. Coursework was tough enough, and on top of that, I did plenty of sports, floorball mostly. Very busy days!
A course buddy of mine was a web developer and admin for a gaming magazine and got paid pretty well (for a student). But he had no time for sports or parties. That was his choice and his sacrifice. These things are individual, so you’d better be conscious and realistic about what things you have time for.
So, is freelancing good for students?
It depends on the individual. There are personal traits that some have and others don’t that make them great at time management, expectation management, negotiations, excellence in delivering work, and other skills that every freelancer needs to learn.
Also, people’s situations differ greatly. Not everyone gets a scholarship, not everyone’s parents pay their tuition fees, and not everyone has a decent place to live while studying. It does help if you have a realistic grasp, a little bit of ambition, and a willingness to learn quickly. In the best case, you’d learn fast from others instead of making all the mistakes yourself… at your own expense!
Freelancing as a student is risky, and it doesn’t guarantee anything at all. Except that you will gain some experience, for sure. Be realistic, and make the choice carefully. The 30 questions I included in the aptitude test will help you make that choice. Take the Freelancer Aptitude Test and reveal how good or bad your starting point is. It only takes 5 minutes!
