The Fallacy of the Easy Freelance Living

Honey, stand back, for I’m about to launch.

I had a video forwarded to me by someone who thought it was interesting. In the video, which is 10 minutes long, a freelancer flaunts their easy lifestyle while talking about how they make — are you sitting down? — nearly $400,000 a year on a freelance platform.

You know, one of those websites where creatives brawl for the privilege of underbidding each other to get a gig. That’s right. This claim suggests that anyone can make that kind of money without the benefit of breaking a sweat. By underbidding everyone else.

In the video, which I’m sure you’ve seen circulating lately, there was a bit of a tell — the freelancer charges $1,000 for 10,000-word ebooks. And has them written in two days. Original content? And do you have enough ebooks to write the 31.5 per month you’d need to write in order to make the money you say you’re making? And are you able to underbid every other writer and still charge $1,000 for each ebook?

Color me skeptical.

What really bothers me about these sorts of promotional videos (let’s call it what it feels like): They’re meant to promote the sites in question, not the freelancer being presented.

You will never make that kind of money on any site that plays to the lowest denominator. You can’t. The math just isn’t supporting it.  And while yes, if you work your ass off you could conceivably make more money than is typical on these sites, the competition makes that damn near impossible. Oh, and now there’s more of it, thanks to the business website that does present reality content.

There is no easy path in freelancing. Let me repeat:

[bctt tweet=”There is no easy path in #freelancing” username=”LoriWidmer”]

When you see these “Wow, can this really be true?” kind of stories, the answer is almost always a big, fat “No!”

If you’ve seen the video, you’ve also seen the claims that other work supplemented this freelancer’s bank account. And I felt one statement blew the whole thing out of the water for me: “I had this $400K just sitting in my bank account…” and funny how that amount was about the same amount that the headline of this “video” claims the freelancer made in a year.

It’s the little details that tell the story.

It also makes you think about the kind of freelance career you’d like to create.

Do you want to compete for work with freelancers who haven’t quite figured out how to get themselves up and running? Or do you want to make a living freelance writing by finding your own clients, building long-term relationships, and writing about things that interest you?

Count me in that second group.

Sure, these sites dangle these carrots all the time. You can make oodles of money working in your pajamas! I can do that now, and I don’t need a middle man, thank you.

When you let someone else market for you, you are never truly independent.

You are relying on someone else to provide leads. That’s great until they change their format or their pay structure or their minds about the site’s viability for them. Because, you see, they don’t give a lick about your career. They care about what their bottom line is.

When you buy into a pipe dream, you might get a pipe. Or not.

If it sounds too good to be true, go with that. It’s far too easy for people to use smoke and mirrors and weird math to make you think you’ve hit the jackpot. If it were that easy, why do so many writers struggle?

Because it isn’t easy. And because we don’t know what’s true and what isn’t, though it’s quite obvious in some cases, isn’t it?

What unbelievable claim has stopped you in your tracks lately?
What’s your recipe for freelance success?