If you are eyeing an online job, then freelancing would be the best option for you. These days, freelancing definitely one of the most sought after trends in earning money because people can work freely at the comforts of their own homes.
Experts say that more and more professionals and skilled people are getting into the bandwagon of getting online jobs as freelancers because the industry offers a lot more opportunity compared to the usual eight-hour job.
Aside from giving you enough freedom from all the hectic office schedule, being a freelancer also enables you to manage your own time and choose your own path, so to speak.
If you are a graphic artist, there are better chances for you to get an online job. This is because graphic designing is one of the industries where freelancing is abundant. Because the job can be arranged in a per project basis, more and more potential clients prefer to hire freelance graphic artists because they don’t have to pay the artists just like the regular employees.
Simply defined as "self-employed, sub-contractors who market their design by the job to several buyers," freelance graphic artists also serve as the boss, the office manager, the secretary or secretarial pool, a member of the sales staff, the head and the staff of the marketing department, the maintenance staff and the mailman all rolled into one person.
If you are into this field and you would want to accept freelance jobs or projects, then you should start building, promoting and marketing yourself by now. According to most freelance graphic artists the first thing that one should have is to possess a dedicated passion for a demanding job and clients as well.
To those who are full time graphic artists and you are planning to go freelance, here's a set of considerations you might want to contemplate on before indulging into an adventurous yet demanding job:
- determine and set your goals. Just like in any job, becoming a freelance graphic artist will require you to set and determine your goals before finally jumping over a new set up. Since becoming a freelance artist will eat much of your time especially if you're just starting, you need to contemplate if you should drop your day time job and if you can handle meticulous and demanding clients at hand. Part of determining and setting your goals is asking yourself what you are getting out of the career shift and what made you decide to do this.
- check your business acumen. Knowing different business routes and knowing how to run a business will definitely help you become a successful freelance illustrator or graphics designer.
- gauge your capability to decide. Decision-making is a very important aspect in going freelance. If you are really planning to go freelance, then you should have the heart and the mind to decide. Since you'll be making a lot of decisions eventually, you should start learning to decide wisely as early as now.
- examine your overall attitude towards shifting to a new working environment. Getting an online job is like taking 180 degrees turn from your usual work setting. Before finally jumping into freelancing, you should ask yourself how to handle stress, possible rejection, and competition. This would contribute to your success in your new line of work.
A lot of students and professionals have now turned to online tutorial as a fresh way of reviewing for classes and learning all kinds of stuff – from academics to extracurricular. As for people like me who are looking for an additional source of income, online teaching was suddenly worth a try.
Please note that I have no experience whatsoever in teaching or tutoring anyone. Nevertheless, when a friend of a friend introduced me to this private online tutorial center, the owner said that I don’t really need to have experience, but I have to show my student that I am well knowledgeable in the field that I will be teaching – which in this case would be English. Having worked in a call center before, I guessed it would be easy.
The task is basically to converse with my students and point out grammatical errors. I would also have to inject grammar lessons along the way. The online medium used is the call feature of Skype and YM since they’re free. Each session would last one hour per student, unless the student likes you very much and would like to extend. The “students” were all professionals and their 1st language is not English. However, they can understand and speak the language at hand at an intermediate level, but just needed to polish their conversational skills. As a newbie, I really have no idea what to do. It’s difficult to gauge each student’s knowledge. Having no experience in preparing lesson plans and modules, I resorted to intense Googling of online teaching strategies and materials.
The technique is to make the students feel that their teacher really prepared for the lesson. Since online tutoring doesn’t give me much variety in terms of teaching materials, I thought it best to make use of Powerpoint presentations. My initial classes were composed of picture exercises, word exercises, tongue twisters, and mock interviews. Week after week, I painstakingly think of more ways to make classes much more enjoyable and hassle-free for my students, who in this case also come home from work just like me.
I’ve been teaching for almost half a year now, and I can say that I’m really enjoying it. Not only have I found a way to increase my monthly earnings, but online teaching somehow breaks my monotonous routine as a regular employee stuck in a boring day job. It is a fulfilling experience, to realize that my students are actually learning something from what little knowledge that I share with them. It’s also fun because while I teach, I also get to learn a lot from them.
Sure, online tutorial has a lot of disadvantages. It’s hard enough to teach someone face to face, what more if your student is a thousand miles away? Teaching strategies are limited, you have to make do with soft copy versions all the time. Call quality can also be an issue, and many times I’ve experienced our call being disconnected. But all in all, teaching online is a job worth trying.
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