“You know you’ll not make a lot of money, right?”, surely some relative of yours have already told you this at some point. With closed magazines and professionals being fired, the future for those who dream of following this area seems scary. However, many of us have found in freelance work a way to get money that has brought promising results.
Julia Martins, a Casperian who studies journalism, decided to look for sporadic jobs to get more money during her internship, looking for specific sites for this. She found in the 99freelas a job in which she remained for 6 months.
“It was a lot of work, but I learned a lot, like SEO techniques and how WordPress works, for example.” For her, although she liked it, it was difficult to reconcile the time of the internship, this work and the college, which made her stop the freela later.
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Pedro Paes had a different experience. In the last year of publicity, he has worked with freelas indicated by friends and even by posts in Closed Caption. “Typically, my freelas had an average duration of one week.” To decide the value of his work time, he researched how many publicity agencies were charging, but he said that one time he worked for a price that he later found to be unfair in relation to market value.
So a tip for anyone who wants to start working as a freelancer is: find out how much your work costs. The lack of this information can not only harm you, but also other professionals who’ll have their jobs devalued by competing with too low prices.
The ex Casperiana Naiara Albuquerque learned to calculate this value with the help of friends from the area, and today she makes freelances for Nova Escola, Editora Global, among other vehicles. She said these opportunities came from teachers’ appointments to contacts made during her TCC, and she gave another crucial tip: grow your college contacts. “Even your classmates are great people to show you jobs in the future.”
But can you live only on that? Another ex casperiana, Sophia Cordazzo, proves that yes, since she’s lived as a freelancer since she graduated, five years ago. She works today as a producer, makeup artist and assistant director, and told us that the audiovisual market has a lot of work space.
She explains that it’s not only important to have networking, but also to be committed to what you do, since a mistake made in a job can make you lose that contact forever. “Being a freelancer is that, it all depends on the type of professional you are.”
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Sophia, who works weekly and per diem, says that there are good months, bad months and months for “holidays.” Therefore, it’s important to be a financially organized person, since the flow of money can vary with the availability of jobs. In addition, it’s important to also keep an agenda organization, so you don’t get lost in your day to day and will not to be deceived by the companies.
Finally, for those who want to start working as a freelancer, especially after college, don’t forget to create an “MEI” (Individual Microentrepreneur), to be recognized as a legal entity, to contribute to the INSS and to be able to give invoices for free. You can do this online and you’ll have to pay a monthly R$52,70 as a service provider.
The last tip to write down is perhaps the most important: learn to control your anxiety and time. There are good and bad periods, but don’t let this make you despair, and don’t forget to set aside time for you between jobs. As Naiara said, we aren’t just our job.