After the current Corona Virus COVID 19 pandemic situation, we might see many people changing their career and start working from home. A lot of people might have started thinking of starting a freelancing career in Nepal and worldwide too. As a freelancer developer with 4+ years of a freelancing career, I am here to share with you the problem that we freelancer face in Nepal. In short the challenges for a freelancing career in Nepal.
Before entering the topic, let me tell you what is freelancing? Actually the word freelancing is for that person who is independent and is not committed to a particular company or person.
Freelancing is one of a good idea for those who don’t want to work for a single unit and also for those who don’t want to be a part of a single unit. You can work for different units and earn. This also can be a good idea for beginners. You can learn very new things, new ideas and the best deal with very new people every day.
We have a lot of freedom and flexibility that a desk job can’t have. You can freely choose the type of job you want to do or you enjoy to do. Yes, the best point is you can stop doing the job if you are bored.
Advantages of Freelancing
- Interesting, freedom and flexibility.
- Can choose the work we like to do.
- It can have good exposer.
- Easily control workload.
- We can get a break when needed.
- Easy to maintain work relationships.
- The time you want to work is in your hands.
- You are your own boss.
Problems and Challenges for a freelancing career in Nepal
1. Lack of remote working experience and culture
In Nepal, we still have a lack of trust. Actually, we still cannot trust the people we haven’t meet. We need direct or physical meet first.
Besides that, the owner prefers long term employees. In addition to that, we don’t have the culture to work remotely.
Not only the trust level, but there are various reasons like clients are no able to explain their needs properly. They mostly prefer to point the work or task in Whiteboard rather than online.
Usually, the employer from Nepal afraid if the freelancer will work full time and gets the job done in time. In Nepal, we have great trust in a face to face conversation
2. International Payment Gateway
The payment gateway can simply define the way we get paid for our work. When we work as a freelancer we don’t need to have much interaction with the company. We just do our work and get the payments.
For example, if you work as a freelancer for an international company, it’s really hard to get the payment because of the lack of an international payment system like PayPal.
However, Wire transfer makes it easier nowadays. Wire transfer is the method of sending money from an international bank to a Nepali bank directly.
Freelancing sites like Upwork, Codeable, Fiverr send money directly to your bank. You just need to create an account on A class bank here in Nepal.
3. Low budget payment
The most annoying challenge for a freelancing career in Nepal is the quantity of payment. Trust me the amount we get is very low.
In fact lower than a general helper. This is the factor that is enough to discourage a freelancer.
In the context of Nepal, every company needs a cheaper freelancer with the best working ability. But tell who will work in this way.
Every worker needs money according to their ability at least near to the ability. But unfortunately, we don’t get that. Because of the payment quantity, it feels like why the hell I’m working this hard?
Even if you work for international companies, they want low budget salary expectations from south Asian countries.
4. Late payment
Another annoying factor is late payments. Along with low payment, we also get late payment.
This one is one of the major problems for all freelancers here in Nepal. There are a larger number of clients who don’t understand our problems or simply don’t want to do so, or may they forget.
After all, they have to work hard. And we just are freelancers, nothing more not their regular employee. But something this problem may occur due to disorganization too.
5. Poor communication
I believe “Communication can solve any problems“. Just imagine if our client can’t communicate or won’t communicate then how can we understand the client’s needs. Sometimes we need to think from our end and the result will be totally positive.
Employers should be somehow technical for better communication. Thus, as a freelancer, you need to know the exact requirements first. They usually tell or show some references but they never think how complex things will be.
In the context of Nepal, People are still poor in communication. We are not able to explain what we need, which 1 day may cause a big problem. The same thing we face as a freelancer.
6. Unreliable Clients
The big challenge for freelancing careers in Nepal is that you can’t trust both parties. As I explained before that the company has a trust issue. A similar condition is applied for freelancers also.
I had to give up lots of money because of the unethical behaviors of employers. They usually ask for the job done first and they never give the remaining payment or they drop the project and break the communication.
Just imagine you have completed your work and you won’t get the payment. This may happen. To overcome we need to build good trust in our clients and they also need to build a good relationship with the freelancer.
I suggest you check the employee’s profile, company details or take the advance payment first. If you are searching for a freelancer, try to find the history or reference of them.
How to make a good career in freelancing?
To make a good career in freelancing, you need to know the basic things that are listed below.
- Establish good communication
- Build good trust
- Meet new people
- Make good market value
- Set limits
- Invest in market
- Find good clients and so on.
Best way to find a freelancing job
- Be prepared to work for cheap
- Stick with your regular clients
- Use freelancing sites like Upwork, Codeable, Fiverr, etc
- Built good knowledge and develop updated skills
- Built a website or make a profile on Linkedin.
- Make your name in a market
- Save money so that you can wait for the next good job
- Invest in yourself for training, better equipment and maintain good health
Conclusion
There are 100s of Challenge for freelancing career in Nepal. I have explained very few of them. But trust me we can overcome them if both hands are joined together. I mean a hand of client and hand of freelancer.
I hope you will like the content and the content will attract you so that you keep on visiting us. Thank you!!! HAVE A GOOD DAY!! Stay Home, Stay Safe!!!