Global Freelancers Survey – A valuable insight into freelancing Industry

Professionals from almost every business segment are looking out for freelance opportunities to make some extra money to survive this financial crisis. Recently a survey was conducted by a freelance marketplace called LimeExchange in partnership with PrePaid Master Card Payoneer questioning the professionals related to freelance and outsourcing industry about the issues, requirements and predictions on the state of freelancing in the current global economic scenario.

Surprisingly a significant percentage of respondents were new to freelancing, with 55% have been freelancing for less than a year. The global economic downturn is at least partially responsible for this influx of new freelancers, with 18% citing the recent loss of a job as their primary reason for freelancing, and another 36% using freelancing as a way to supplement income from a full-time job. Only 29% of respondents considered freelancing to be their primary job or business.

Professionals prefer freelancing career over a full time job as 59% feel it is flexible to work from home and set their own work schedule. The survey explains this as 28% freelancers believe that the ability to work from home and 26% says the ability to set their own hours are the main reasons they want to prefer it -- followed closely by "the ability to control their own destiny" (22%) and "earnings potential" (22%).

As many freelancers face the challenge of finding a right kind of job relevant to their area of expertise. In that case which source freelancer prefer to look out for freelance work opportunities, Freelance Marketplaces were preferred by 27% of those responding. Search Engines generated work for 24% of the respondents. Friends and referrals were noted by 20% of the respondents. Personal websites and personal paid campaigns were noted by only 3% of the respondents.

It is really interesting to know that what social media platform freelancers prefer to use. And the survey announces facebook as the winner as 56% of Freelancers surveyed noted Facebook as their Social Media Website of choice. This was followed by Twitter (13%), LinkedIn (9%) and Orkut (9%). Other was noted by (12%) of respondents.

Freelancers can provide services in a variety of categories and it was important to understand that what freelance skill sets or categories are in demand? The survey stated that Services, Writing & Translation and Web Development categories are some of the most popular and fastest growing project categories. Of those surveyed, 37% have writing and translation skills; 31% have web development skills; 29% have graphic and design skills; 22% note audio/video and multimedia skills; and 19% note software development skills.

Freelancers  have a bright future ahead as the survey clearly confirm as a whopping 79% believe it is going to continue growing, 15% feel that it will remain like this and only 6% think it would decrease by 2010.

Hope this survey would help everyone in understanding the freelance market and its future in the coming years. Please provide suggestions and feedback on the same.