1. Freelancing in Information Technology- Obstacles
and Suggested Solutions
Mahhek Tahir, Khizra Samad
Computer Science Department, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences
www.nu.edu.pk
mahhek.khan@gmail.com
ksammad@gmail.com
Abstract— A freelancer works online as a self-employee
and is not associated to any organization. This article
illustrates freelancing, its history, different modes of
freelancing and payment methodologies.Freelancing in
information technology is emerging as a popular activity
because of its numerous benefits but unfortunately
freelancing has some obstacles and there are various
ways to overcome these obstacles. This article highlights
benefits of freelancing, the obstacles faced by freelancer
and suggest the possible solutions of these obstacles.
Keywords— Freelancing, Methodology, Payment Modes,
Obstacles, Suggested Solutions
I. INTRODUCTION
There has been a massive shift in the way people prefer to
work. Work is no more captivated by complex boundaries
such as legal terms, single client, space and time.
Freelancing is the word that properly defines these
phenomena. In definition freelancer means a person who
does some work or a job without any long term commitment
to a particular employer. This term is getting popular day by
day. According to a survey there are about 1.6 million
freelance in the UK with £84 Billion added to UK GDP.
Freelancing has broaden up the horizons for people to seek
and do work. They are free to work, they are on their own
boss, they can excel, develop, grow and do what and how
they like. In short they are Self Employed. When you are a
freelancing you are an expert in your field, you prove
yourself to know everything without needing a supervisor or
manager in most of the cases. [1]
Freelancing has penetrated many industries including
computer application development, accounting solutions,
quality assurance, web designing, gas and oil contractors,
business and management consultants, medical professionals,
technical writing, data entry operations and many more.
Many people are shifting from routine office based jobs to
freelancing. People in different industries are also finding
ways of starting freelancing in those industries too. Even
small companies are emerging out of this profession. People
start individually or in small groups of friends and
colleagues and when they find positive response from clients
they start hiring people to share their work. This way small
entrepreneur emerges. It helps people who have a business
mind and do not have much capital to start of a company of
their own; they can start with small projects and small
capital and then increase by growing it slowly and steadily.
The practice of freelance is different for different types of
clients. Some believe on the words of the freelancer while
other want them to fill up contacts like the NDA document
which has list of the rules which the freelancer is obliged to
follow including rules like the work remain the property of
company and freelancer is not allowed to re use it etc.
II. HISTORY
The word freelancing was used for the first time in a novel
called ―Ivanhoe‖ which was written by Sir Walter Scott. It
was used to describe a free-lance with a person who is not
under oath to any lord and his jobs, It converted to noun in
1860s and then finally as a freelancer verb in 1903 defined
in Oxford Dictionary. Now a day it has been given a term as
a noun (freelancer), adjective (a freelance engineer) and
adverb (he worked as a freelance). [1]
III. MODES OF FREELANCING
There are many modes of freelancing. There are many
websites called freelancing market places where the client
puts their requirements and the bidders have their bids and
profile and the client is free to choose from the bidders after
a formal interview with the freelancer and sometimes a
quick test to evaluate what he really knows. The client also
asks for code samples of previous work done and work
history of applications made for real clients. They might also
ask for references of clients especially clients in their own
country, they contact these references via email or phone and

2. make sure they were happy with the freelancer’s reputation
and that their work was completed on time and within
budget. Other then this client consider the years of
experience, expertise, rate, location, similar projects done
before, comments and feedback of other clients, skills,
education history and many other criteria but the most
important of them is how fast and efficiently the freelancer
can do the job within the budget the client can afford. Other
then website there are clients that becomes the permanents.
These clients directly contact the person if they have done
their work before and were satisfied by it or ask their
colleagues if they know a freelancer that they have good
experience with. There are also companies who hire
freelancers and find clients and then they introduce the
freelancer to the clients, keeping a profit margin. [2]
IV. PAYMENTS
In freelancing there can be many types of payment plans. It
can be hourly, daily, weekly or monthly. It can be based on a
task module, milestone, objective, groups of activities or a
whole project. Some freelancer chooses value optimizing
pricing based on the historical price of a project. The price
can be either decided by the client or by the freelancer itself.
The client can decide price of the project either by
experience, historical evidences of similar work, suggestion
from colleagues, his pocket and average of bids from other
developers. Where as a freelancer can decide a price by his
experience with the field and that particular project, options
available to him other than that particular project. In most of
the cases price is decided by considering all of these factors
mentioned above. Sometimes the freelancer keeps an upfront
payment for liability that the client will not leave the
freelancer unpaid after getting his work done. Many rules of
payments are also imposed by the third parties involved in
freelancing like the market place.
V. BENEFITS
Freelancing has many benefits. Few of them are outlined
below.
Ease of work – Freelancer choose what they want to work on.
When you are on a job for any company you are bound to
work on everything that your manager assigns you, even if
you are not comfortable with that or even if you are new to it,
still you are bound to do it, but in freelancing you are free to
choose anything you want to work on, you apply on tasks
you are sure you want to learn or you already know them.
Multiple clients- Freelancer can work for more than one
client at a time in freelancing. Person are not legally bound
to work with one client at a time, so if there is a client is not
giving you complete work for the whole week due to his
busy schedule or vacations, you can always switch to other
client to complete your hours for that week.
Unlimited hours of work – You can work as much as you like,
normally in offices we are suppose to work 40 hours a day
but when it comes to freelancing we can work as much as 60
hours a week or even more. That can help you improve your
income by putting extra effort on work. Freelancers can
work on weekends and can get paid for that time as well
where as in job even if you work extra hours or work on
weekend there is very little changes of getting a fair amount
of bonus. So in short freelancing comes handy especially
when you are willing to save/earn some extra money.
Expanded markets – Sky is the limit when it comes to the
boundaries of freelancing. The world boarders start to fade
off. You can apply anywhere in the world and can do the
projects for any client around the world. That improves your
changes of learning and getting a fair amount of work from
all over the world. And compete as international level of
standards and money.
New connections all over the world – Freelancers get to
know new people, new cultures, new societies and get good
business connection all over the world too. That can help
them throughout their life and can become their
recommendation even if they plan to move abroad to seek a
fortune. [3]
Advantage for partial workers – The world is moving
toward a situation where everyone needs to work to earn a
living. There are people especially who can’t work because
they are bound to stay at home due to social, economical and
other factors or even there are people who can’t give full
dedication of 8 hours a day. Freelancing is a miracle for
them. They can work from home and even if they put small
hours on the job daily, they can still earn a fair amount of
money.
Better income - Freelancers generally have improved hourly
rates as you are competing at international levels. Especially
for the resources from the third world countries when they
convert into their own currency its comes real fruitful. So
you have better income and hence an improved lifestyle.
Self employed – You are your own boss. Imagine!
Flexible Timings - Freelancers can work when they want. No
more bound by time of 9 to 6. you can work late night to
compensate for a party at noon, or can even work early to
compensate an exhibition in the evening. So in short one can
plan his life according to his will.
Improved learning curve – When a person is on job his/her
learning curve is not so high, but when it comes to
freelancing one can learn what he/she wants to learn.
Freelancers can take risks of working on different
technologies and tool, they struggle to find solutions online,

3. and in the process of doing so the learning curve is improved
by many folds. [3]
New technology curve – In freelancing it is very easy to shift
to different technologies, mostly when a person is on job
your manager will like you to stick to the technology you
master in as that benefits the company. You might get lagged
behind due to that, but in freelancing you try to conquer the
lion by trying to learn and intervene into new technologies.
Thus you stay with the pace of the world easily.
Can start own setup – Pretty good chances of starting a
personal setup either with the help of client investment or
slowly and steadily by increasing clients one by one and
hiring resources for projects.
Improved level of confidence, communication and English
skills – Not just you get a chance to work with different
clients throughout the world but you also get a chance to talk
to them daily. That improves your confidence level and
communication skills. You get an improved vocabulary,
pronunciation, oral and writing skills.
VI. OBSTACLES AND SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS
Having a long list of exciting benefits described above, still
many companies avoid freelancing as a medium to get their
work done and even many personnel avoid it to adopt
freelancing as a profession. Now we will look at certain
obstacles that freelancers face and we will state some
possible solutions to these obstacles keeping in mind the
benefits we discussed above.
Obstacle: Finding client – When person starts his career as a
freelancer then the first problem wait for him is finding
client who can give you work and pay you in return. Finding
loyal client is very difficult task because some client are
very cunning they don’t pay back to freelance once
freelancer complete the project and sometime client quit
project in between without stating any reason.
Solution: There can be two ways to find clients either
request your seniors to refer you and recommend your work
to their clients to consider you for some of their projects but
not all the senior do this because if they refer you then what
they will do. The second way to catch client is to create
profile on any trustworthy freelancing website e.g.
oDesk.com, Guru.com, Freelance.com and apply for project
through these freelancing websites.
Obstacle: Grabbing project at early stages – There are many
trustworthy freelancing websites and these websites contain
countless project of various domain. Anybody that is
authorize to those websites and have profile on these website
can bid for the open projects but grabbing project at initial
level is itself a spiky task because mostly client reluctant to
approach people who just started freelancing, their
preference is to hire skilled and experienced people.
Solution: Most of the time people drop their guns after
successive failure but this is not the right approach and don’t
panic in this situation and keep on applying on different
open jobs and projects of your interest. Follow up that job
and keep visiting to that job application to view the status.
The more you apply to different job the more are the chances
to be hired for different projects.
Obstacle: Low income in start – This is a common problem
for every new freelancer no matter how much skilled you are
in your domain you have to suffer with this problem because
you are building your profile as freelancer. In start,
freelancer forced to charge less so the income rate is low
because it takes time to establish your profile moreover
clients tend to pay less to new freelancers as compared to
already established freelancer with strong working profile on
the other hand newbies are compel to place low bid to win
contract.
Solution: In this situation try to apply for small contracts,
focus on fixed price jobs and once you get hire and
successfully complete that task that will add in your profile
and this will give you chance to increase your hourly rate.
Obstacle: Concentration diversion – Employer who are
associated with 9-5 type jobs have thoughts that working as
a freelance is a relatively easy and relaxing job as compared
to regular 9- 5 job although situation is opposite to it because
freelancing means working from home and in your own
home there are a lot of stuff like TV, cell phone, play
stations, radio, laptops, internet, eatables and many other
things are enough to distract you from work.
Solution: To avoid such distraction you need to be your own
administrator because there is no one sitting at your home to
monitor you and to realize you that you should do your work
to earn and to fulfil your commitments. You must create
your schedule for working, stay away from all the stuff like
TV, cell phone, play stations, radio, laptops, internet,
eatables etc during working hours, and follow the schedule
strictly.
Obstacle: Ignore Self Promotion – A freelancer is so much
engage in his assignments and client’s work so sometime he
ignores his self promotion and growth. He confined himself
in some specific domain by doing this freelance impede his
learning curve and in long run he will have to suffer when
he has no work in hand of his specialized domain.
Solution: To handle this situation freelancer must keep
himself updated by IT industry , stay in contact with other
freelancer and share knowledge to learn from each other
experiences. Make habit to visit different IT blogs to stay
inform about latest happenings and advancement in IT
industry this will really helpful for improving learning curve.

4. Obstacle: Contract violation – A contract is an agreement
between freelancer and a client, all the terms, conditions,
penalties and work responsibilities clearly mention in the
contract. When a freelancer and client signs a contract then it
is a legal and ethical responsibility for them to follow
contract but even then some nasty client deliberately breach
the contract taking the advantage of being located in foreign
country and knowing the fact because of this reason it is not
possible for freelancer to take any action against them.
Solution: Contract violation is very difficult problem to deal
with. In such situations have patience and don’t fright. If you
are dealing with an independent client first talk to him and
try to sort out the issue but if he is not agreed then you must
file a law suit against your client for contract violation. You
must find a lawyer locally who deals such sort of cases and
discuss your case so that he can help you in taking legal
action against your client. If you are dealing with a client
from any freelancing websites like oDesk.com, Guru.com or
any other website, then just file complaint against your client
for contract violation in their customer support system and
follow up with their representative to solve this issue. [4]
Obstacle: Client never ending demands – Some client treats
the freelancer as full time servants and demands for the
features that are not listed in contract. When a freelancer is
working with a client then sometime client ask to do
additional work at run time for which no detail mention in
contract. If you are doing something that is not mention in
contract then client is not supposed to pay you for that extra
work and it means you are doing your work with effort free
of cost.
Solution: It is very difficult to say NO to client for additional
work that is not mention in contract but it is possible to deal
with such situation efficiently. When client demand
additional work simply discuss with client the effort and cost
of doing that work , document all the detail and take sign of
from client before doing that extra piece of work. [5]
Obstacle: Poor Communication – Freelancers need to
communicate with clients of different locality and different
cultures, there are many factors that cause poor
communication e.g. different time zones, command on
language, unfavourable circumstances etc. Poor
communication sometime annoy client and compel client to
take actions that are not in your favour.
Solution: To overcome poor communication issues, first
select proper communication medium and communicate
client off and on. Regularly touch base with client and
communicate work status by email, phone calls and Skype.
Obstacle: Poor time management – Freelancers most often
fail to manage time because of large workload or they get
involved to other activities like watching TV, listening radio,
hang out with friend etc, in result they have to work hard and
overnight to complete tasks to meet deadline
Solution: The best way to manage time is to create schedule
and plan your work and activities accordingly. Prioritizing
your work is also helpful and just focus on your work in
working hours because timely delivery of work make the
client happy and also bag more task and money for you.
Obstacle: Delayed Communication – The common
complaint of clients is delay communication from freelancer.
Sometime freelancer does not check their inbox on time and
somehow they miss latest messages from client and in result
unable to provide client with timely feedback this may make
client unhappy. This delayed communication can cause
cancellation of contract.
Solution: The solution of this problem is very easy and
tricky, always login to the freelance websites if you are
dealing with clients from there. Make sure that you are login
to your email account on your machines and mobile devices
this way you won’t miss any message and notification from
client. Try to reply client messages and queries as soon as
possible. Don’t let the client to wait for the update keep in
mind that its you that need work otherwise client have many
other options available. [6]
Obstacle: Lack of Social Activities – Freelancer usually
keeps on working without any break because the more they
work the more they earn this attitude affect the personal life
and reduce social activities. Sometime they work more than
24 hours just to complete task on time and ignore family and
friends and sometime client ask to work over the night to
complete work and in this situation one have to bypass the
personal activities.
Solution: Only the freelancer owns attitude can solve this
issue. If your family, friends matter for you then commit
only the amount of work you can easily handle. Take a day
off in week and plan social activities with friends and
family. Try to complete work on time and enjoy spare time
with family and arrange social activities in leisure time. [7]
Obstacle: Late Payments from client – Late payments from
clients are unfortunately a critical issue for a freelancer.
Freelancers deliver their quality work on time but sometime
clients intentionally or unintentionally paid late. The late
payment upset freelancers if he does not have another source
of income.
Solution: In these circumstances, all you can do is just send
a reminder email to the client or you can communicate the
payment delay issue with client over skype but do not get
harsh while communicating with client because it might
possible you get chance to work with same client again in
future. [8]
Obstacle: Client refused to pay – unlike the regular job
where salary transfers at the end of month, in freelancing
payment are made at the end of work. Sometime when
freelance deliver his work to client but for payment he has to
wait long but the situation gets worse when client refuse to
pay back to the work done , this thing seems weird because
all are professionals but these situation arise in freelancing

5. field when client decline payment and stops payment for
anonymous reason.
Solution: This issue can be solved by various means like
before start of every contract always ask for down payment.
Freelancing website like Odesk.com, Guru.com and
Freelancer.com have their own specified payment policies
and if you are working through these websites then you can
file complaint against that client in their support centre, the
support team investigate the issue and helps you in resolving
payment issue.
Obstacle: Lack of benefits – Being a freelancer you cannot
avail the benefits that corporate companies offered to its
employee. You cannot have health insurance, retirement
incentives, pay for doing late sitting for task completion and
bonuses. You cannot take sick leave you have to complete
your task even if you are sick because its your work and you
have to do it to get paid otherwise client will hire someone
else to complete that project.
Solution: Despite the fact that you cannot enjoy these
benefits even then being a freelancer is itself a blessing
because you can enjoy the freedom of working according to
your own way. You do not have to follow company rules
and regulations and you are free from office politics. You
can develop good working environment at home too.
Obstacle: Retaining clients – Retaining client is very
difficult thing because there are massive professional
available in market and client can access anybody who
charge less. Quality of work also matter to client but if a
freelancer charge less than you for same task then client will
definitely think about him once and then the ball is in the
court of client and he has to decide to whom he should select
for that task.
Solution: It is very important to stay in contact with old
client and if client was satisfy with your work in past then he
will definitely contact you and prefer you for future projects
and there are more chances of you that client hire you for his
projects.
VII. CONCLUSION
Freelancing is a very exciting way to earn better money. It
has a diversity that can be enjoyed. It gives exposure to a
person to improve his learning. It allows a person to decide
his own schedule, the type of tasks he likes to work on, and
how much he wants to work, and more importantly his own
lifestyle. Its benefits are much more than its drawbacks.
Again a very important phrase, if you have a will you are
definitely going to find a way. It provides freedom while
working because no one monitors you in freelancing so its
all about you, if you really want to do it. One just needs to
be fair and flexible with his dealings and he will definitely
get the reward in return.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We are very obliged to our teacher Sumaira Sarfraz for her
advice and continuous support.
REFERENCES
[ 1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer#Current_market
place
[ 2] http://www.project4hire.com/articles/How_To_Work_A
t_Home_As_a_Freelancer.html
[ 3] http://freelancefolder.com/7-reasons-to-consider-small-
clients/
[ 4] http://www.computerarts.co.uk/features/20-freelance-
problems-and-how-solve-them
[ 5] http://passivepanda.com/freelancing-part-iv
[ 6] http://freelancefolder.com/5-problems-clients-have-
with-freelancers-solved/
[ 7] http://blog.brazencareerist.com/2011/11/23/don%E2%8
0%99t-let-these-common-freelancing-problems-kick-
you-in-the-butt/
[ 8] http://cashpowerinfo.com/problems-of-freelancing-and-
how-to-overcome-them/