It is time to focus on Freelancing work in the light of the Coronavirus crisis.

Dina Aziz Mohammed
Banking & Financial Sciences Department
Cihan University-Erbil

Who is a freelancer?

He is the person who works independently and self-relying on his skills and capabilities and works from anywhere and at any time he wants.

It is a broad term if it is not defined precisely.

A person who has a company is considered a freelancer because he is not governed by laws or official duties from a higher authority.

A person who has a craft or profession such as pigment, carpenter, barber ... etc., is also considered a freelancer because he works whenever and wherever he wants.

But what I mean here in my article is to focus on the freelancer who works online as a result of having distinguished skills that enable him to obtain business deals via the Internet.

And the skills of the freelancer range from rare and very difficult, such as programming, site creation, and remote electronics maintenance to relatively easier such as printing texts on the Word program.

But it must be known that the level of difficulty or ease in the skill that the freelancer possesses has a close relationship to the level of wages he receives and the job opportunities available to him.

Whenever the freelancer has rare skills and knowledge and is relatively difficult (that is, there are not many people who have this skill because it is difficult to learn) the higher the wages and the conditions that the freelancer places more.

For example, Fees for designing and creating electronic sites. Wages range between $ 1,000 - $ 5,000, depending on the site’s specifications. There are fewer or more prices according to specifications, importance, and privacy, but the reasonable range is what we mentioned above.

The period required to complete this work ranges from one to six months due to the accuracy of the work and the importance of mastery in it.

The reason for this is that when presenting such projects, the number of applicants for accepting the work with the availability of the required qualifications in it is minimal, and therefore the choice of the freelancer is among a limited number of people and therefore since the supply of the workforce is less than the demand for it, the wages are higher, and the freelancer can impose the wages he wants.

As for the relatively simple skills that do not require rare or specialized skills such as printing texts on a Word file, wages are low and can start from the price of $ 5 or more depending on the amount of work and delivery time where the time for carrying out the required work is often very short such as the same day or two days and so on.

Freelancing work appeared decades ago in developed countries, and until now there has been no attention and focus on such type of work in the Arab world in general and in Iraq in particular.

However, the importance and seriousness of working as a remote freelancer appeared in this current crisis of Corona Virus, where freelancers can be employed remotely and assigned to complete tasks in exchange for payment electronically.

Even ordinary employees were forced to work and learn the skills of implementing and delivering work remotely, and they did not have this opportunity before if it were not for this crisis that everyone was forced to learn the skills of managing their work remotely as a result of social distance.

In conclusion: I advise all young people not to wait for a government appointment, whose opportunity may never come, and to rely on themselves and acquire qualitative skills that qualify them to work as a freelancer, and whenever they made real efforts in learning rare skills, it became easy for them later to obtain opportunities with high wages, especially since this the type of business depends on the evaluation and opinions of the project owners presented.