When you work in a traditional job, you usually have an hourly rate. You may receive a salary, but your employer will probably base that wage on an hourly rate, assuming an average 40-hour work week. Your salary is directly proportional to the amount of work you do. In short, you get back what you entered when you charge by the hour.
This is a good strategy if you're working with a new client or on a project that has the potential to be dragged down or bogged down by several revisions. Getting to know your customers can take some time; some are picky and request several revisions, and others may change the summary when your work is well under way. In both scenarios, charging a fixed fee per project could mean getting a lower ROI for the project as a whole, so an hourly rate makes sense. Self-employed retention agreements can be a great safety net for self-employed workers, since they guarantee a certain amount of work for a customer over an agreed period of time.
In fact, there is a negligible difference in the average hourly wage when comparing self-employed people with graduate degrees to self-employed people who only have a high school diploma. The most profitable industry is the legal field, with its 5 jobs listed among the 5 highest-paying freelance jobs. The least profitable industry is Customer & Administrative Support, and their 4 jobs listed are the lowest paying freelance jobs. These figures show us that, apart from the minimum wage in Switzerland (which only applies to part of the country), the average figures of the self-employed are mostly higher than the minimum wages of countries with the highest minimum wages.
A survey shows that self-employment, in general, outperforms full-time employment. When it comes to starting to work as a freelancer or even expanding your business as a freelancer, what you charge and how you get paid are two very important factors. User reviews on platforms such as Upwork, Fiverr and Freelancer help clients assess the skills and experience of a freelancer. If you haven't yet earned your high school diploma, freelancing isn't out of your reach, but since you're probably still learning your skills as a freelancer and don't have an extensive portfolio, expect to earn roughly the equivalent of the minimum wage in your country.
