Elance: More Pinoys now prefer online freelance jobs

CEBU, Philippines - Going beyond the traditional approach of employment, the Philippine labor market sees a lucrative job opportunity in freelancing wherein Filipinos could enjoy their passion and control their schedule with no commute and no office dress code while earning in dollar rates.

This is according to the top officials of Elance, an online freelance platform, who recently visited Cebu for the company’s first summit and meet-up with Cebuano freelancers.

Elance Bangladesh country manager Saidur Mamun Khan shared the company’s observation on the growing number of freelancers in the Philippines wherein most of the Filipinos prefer to do freelance work with the convenience of being able to work anywhere and anytime they want.

He described freelancing as the key occupation in the market in the coming years as people tend to shift to work online, banking on their skills that qualify to the requirements of global companies that are now starting to embrace online freelance.

“The time has changed. Freelance is changing the society. Five years ago, people have to go to the capital city to work but now with freelancing, they can work in their districts without the need to commute. It has changed the way we used to have with just a computer and an Internet connection,” he stated.

He noted that Elance is beginning to introduce a revolutionized hiring approach of addressing the high unemployment rate in countries with the high potential of the freelance market. .

Philippines ranked fourth in number of users and ninth in terms of earnings with over 95, 000 Filipino freelancers registered on Elance, specializing in administrative support, IT and programming, and writing and translation and earning an average hourly rate of US$8.3.

It has also been reported that information technology and programming freelance jobs are paid the highest at an hourly rate of $14.30 while engineering and manufacturing freelancers received $12.2 and design and multimedia at $12.

Khan said that most of the clients who hire freelancers are small and medium enterprises and start-ups from Western companies who find it expensive to hire physical employees and rent an office space for the personnel.

Elance has 5,000 active clients in the platform to date.

Unlike in Bangladesh where freelance community in the country is very active due to social media, Khan then encouraged Filipinos to exert more effort in promoting a network of freelancers in the Filipinos and getting more people involved in the booming industry.

In order to attract clients, he said that it is significant for a freelancer to create a good base of skills portfolio and presentation for the market.

He urged non-freelancers to try logging in the company’s website, register for free, list skills in the profile, find work in the list of available jobs, collaborate online with the employer, and get paid.

Clients, on the other hand, post their job vacancies in the Elance website, review job proposals, manage and collaborate with the qualified freelancer online, and evaluate his work performance where the latter is rated five being the highest and one as the lowest.

Elance, serving as the online freelance platform, earns a commission of 8.75 percent as a service fee when the work has been delivered and the payment has been made.

Elance Philippines country manager Ron Cirujano said that Filipinos are presented with a unique opportunity to have the chance to earn money while staying at home instead of flying abroad to be an overseas Filipino worker or work for a business process outsourcing company.

“As long as you’re good at what you do, stick to what you know and do it very well,” he advised.

Out of the 95,000 Filipino freelancers in the company, 5,480 are registered from Cebu, 318 are hired and $314,881 is recorded to be the total freelancers’ earnings in the last twelve months.

“Cebuanos, in particular, are qualified since they are good and fluent in the English language,” Cirujano said.

Contrary to Cebu, Manila only has 3,859 freelancers registered, 193 are hired and are paid a total of $210,916 last year.

Bangladesh, on the other hand, ranked seventh with 36,000 freelancers.

Most active clients for Filipinos are United States, United Kingdom and Australia while the highly in-demand freelance jobs are the administration-related positions. 

In the company’s report entitled “The State of the Filipino Freelance Market”, Elance indicated that the country is a prime destination for freelancers with its skilled and hardworking workforce, technologically savvy population, and accelerating entrepreneurial communities.

The Filipino freelance market further posted a growth of 89 percent increase in new registrations representing 1,456 freelancers hired in the first quarter of 2013.

It also reported an annual growth of 158 percent for the total number of hired freelancers, 175 percent for those who are hired for the first time, 79 percent on the total earnings and 105 percent on the total number of jobs every year.

There are more than 500,000 businesses and 2.3 million freelancers who use Elance as an online freelance platform in over 170 countries.

The survey which was participated by 120 selected Filipino freelancers as respondents was conducted in September of last year. /JOB (FREEMAN)