Freelance Business in 2021

Hello Friends,


We are half-way in 2021 and it is time for us to share how we see the rest of the year for the Freelance Business Community.

We are mega proud to be able to launch extra events this year and have successfully run Freelance Business for Marketing and Sales in April, which saw 550 attendees and Freelance Business for Writers in June, which was attended by 360 from more than 50 countries!

We are very grateful to have partners this year: Django.city, Business4Good, Nomawo, XOLO, Freelancing.eu and Opdrachten.be, The Indie List, The Freelancer Club and Lancr. We are looking forward to expanding our partnerships to other organisations interested in connecting with freelancers and freelance economy players.

At the beginning of 2021 we made a strategic decision to focus on 3 pillars of the freelance economy: Freelancers are the main one, Service and product providers targeting freelancers are the second; and Organisations, or people hiring freelancers are our third pillar.

We believe that connecting these 3 main players will give us the synergy and the power to improve the freelance ecosystem as a whole. We started trailing this approach at the Freelance Business Month last year and we will continue doing it in 2021.

To address the interest of the Freelancers, we launched 4 free sectoral events to give them an opportunity to learn and increase their network. Two of the events were mentioned above, two more are coming and they are: Freelance Business for Creatives (23-24 August) and Freelance Business for Software Developers (6-7 December).

In addition to the bigger events, we run smaller masterclasses on specific topics: investments for freelancers, pricing, and contract negotiations. These masterclass materials are free to rewatch to anyone interested.

Apart from that, we are proud about our special ongoing freelancers campaign - Freelance Gurus, started last year. Through it, we share the lives and voices of freelancers on our social media to provide more visibility to them.

Our Instagram account will run a special Freelancer Take-over programme, where anyone can have an opportunity to host the account for a day and share their freelancing story.

We equally give opportunity for experienced and starting freelancers to try their public speaking skills and talk about what matters to them during our events. Our call for speakers is constantly open and we try to accommodate each submission to a respective event. We also support and train freelancers to deliver a great presentation.

We have also sponsored the University of Toronto Freelancers Global Research lead by Jonathan Younger, Professor Gerald C. Cupchik and the team of researchers at the University to study the attributes of successful freelancers. We are excited and can't wait to get the results of this study, which will be presented to our community.

As a result of the Freelance Business Month last year we are producing our first Freelance Business Book, an accumulation of all the insights that we gathered during 80+ sessions.

The book will be available for free to anyone who wishes to borrow the wisdom of the greatest minds in the Freelance economy. We had 15 book authors, 6 TED and TEDx speakers, 2 representatives of Forbes and many more excellent C-level professionals joining our Freelance Business Month. The value of the information in this book will be unprecedented! This is a mega-exciting project and we can't wait to see it live.

If you are an organisation that is looking into promoting your business to the freelance community, the book will have branding options and is aimed to be released in Q3.

For organisations, targeting freelancers we have developed marketing and communications campaigns that will allow them to reach out to freelance audience. Apart from that, we provide plenty of opportunities to shine at our events or masterclasses. Our team works hand-in-hand with each of our partners to ensure the efficiency of each of the campaigns and partnership arrangements, be it content redistribution, content creation, specific matchmaking or social media visibility - just to name a few. Anyone can request the information at any point of time at partners@freelancebusiness.eu.

Second part of 2021 will see new products coming to life specifically for organisations, targeting freelancers. Our bespoke Freelance Ecosystem Guide will explain how the freelance economy functions. More and more players are joining this growing market and it is time to have a good usable summary.

Freelance Business Community started in 2018 with the notion to connect freelancers with job-givers and help freelancers to find assignments. We continue keeping that focus. We figured that organisations and people who are hiring freelancers do not always understand the practicalities and specificities of hiring and working with freelancers, so we would like to help them with that and lead them in this process. We are also delighted that some partnerships are coming to support this initiative. Stay tuned, as they say!

2020 was a pivotal moment when more organisations started looking into flexible workforce and that gave an unprecedented birth to new freelance platforms. Almost every sector or market is now having a freelance platform that connects freelancers with job-givers or allows job-givers to post their vacancies and find talents.

We realised there is a need to do an overview of freelancer platforms - and this turned into a project called Freelance Platforms Guide overview, which will see light in Q3.

Lastly, our biggest initiative that took place in 2020 - Freelance Business Month - will be happening again this year in October!

This is the flagship event that aims to connect freelancers with job givers. The event will be the moment when the entire worldwide community will come together to talk about freelancing, freelance economy, relationships between freelancers and those who hire independent professionals. It will be a moment for all freelancers to connect and show the power of solo-business.

We welcome everyone to participate in this movement either as an attendees, speaker or partner. Call for speakers is currently open.

Last year we welcomed more than 900 attendees, this year we have a big ambition to attract 5000 people. The Freelance Business Month will include the European Freelance Week (18-24 October), dedicated to policy-making efforts that need to happen to support the freelancers' lives and work in Europe overall.

I hope I have inspired you with our plans and I am pretty sure you will find an activity that passes your personal or organisational goals. With Freelance Business we are not trying to build a membership organisation or another freelance platform. We prefer to stay neutral and serve as the voice of the industry. Our big ambition is to develop a strong Freelance Business brand that would be associated with quality events and content. Or yes, did I mention we are also working on a rebrand?


What is more important for me personally is that in these 6 months we were able to create new job opportunities for the team members who are working with us at this moment: Ana, Bozhidar, Ivan, Meadhbh, Katrina and Anel. I couldn't dream of a better team.

Should you have any comments, ideas or suggestions, please connect with me on LinkedIn.

Kind regards,
Elina

#iamfreelance