10 essential problems of Freelancers in Iran

10 essential problems of Freelancers in Iran

Being a freelancer has scores of advantages. but since the number freelancers has grown rapidly, the number of problems expand as well. In this article, I am going to share with you 10 of the most common problems of freelancers in Iran.

Every freelancer around the world has some problems and Iran is not a country apart from others. But the type of problems in Iran are a little different from other countries. 

1. Marketing is the biggest problem of Freelancers in Iran

This issue mostly affects people are freelancers and not those companies that employ skill workers.
It can be said that marketing is the common challenge of most freelancers in different lands around the world. Based on this poll 63 percent of people who want to work for themselves, suffer from lack of marketing knowledge. And this number is growing very rapidly at the moment.

Let’s take a close look at the above mentioned issue.
If you look search freelancer jobs in Persian “شغل فریلنسری”, you will come across more than 100 companies’ website that offer you the cheapest price to get your project and give to a freelancer.
But the real freelancers don’t even know how to advertise themselves and because of that their income gets much lower than it should be.

2. Low income of freelancers in Iran

Most people think that freelancers get more money than employees or managers which is not true. We should rephrase that sentence and say that most freelancers WANT to gain much more money than employees but they fail after a lot of try.

And again their low income is interconnected to lack of marketing knowledge. (when we say marketing, some people think we mean advertising which is not correct)
Being a freelancer is like a worker who gets his wage after the job and his payment is not regular like a salary.

In Iran, if you want to be successful as a freelancer, you should put some money in the bank and get the profit for at least a year to work hard and earn nothing! This practice is good to learn the ropes.

Some time, freelancers do the job perfectly well and expect the employer to give them their wage, but this doesn’t happen because most of them don’t sign a contract in the beginning and that cause a huge problem.

3. Freelancers in Iran want to work alone and not in a team

Some think that freelance means working alone and not in cooperation with other people. But this is a huge MISTAKE.

Most of the time I get aligned with those employers who do not trust freelancers and do not give them big projects. Because big projects need big teams to do the job on time.

Imagine as a freelancer you are suggested a web design job. So you can’t know about coding, designing, writing content, Internet marketing, Photoshop and so forth professionally. So you need to either team up with others or do just one part of the job. So sometimes employers do not accept this.

4. Working for third party dealers

Apart from some freelancers who don’t have a job, some others don’t have time to sleep! Why is that?
It is because some of them work for dealers and those dealers have connections with big companies and distribute the jobs.

So that way their income lowers but there is no other way to do the business until you get a good grasp of marketing.
But here is my WORD OF ADVICE, never work cheap for anyone.

5. Working excessively

This problem comes to those who are experienced or professional. Since these freelancers have been in the market for a long time and a lot of customers know them, they receive a lot of request for doing projects.

Accepting projects excessively can cause stress and long headaches during the day which can affect their mental and physical health in the long-run.

6. Getting access to universal services

In Iran this problem is very common. There are two kinds of filters in Iran.

One from the government which filters different kinds of websites from adult movie builders to those talk about politics in Iran. Recently they have filtered quora.com which came as a shock to me. Needless to say that twitter and youtube are also filtered.

Second, there are some websites that countries like the US do not let Iranian use them! And I don’t why. For example, half of Google’s services are filtered for Iranian users!
So using a proxy app in Iran is very common.

7. Managing yourself as a freelancer

Most freelancers cannot or do not manage their time, budget and income and relationships.
About the time, they work one some projects more than required work and don’t have time for other projects that are in need of attention.

They spend all the money that they receive from projects and till the next project, they have no money to spend for their life. 

8. Don’t get understood 

Most freelancers in Iran don’t get understood by their partners or families. It is common for some freelancers that some months they don’t have much money and some others they have decent amount. But their families and business partners want regular amount of money each month.

9. Lack of enough profession

Some freelancers learn a special job and do some business with it and think that this skill will be enough for them for the rest of their life.

But they should know that everyday new freelancers come into the market with multiple skills and that jeopardize their future life.

Also with the pace of technology and advent of new systems, you have to be able to update yourself otherwise you will be out of the circle.

10. Lack of proper infrastructure for freelancers

As I mentioned above, most valuable websites that share common knowledge are filtered in Iran (Youtube, facebook , quora for example). So sometimes it is difficult to contact people worldwide and see what they are doing and get their jobs.
 
Also the internet quality and speed is not suitable for those who work with computers.
So you see that being a freelancer in Iran is not that easy but is a good way to fulfill your dreams if you learn International marketing.