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UK’S SELF-EMPLOYED IN 2020

British IPSE has just published The Self-Employed Landscape in 2020 report. As usual, it defines freelancers as the top-skilled subset of the solo self-employed population:

“There are now almost 2.2 million freelancers in the UK, up 1% from 2019. Of these, over 1.9 million state that freelancing is their main job, with a further 239,000 people doing freelancing as a side hustle alongside other employment. Due to the small increase in freelancers between 2019 and 2020 and the larger drop in the overall solo self-employed population (-5%), the number of freelancers as a proportion of wider population has increased by 3% from 46% to 49%. Therefore, highly skilled freelancers now make up almost half of the 4.4 million solo self-employed in the UK.“

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GOOGLE TRENDS: FREELANCING

2020 has been an overwhelmingly eventful year for freelancing. According to Google Trends, it has also been trending in global Google search, reaching an all-time high in July.

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UNIVERSITIES & FREELANCING

Dan Sacha has researched the websites of 150+ leading European universities to produce an overview of a dozen programs, both older and new, seeking to support freelancing. These are the highlights:

• From student ID to business ID (Od UCO k ICO, Masaryk University in Brno) has launched on October 5, 2020, in collaboration with Freelancing.eu’s Robert Vlach as the first general full-semester university course on freelancing in Czechia, and probably in wider Europe.
• Your future in freelancing semestrial course by UWE Bristol (UK) has launched 10 days later (on October 15, 2020), and it is quite similar in scope.
• United Kingdom — Freelance February (annual lecture series at De Montfort University Leicester), Freelance boot camp (annual event by the University of Southampton), Freelance and business advice (ongoing event series at University of the Arts London), Introduction to freelancing (workshop at the University of Kent, with IPSE), Thinking about becoming a creative freelancer? (lecture at Lancaster University), Practical advice for freelancers (debate at The University of Edinburgh), How to be a great freelancer (upcoming series at Nottingham Trent University), Freelance and feature writing (media-oriented public course at The London School of Journalism) + in February 2024, Matthew Dowling published summary on what UK universities do to support student freelancers (namely at University of Plymouth, The University of East London, The University of Essex, Sheffield Hallam University, and University of the Arts London)
• Germany — Freelancing: best practices for beginners (Freiberuflich arbeiten: Basiswissen für den Start, workshop at Freie Universitat Berlin), Freelance work in humanities, social and cultural-science professions (Freiberuflich arbeiten in Berufen der Geistes-, Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften, online workshop at Technische Universitat Dresden)
• Spain — Product management and communication projects (Gestión de productos y proyectos de comunicación, media-oriented course at Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona), Marketplaces for freelance services (Marketplaces de Servicios Freelance, an open course at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)
• France — 021 (conference at Université de Bordeaux)
• Sweden — Freelancing and business within media production (Frilans och företag inom medieproduktion, media-oriented course at Lulea Tekniska Universitet)
• Finland — Art, life & entrepreneurship (arts-oriented course at Aalto University)

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STATE OF INDEPENDENCE 2020

Wondering what the real freelancing trends are? One of the best answers to this question has always been provided by MBO Partners State of Independence annual surveys. To celebrate their 10th anniversary, the newly released 2020 report presents the 10 major changes over the last decade, as well as 5 growing US freelance trends for years to come:

1. Technology continues to enable and empower independent workers while also making it easier to start and operate an independent business.
2. Using independent workers improves business flexibility and agility for employers.
3. Workers increasingly want the autonomy, control, and flexibility independent work provides.
4. The need for many workers to generate supplemental income continues to grow due to stagnant wages, fewer middle-wage jobs, and increasing costs.
5. A growing support infrastructure of products, services, and programs makes it easier, cheaper, and less risky to become independent.

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THE FUTURE FREELANCE MARKETPLACE

“95% of freelance work comes through relationships and reputations, rather than digital pipes,“ writes a freelancing expert Jon Younger in his latest Forbes article about The Future Freelance Marketplace. He also includes 7 themes for the best future platforms:

1. Letting go of hub and spokes.
2. Treating talent as an asset, not as inventory.
3. Welcoming more kinds of freelancer relationships.
4. Providing more freelancer help and guidance in managing their business.
5. Defining and sharing best practice across the platform.
6. Becoming an innovation center.
7. Investing in client education.

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GET READY FOR BREXIT

With the no-deal Brexit scenario looming over Europe, British IPSE published a simple summary of How freelancers and contractors can get ready for Brexit. If you operate across the UK/EU border, this is essential reading — albeit full of WTF-moments. For example: “If you have [as a UK freelancer] used a .eu domain name to supply services in the EU, this will no longer be usable after December.” 🤯

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“ULTIMATE GUIDE TO BEING A FREELANCER”

Ultimate Guide to Being a Freelancer is a free kickstart guide. Take it with a grain of salt, though. Besides useful advice, it also contains some factual errors like claiming that “75% of freelancers find work through online platforms”, while other more reliable sources estimate that number to be as low as 5%. Ouch!

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HEADLIME: AI COPYWRITING

Headlime is a new AI-powered copywriting tool able to generate marketing texts in 11 languages. It is based on hundreds of copy templates and the famous GPT-3 deep-learning model developed by OpenAI. The question is: Will such AI tools put some less-skilled copywriters out of (freelance) business? 🤔

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BOB DYLAN SELLS RIGHTS TO ALL HIS SONGS

Bob Dylan sells rights to all his songs to Universal Music Group for an undisclosed sum estimated as high as $450 million, BBC reports. It is supposed to be one of the best deals ever made by any independent artist. 79-year-old Dylan released his latest album in June.

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TOP DOG: UPWORK OR FIVERR?

Investing in the Gig Economy was a topic of a recent Motley Fool Industry Focus podcast, debating mostly the two contenders for the top dog position among global freelance platforms — the current market leader Upwork and its rising rival Fiverr. According to podcast hosts, the growth opportunity for both is still huge: “Fiverr … thinks less than 5% of freelancers are hired through online channels like Fiverr and Upwork.”

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