As a home-based professional who does freelance work online, I am very much interested in how other online freelance workers are doing in the down economy. Today, I took a look at a report on online freelance work which was put out by Elance, a web site where freelance professionals of all kinds can bid on and work on jobs for clients around the world. The report focuses on what has been happening for online freelancers during the second quarter of fiscal year 2011. I am happy to say that things look good for online workers across the broad spectrum of freelance work that they do.
Despite the sluggish economy, online freelance workers are still doing well. During the second quarter, the approximately four hundred and fifty thousand active contractors who use Elance earned a total of over 34 million dollars. Those are some huge numbers, and some encouraging numbers. I can only imagine what the totals would be for all freelance online workers on all freelance web sites combined.
As a writer, I was pleased to see that the demand for high quality web content and blog posts is still high. It is always nice to know that there is a good amount of demand for one’s services, after all. Graphic artists and photographers may be interested in knowing that demand for their work is also on the rise. Programmers are in demand too, as they have been for some time. Hot areas for programmers right now are ecommerce and Android/iPhone apps.
The online work report has a lot of encouraging numbers, but it also includes some fun facts too. For example, did you know that California has the highest number of businesses hiring online workers? Texas and New York are also near the top of that list. Another fun fact is that if all of us who work on Elance were to drive to our jobs, our average commute would be 1,167 miles. Thank goodness my actual commute is only as far as the kitchen table, where my laptop is located.
Photo by cohdra on morguefile.com.