Imagine a job where you yourself decide when and how long you will work. Where you don't have to wake up early in the morning and rush through the tiring traffic jam to reach office within the stipulated time and where there is no boss breathing down your neck all the time. Add to that, a great salary. This isn't wishful thinking, but now a possible reality.
The mighty internet has once again shown its worth in bridging the gap between employer and employee, living seas apart. Today, with the help of the internet, a person residing in Bangladesh can work for companies all over the world virtually as if he were physically there, a phenomenon that is termed as Outsourcing or Freelancing.
Freelancers in Bangladesh today are earning thousands of dollars from the comfort of their own homes. Faisal Farrukh, a Dhaka-based freelancer looked to freelancing simply to explore and develop his own creativity. Today, he is providing back-end support, virtual assistance-ship and content development to numerous foreign companies, and now, it is more than just a hobby for him. With the amount money he makes, why would he need a nine-to-five job? “There are numerous companies out there in need of labour at low cost and less time”, he says, “These companies or 'contractors' , who, maybe, are short of time to look for a real assistant, may prefer to employ a virtual assistant who can manage their workload for them within the stipulated time. This is where freelancers come in. Still others may need freelance writers (or content developers) to write up a press-release for them. The possibilities are unlimited”.
For many, the idea seems far-fetched. The idea of something so simple and easy is sometimes difficult to digest. Many believe that one has to be super-qualified for this. However, there are a multitude of projects, which do not always require a Computer Science graduate. Shahriar Jahan, who was awarded as a freelancer at the recently concluded BASIS SoftExpo, began freelancing doing data entry jobs, but is now expanding his horizon by taking up other projects like web research, marketing and search engine optimization. He urges beginners to not use these projects for testing. “Unless you are sure you are up for it and have the time for it, you should not promise your services. Since, these are real companies, with real needs. Doing so can cause them a lot of hassle”.
It is a well known fact in Bangladesh, that if one is to do big things in life, he or she has to come to Dhaka, the Metropolitan city of dreams. If more Bangladeshis took to freelancing, the population pressure over Dhaka would also reduce. Shabbir Hossain, winner of the BASIS Award, is based in Rangpur and has been freelancing since Grade 9. Today, his workload has expanded so much, that he is working with six others.
After passing his Honors, five years ago, Enayet Husain Rajib started looking for work online, when he stumbled across the website scriptance.com. “There are numerous more such websites, such as www.odesk.com and www.freelancer.com. I started my job with less pay, but tried to do more and more projects, just so that my ratings on the site increased. Sometimes I even worked for free. But soon enough, as predicted, once the number of projects done in my portfolio increased, I got bigger projects and higher pay. In all, I needed about a year to get established”.
But many are skeptic about the reliability of these companies. What if I don't get paid for my hard work? “The solution to this,” explains Enayat Husain, “is the escrow system. The way escrow works is it puts money in a placeholder which is not accessible to the freelancer. This allows the freelancer to know that his contractor has the cash needed to start the project. Once money is placed in escrow the contractor is unable to cancel the escrow money or retrieve his money. Then, the contractor will only have the option to release the money to the freelancer while the freelancer will only have the option to cancel the escrow, thus returning the money to the contractor. This shared responsibility protects both parties from being ripped off.” Enayat Husain works on web application development and modification projects using PHP, Joomla, etc.
Mohd. Solaiman, a graphic designer, uses his artistic skills in designing web-pages and doing 2D and 3D animations, using Flash, Corel Draw, etc. “There is a lot of scope in this field”, he says, “However, time is very important. Failure to make the delivery on time will cause the country to suffer a bad reputation. Earlier, Indian freelancers were preferred, however, now, one can find numerous job projects that mention 'Filipinos only'. Bangladeshis should create such a name that someday, the words 'Bangladeshis only' can be seen on these websites”.
The main barrier that most Bangladeshi freelancers face is in the mode of payment. Due to the absence of Paypal system in Bangladesh, it sometimes becomes a hassle for the freelancers to get their payment, as they have to depend on relatives living abroad or have to go through complex procedures for their rightful earning.
However, barring the slight inconvenience, this is also a great way for qualified women who stay at home to develop their skills and earn some money too. Be it website content for a tourism website, proof-reading, creating a PowerPoint presentation to excel sheet data entry, the possibilities are unlimited.
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