Five Reasons to Use an Online Freelancer

So you’re probably thinking, “why would I need to hire a freelancer when I can just do it myself?” The answer is simple because we oftentimes fail when attempting to do tasks that we just aren’t skilled enough to take on.

Hence, the convenience, and often affordable nature of online freelancers.

They can be used to take on even the most simple task, giving you more time to focus on the business side of things rather than managing a website-building project, writing ad copy and being an accountant.

In the end, you are left with more time to manage all the other aspects of your business and do so efficiently.

This is why online freelance marketplaces offer great solutions to most small business problems. Need a short or long-term social media expert? You can take to an online freelancer marketplace and search for just that.

If you’re still on the fence about the benefits of hiring a freelancer, here’s five rock-solid reasons you should use one to help your business grow.

A New Perspective

First thing’s first, you’ve likely been doing this for a while, and you probably have ideas which are great and should, therefore, be respected.

But have you ever considered that your ideas might benefit from a facelift? A refresh, if you will.

This is where hiring a freelancer and having their new perspective on your product, website, etc. comes into play. Freelancers come from a wide variety of backgrounds and usually possess a wealth of knowledge that spans far beyond the services they offer.

Let’s say you own a financial consulting business and want to not only take steps toward improving your company’s SEO but its website copy as well. So, you do some research on Fiverr, Toptal, UpWork or other popular freelance marketplaces to hire someone to produce the copy.

In order to ensure quality, you should check to see which copywriters have been given high ratings, and look for one who has a background in the financial sector. This is not a far-fetched possibility and would mean he/she could provide tons of additional insight to the copy that readers could directly benefit from.

Project Management

One of the biggest headaches when heading up a project is the constant management of each intricate detail. This can be especially difficult when you have plate-full of excessive amounts of responsibility paired with a large portion of lack of sleep.

By enlisting the help of a freelancer, you will be able to free up time to focus more on the aspects of your business that need some extra TLC, as well as the aspects you are best at managing. In the end, you leave those that you are less experienced in, for a freelancer.

This could be any number of things, and here’s an abbreviated list we’ve compiled with a few:

Product Development
Market Analysis
Payroll
Accounting
Increasing Workplace Morale

In general, there are countless moving parts involved in project management that you constantly have to worry about, things such as time and employee management, moving the project along, and ultimately seeing it through to its completion.

With a freelancer, you can not only improve efficiency, but you will likely be more satisfied with the final outcome. Plus, you want to leave certain things to those trained in the art of doing them well.

After all, you’d never trust copywriter to make your soufflé at a five-star restaurant, when you’re really expecting a celebrity chef.

Lastly, and one of the most inherent benefits of hiring a freelancer is that it can even help you achieve much-needed work-life balance, therefore enabling you to spend more time with those you love most.

Turnaround Time

If you have a small project, or even a large one, you have to consider your budget. Week-long, month-long, and even long-term projects should always have a set, and realistic budget that you should aim to go under if at all possible.

This is not to say that freelancers should not be compensated accordingly for their time and experience, but you should understand that this is their livelihood and they are likely working on additional projects.

Freelancers usually have a tremendous amount of respect for deadlines, which is especially imperative if their portion is a smaller part of a larger project. There is also a mutual understanding that if the project goes well, they will be considered for future projects, and probably receive a glowing review/recommendation to friends and other business owners.

In regards to accountability and overall turnaround time, when using an online freelancer marketplace, they not only answer to you, but the marketplace as well.

If they fail to produce work on time, they will receive bad reviews. This alone has the potential to reduce demand for their work and could be grounds for being removed from the platform due to habitual offenses.

Fiverr issues custom notifications, and gives users access to messaging (for easy near-instant communication with sellers).

The real beauty of using an online freelancer is that you can connect with anyone around the world. If time is of the essence, you can connect with someone in a different timezone, opposite of yours. They are then left to perform the tasks while you’re asleep to meet your crushing deadline for potential next-day delivery.

Some freelance marketplaces (if not all) charge extra for faster delivery, so it is recommended to check the terms and conditions of your seller, of the marketplace and to go into it knowing that you will likely have to pay more for expedited delivery, especially next-day.

You’ll Actually Learn A Lot

With millions of freelancers around the world, they hold a near-infinite amount of knowledge over a wide spectrum of industries. If you take to a freelance aggregator network, you will be surprised how specific people’s service offerings are.

For instance, on you can find someone who is an expert in fundraising, design, developing JavaScript (and other forms of development). Sites like Toptal offer a large selection of talent to chose from and offer pretty ballsy money-back guarantees.

After just two weeks, if you’re not satisfied with the service, you qualify to have the service for free, according to its website.

You can also learn a heap of information, just by asking questions, and in many cases learn expert methods on how to improve the overall efficiency of tasks.

If you ask questions (but be sure not to be annoying), you will also find that skilled freelancers are more than willing to share their breadth of knowledge with you. This alone can help you improve things such as:

Content writing
Social Media Marketing
SEO
Affiliate Marketing
Time Management

You can see the diversity in Toptal’s services and its pool of freelancers.

Budget Control

As you may know, overhead is one of the largest costs for business owners and can include everything from renting or owning a physical space, to paying a monthly salary to your employees.

What if you could achieve the same goal each time you had a one-off or even a long-term project to be completed?

You can — and you also won’t have to factor in health insurance, workstations, vacation days, workers’ comp and a number of other very expensive variables.

With skilled freelancers, however, you merely have to factor in the bottom line, that is — how much the project will cost to complete. If the answer is, less than a full-time employee, or any variant of this, the choice is clear.

Final Thoughts

Running a company is stressful. That is a fact. What is also a fact, is that the main goal of a company is to be the best it can be and make a profit simultaneously.

Regarding freelancers, 34 percent of the working population actually considers themselves to be freelancers. So think of it this way, by employing a freelancer, you’d also be doing your part in keeping a growing and thriving industry afloat.

They can help reduce time spent on paperwork, time spent making revisions and one of the major pluses as stated earlier, is decreasing your overall overhead to inevitably increase profit and begin to see a measurable return on investment (ROI).