Struggles of a new Indian freelancer
By: Ranveer Mohite
Tags: Writer, Freelancing, Indian, Monetization, Freelance

Photo by Dewang Gupta on Unsplash

I’m a freelance writer from India. It wasn’t until the pandemic forced me to become a writing freelancer. Even though I need to write a lot for chess, which is my field of expertise, I never really considered getting into writing.

However, the pandemic changed everything…

In this article, I want to share common struggles which new Indian freelancers are facing with. If you’re looking to hire a new Indian freelancer or or you are freelancer yourself, I encourage you to read this.

Native English Speaker

A lot of people will relate to this. I spent my entire school life talking, writing and breathing English. That was the only language I spoke at school. At home we speak our mother tounge, Marathi. Hindi is another language one picks up as habit in India.

The problem is, I don’t know if that qualifies me as a native speaker of any language. In fact, I didn’t even study the grammatical rules of my mother tounge, Marathi.

And Hindi? Well I studied the grammar but I don’t speak the language much. So I can’t really be called a native Hindi speaker either.

So whenever a client asks me if I am a native English speaker, I’m in a dilemma. Yes I can speak, write and hold a conversation easily with a native English speaker. But English isn’t what I speak at home or in most places in India? So even I’m confused if I’m a native or not?

Before you dismiss any Indian freelancer for not being a native speaker, think again. They could’ve spent their entire lives studying English and they still struggle to answer this question — Are they native English speakers or not?

In reality, most of them would describes themselves as multi-lingual. And a lot of them can speak English as fluently as a native speaker would.

Bad Reputation

India is a huge country. It has over a million people, even in my city. And almost everybody can understand and speak English. Since jobs are scarce and pay in pennies, Indians will do anything to get work.

They’ll spam inboxes asking for work and most them won’t even have good conversational skills or etiquettes to start a conversation. Another thing is that they may spam you with links. All of this has led to Indian freelancers having a bad reputation.

And because of the poor reputation, most new Indian freelancers struggle. I’m not talking about well-established freelancers here, but the new ones. The ones who can write and speak well and have the etiquette to hold a conversation.

No Medium Monetization

For any Indian freelancer, it isn’t possible to monetize their medium account. Medium had allowed Indians writers to monetize their account but stopped it again during the mid 2020.

In a way, it’s a good thing and a bad thing as well.

If majority of Indians find out that one can make money writing on medium, the quality of Medium articles is going to fall. Yes, I’m an Indian and I know what I am talking about.

You see, it’s not very difficult for Indian people to gather views(remember, just my city alone has over a million people in it). We have a distinct advantage when it comes to population. Also we love making extra penny by doing a ‘jugaad’ — an unconventional way of fixing things and getting work done. As a result, anyone will pop up on the platform, share it with their vast network and look to monetize.

But the genuine Indian writers, who have great ideas to pen down, are going to suffer. I haven’t met most of them but I’m pretty sure they are reading this article & understand what I’m saying here.

These people have great ideas, the skill to write but unlike people from other countries, it’s not possible for them to monetize their Medium account. And that is the real problem.

Blaming Medium for not giving us the option to monetize, may look like a problem. But I don’t think it is. Even though there are other reasons why Medium isn’t paying Indian writers, consider this -

If my neighbor who barely speaks English, finds out about Medium monetization, he’ll immediately jump on the train. That I’m sure. And that’s not something which will add value to the quality of articles on Medium.

On Medium, some publications require you to have your story behind a metered paywall. As an Indian writer on Medium, that’s an impossible thing to do.

In the end, the good writers from India have a huge disadvantage compared to their western counterparts when it comes to Medium monetization.

Societal Pressure

Most Indians are encouraged to grab a job first and think about business later. Freelancing is still an unknown concept in some Indian societies. We are born to study, go abroad and take a job. If not you can settle in a stable job in India. In some communities people are encouraged to start a business. But rarely are we encouraged to become freelancers.

Since Indian job market is a hyper-competitive space, I understand why our society wants us to settle down and discourages anything involving risk. Because of this, a lot of Indian freelancers have problems in either letting go of their job or starting out as a freelancer.

Most new freelancers have to face this pressure on a daily basis. Often times when the societal pressure builds up, a lot of them are forced to let go of freelancing and settle in a job.

Content Mill Rates

Since India is a hyper competitive space, most Indian freelancers are willing to cut their rates just to get work. As a result, you’ll find a lot of people doing more work and charge less than their worth.

Most Indian writers will do work to be paid in pennies. A lot of Indian employers or clients know this and they often look to get work done at less. Let’s not talk here about work scams in India. People are offering pennies to genuinely talented Indian freelancers.

On the bright side, there are Indian clients(or employers) who’ll pay you a fair price for the work you do. Such people do exist. Don’t let a few scams taint your view about Indian clients. However, it’s very difficult to find such clients.

In the end, I think it all comes down to believing in yourself and your worth. You attract the people you are like. If you believe you are more than a penny’s worth, you’ll find those people.

Payment Integrations

This one is a big headache. The problem is if you don’t have an approved Paypal account as an Indian freelancer, expect to get ripped off if you want to transfer foreign currency to your Indian bank account.

You can go for wire transfer but expect the client to cut charges. Also it doesn’t make sense for the client to send you small amount as wire transfer. For larger amounts, wire transfer is fine.

With services like Paypal, Payoneer it is easier to get paid faster. The approval process takes time though and these companies have little human resource to deal with so many approval requests.

Without them, transferring currency is be a problem. I know people in my country who charge a ridiculous 50% rate for transferring money to your account through their Paypal account. It’s like you can’t do without them. In such cases, it’s better to have friends who have an active Paypal account. Maybe a really close friend who can do it for you for free.

But the problem is your friend will always know what you are doing, how much you are earning etc. Also sometimes, the transaction maybe flagged by Paypal if the payment is for someone else and being received on someone else’s account.