Congratulations, you’ve started your blog. You’ve taken your first step towards gathering followers and perhaps even making money from home.
Maybe you’ve been working on your blog for a while now, but you’ve gone about as far as you can on your own. Either way, you’re going to have to bring others onboard at some point.
Read – How to Survive and Succeed as a Freelancer with Kids
The question is what kind of people should you be looking for? Is hiring a freelance contractor a good idea, or is it better to go with someone else? We’ll answer this question and more in the paragraphs below.
#1. What is a Freelance Contractor?
Before getting into whether or not you should hire them, we’ll explain what a freelance contractor is. A freelance contractor is an employee who is hired to perform a job for a specified period of time.
This type of employee is a good fit for the self-employed, like writers, programmers or web designers. Oftentimes, these people need temporary help completing a project or generating content.
The issue is that bringing on an extra employee is that you can’t guarantee that you’ll need them when the project is completed. Since freelance contractors are hired on a temporary basis, they don’t plan to stick around after the job is done.
Contractors also tend to be specialists, so they’ll know how to do the job they were hired for.
#2. Freelancer
The self-employed world can be difficult to navigate, and making a mistake can cause serious problems. You may even be violating employment law if you’re not careful.
Believe it or not, contractors and freelancers are not necessarily the same thing.
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The differences between the two are often subtle but can be important. The biggest difference is that a freelancer doesn’t work as long as a contractor. While a contractor signs up to complete a project or work for an extended period, freelancers often perform simpler tasks that don’t take as much time.
For instance, a freelance writer can be hired to write a few articles or blog posts and may get the whole thing done in a few days. Freelancers can also differ from independent contractors in how they work.
This makes the term ‘freelance contractor’ a lot more confusing. This is just a synonym for a contractor. The freelance part is largely redundant.
The Rules of the Game
For an independent contractor, the key word is independent. They don’t work for an agency.
They’re the ones who are responsible for selecting what jobs they take, what hours they work, and how their jobs are done. They also file a 1099, meaning that they pay their own employment taxes. The term 1099 is so prevalent that it’s become slang to refer to the self-employed.
Freelancers can fall under this category, but don’t have to. Some of them work for agencies, meaning that the agency bosses may be dealing with work conditions and pay rates, among other things. Those working for agencies may have set hours, which means that you might have to pay overtime.
This is also true for the contractor. An independent contractor is someone who is self-employed, while a contractor can refer to the self-employed or those working for an agency.
When Should You Hire a Freelance Contractor?
Whether or not a freelance contractor is right for you depends on what you need done. Contractors work for longer periods of time and often complete bigger projects. However, they also set their own hours and pay rates and you don’t have any input on how the job is done.
Freelancers often work for shorter periods of time and on smaller projects. Both freelancers and contractors can be independent, but they aren’t always. If somebody is not self-employed, you’ll need to know, because that changes the wage and tax laws.
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