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Towards the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017, 75 Pinoy freelancers participated in our survey:
I would like to thank everyone who participated - you're an asset to the community and we need more people like you.
On to the results!
NOTE: Some of the results in this study were omitted due for accuracy purposes.
One of the top questions when it comes to freelancing is:
We created several categories for this question:
On average, freelancers earn P39,000 - which is comfortable living for most people.
56% of all freelancers were still earning below P30,000/mo. This shows that there's still a big opportunity for newbie freelancers to grow and expand their skills.
If you're an existing freelancer with at least 6 months experience who wants to earn P100,000/mo, I'm working on a new course: Become a P100k/mo Freelancer. Sign-up HERE to get notified when it's ready.
Based on this survey, most people scored between 7-10 in their "Satisfcation with earnings question"
These results are interesting when we see the next chart:
It seems like Happiness and amount of earnings didn't necessarily go hand in hand.
On average, Pinoy Freelancers worked 32 hours per week. If we relate that with the average earnings of P39,000/mo, that translates to $6.14/hr.
While there is a direct correlation between earnings and hours worked, those that earn more than P100,000 work slightly less than those that earn between P30,000 and P50,000.
This means that those that are earning more than P100,000/mo are mostly doing so by charging higher rates rather than working more hours.
In the Philippines, Females beat Males 3:1 in freelancing.
However, if we look at the earnings per gender.
We see that Males dominate both the lower earnings bracket and the highest earnings bracket, with not a lot of males in the middle brackets.
The number of Females, on the other hand, consistently decrease as earnings increase.
One of the top earnings factors people point out is years of experience.
Based on the chart above, that is mostly true, with most top earnings having at least 5 years of experience.
However, we do see that there are a good number of freelancers who earn P50,000 and above with less than 2 years of experience (and even some who earn more than P100,000/mo). This shows that experience is not the only determinant of earnings.
While there is a lot of frustration with Upwork, the majority (56%) of freelancers still wind work primarily through Upwork. 17% find work through onlinejobs.ph, and 14% through referrals.
If you're having trouble with Upwork, try checking our FREE Course: The 5 Reasons You're Failing on Upwork HERE
Most Filipinos (54%) primarily work as Virtual Assistants or do admin work, followed by 13% who do writing, and 10% who do customer service jobs. The bulk of the remaining ~20% are primarily marketers and designers.
The earnings for each industry also correlate with our total earnings findings.
The lowest earners are those who primarily do Admin and Customer Service work, which are the majority of freelancers.
TIP: Admin and Customer Service are still the easiest areas to enter and learn. You can always change industries later on once you get some experience in Admin/Customer Service. That's what I did, and what most top-earning freelancers did. If you want to learn how you can get started working form home as a VA, you can take this FREE Course HERE.
69% of freelancers stated their favorite benefit of freelancing was related to time, 20% related to money, and 9% to control
Freelancers found that time management, instability, and loneliness their top downsides of freelancing.
There is still a massive opportunity for freelancing in the Philippines.
Both for newbie freelancers to learn skills and existing freelancers to grow their earnings by enhancing their skills and improving their sales methods.
