Why I am starting this website (Solo Career Path)?
Start your solo freelancing business and grow it with us. I will share my experience of finding clients, building relationships, remote work, pricing, taxes and life around it.
Before I tell you the reason to start this website, let me show you the career path of a software developer graduated in 2016.
- Remote Internship (April 2015 - July 2015)
- Remote Software Developer (August 2015 - December 2016)
- Remote Independent Contractor (January 2017 - January 2020)
- Started Software Consulting company - Remote Inning LLP (February 2020 - present)
I am sure you notice two common words - Remote and Contractor. A software developer who has worked remotely from Day 1 of his career. Who also worked as an Independent contractor. Seems like a strange career path. Who is this person?
It's me. My name is Parbhat Puri. It is my solo career path. I am starting this website to share my experience as a Remote Independent contractor from India. When I joined my college in 2012, I never thought about this career path. As a young 18 year old searching for a college, I was asking questions like
In the 6th semester, one of my batchmates got an Internship in Europe. I was applying for Internships in India but did not think of sending applications to companies outside India. I started sending applications. One company replied to my email then we had a call. The founder said we can not apply for your visa but can offer you a Remote Internship. I was new to Remote work at that time. I googled about this way of working. Finally, I decided to give it a shot.
In the 4th year of my B. tech, I did not participate in the campus placements. I was working remotely with the company for a year. My earnings were more than the packages given by the MNCs like TCS. After a year of working remotely as an intern and developer, I got the confidence to do something remotely. The flexibility of location, learning, earning in $ (USD) and work culture was a big motivator.
Why did I decide to be a remote contractor and not a remote employee?
In 2016 remote jobs were not widely available. After Covid everyone came to know about remote work and work from home. In my search, I found the number of companies hiring remote contractors was way higher than the number of jobs. Legally it is easier for US/overseas companies to hire developers on contract than payroll from India. I started working as an Independent Contractor. I liked the flexibility to choose my working hours, location, clients and projects. I can also work with multiple clients at the same time.
In 2023, I still believe the number of remote opportunities for contractors are higher than for remote employees. After getting started, I did not turn back. I worked with clients from the USA, Canada, Italy, Latvia, Trinidad and the UK. I have earned ~$3,00,000 on Upwork and increased my hourly rate from $12.5/hr to $80/hr. Not active on Upwork nowadays as the platform has changed a lot today. I will be writing a separate post for it. Currently, most of my clients are direct.
Why I am starting this site - Solo Career Path?
If you are still here, thanks for listening to my journey. As the career path was not normal, I faced many challenges and questions. I was not able to find answers on the web. Most of the content online was for contractors based in US/Europe.
We are a diverse country and our needs are different from the rest of the world.
I mentioned this line in my old blog post. I tried different things and had to figure out answers to my questions myself. Some examples are
- What should be my hourly rate?
- How should I increase my hourly rate?
- How to get payments from clients? Which payment method is best? How to get better USD to INR rates from the bank?
- How to identify bad clients?
- How to get retainer contracts instead of hourly?
- I got the payments. How much tax should I pay? Should I open a company? GST? Advance tax? TDS? health insurance?
and many more.
I am starting this site to take you through the journey of an Independent Contractor. I will discuss the benefits and also challenges that come with it. So you will not feel alone in your Solo career journey. You may be trying the contracting path along with your job OR can be a full-time contractor already. I will be posting articles on this site so you can subscribe to get notified about new posts. There will also be guest posts from other contractors. Are you ready to join the community?
Thanks for reading till the end.