Opportunities for Freelance Workers to “Feel in an Office”

One of the main reasons people become freelance workers is to somehow get out of the office life. However, many soon find out that being in an office, surrounded by co-workers is actually much better for them in terms of motivation, effectiveness, and productivity. However, there is also a case of “I’m my own boss” for a freelancer that can’t really be ignored when we first get a taste of it.

For most freelancers, the perfect place to work is either their home or a coffee shop nearby. However, home can get quite lonely, while the coffee shop can get very expensive and loud at peak hours. Therefore, freelancers are sometimes feeling themselves lost in this limbo of wanting peace and quiet, while also wanting to socialise with nearby people of the same expertise.

The popular alternative

Well, it turns out that there are places like these popping up all over the world as travelling freelancers are a more and more common sight in cities. In most cases, these places take the form of co-working spaces where a small company or an individual can just sit down, work, have all the luxuries that an office would provide but also not be tied down by a contract to that place or anything of the sorts.

It’s basically like having a job in a big company while not being coworkers with anyone and nobody gives you orders what to do.

Unfortunately though, even though co-working spaces do provide all the comforts of an office like people to talk to nearby and everything, it doesn’t really provide a direct way of improving one’s skills.

Sure a co-working space may house copywriters, marketing experts, and developers that can maybe work on a project together, but it very rarely houses people of the same profession. This kind of removes the opportunity for many to learn from each other and benefit together, or maybe even build a project they’re both comfortable with. Well, turns out that is also being taken care of.

Niche gatherings

Niche gatherings or hotspots have already been around for a long time, but it was usually for contests or small events. People are now making special co-working space-type places that only house 1 profession. For example, a place could only house developers or copywriters or etc. This way the people inside these offices can connect much better due to having the same interests and line of work, thus making cooperation much easier. Let’s take a look at some options.

Trading cafés

A trading café is a special place for anybody interested in speculating in the financial markets. This place usually has people like stock traders, forex traders, crypto traders, and pretty much any other trader you can imagine.

Yes, it may be surprising since we’re used to seeing traders watch multiple screens at a time and trade like that, but who says they can’t bring those screens? Most people, however, prefer to get comfy on the sofa with a laptop or a tablet. Then they would conduct something called live trading. If you follow this link you’ll easily find out what live trading is especially in the forex sense.

With a huge gathering of traders together, they can very easily share the fruits of their analysis or research with other traders and trade a specific asset together. It’s not like anybody loses as well, most people will not affect the markets too much with their trades. Basically it provides a lot of like-minded people thinking about the same prospects in the markets and acting on it.

Hackathons

Hackathons may look like a temporary gathering of developers to create a very simple program in a short period of time, but some of them could continue for months on end. In some cases, these hackathons could take the shape of a developer-only office of some sort. This helps with gathering developers versed in different coding languages. For example, a hackathon like this could gather web developers, back-end developers, mobile developers, etc. Overall, a whole team to develop a project or to help each other with personal ones.

Overall, it’s a win-win situation for most of these people gathering here and being able to branch out and learn a lot more things from each other.

Are these places profitable?

In order to find out about the profitability of gathering places like these, we need to take a look at the profitability of co-working spaces. To be honest, it’s not likely for the profit to be quite as large as we think. For example, WeWork managed to completely collapse financially while only a few coworking brands managed to stay alive especially during COVID-19.

These profession-specific co-working spaces may work though, as there is an extra incentive for people to join as not only do they get the comfort of both freelance and office work, but also a supply of new information from their peers.