Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting someone who has more time to spare than I do, but who also has a higher income each year than I do. He worked from home, and I had to slouch in to the office at 9am each day, battling the daily traffic, and breathing in all those nasty fumes outside. He spent quite a bit of time with his kids, much more than I would have the time available to spare. He seemed to have everything that he wanted, and yet here I was - working and working, and really only being able to pay off the bills each month.

What was his secret? I'm sure you are keenly on the edge of your chair waiting to find out. Well, I hate to let you down, but I won't be providing some magical money making system in this article. Nor will I be telling you the industry that you should work in. In fact, the secret is not really that much of a secret at all. It is freelancing.

Huh? What on earth is that? Well, a freelancer is someone who works in their own time, on their own projects, and works generally from wherever they want. They take on projects when they need them, and basically contract out their services, one project at a time (sometimes multiple freelance projects at once). I can speak from experience in this area now, because since I met that guy not so long ago, I have become attached to the freelancing industry just as he did.

So you may be wondering - how popular is this type of employment? Well, let me give you a few interesting statistics. In the United States, over ten million people are considered to be freelancers. These statistics actually count people who tag themselves as "contractors" as freelancers - and when you think about it, they are totally correct in doing so. This is just another name for someone who finds a freelance project, and pursues it in their own time, or negotiates their own contract terms. If we convert that into percentage terms, it's about 7.3% of the USA workforce, Impressive.

So why the popularity? Doesn't everyone crave employment security in this uncertain day and age? Well, not necessarily. Freelancers have the advantage of working on a wide variety of assignments. They are not bound to one task day in and day out - in the hope that one day they will receive a promotion and go from photocopy machine operator to office assistant. They thrive on the feeling of being free to do exactly what they want, when they want. Maybe that is why in a recent study, employers who handed out freelance jobs to freelancers found that those jobs were done with more passion, commitment and vigour, than would have been seen from the regular 9 to 5 employees. It seems that this way of life certainly can provide amazing benefits to those who truly get in to the freelancing way of life.

Are you interested? A simple Internet search is all you need to do to get started.