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What are the demographics of people that buy freelance services?



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What are the demographics of people that buy freelance services?

Do you ever wonder just how big the freelance industry is?

Do you know of any up to date infographics, sites or blogs that share any info on the freelance industry such as which age group are most likely to use a freelancer or which age group of people are most like to be a freelancer?

Or which country has the most amount of freelancers in it, India, Pakistan and other eastern countries. Or is it America and Europe and other western countries? Does anyone know where I can find out information like that?

I done some digging around. And according to this post, there are 53 million people doing freelance work in the US – 34% of the national workforce. It goes on to say that freelancers contribute an estimated $715 billion in revenue to the economy.

That's insane!

It also goes on to say that there are approximately 1.4 million British freelancers working across all sectors which has grown 14% in the past 10 years and the whole UK freelance industry is worth around £21 billion. Hey we're only an island compared to the US!

That post states some shocking statistics on the freelance industry. But nothing is said about the demographics on the age groups. I'd like to know what the age groups of freelancers is and which age group has the most freelancers.

What I'm trying to find out is whether the majority of freelancers are Millennials (21-33), Gen-X (34-49), Baby boomers (50-67) or Matures (68+). I would imagine myself, that the majority of freelancer today are the Millennials.

What do you think?

And do you know anywhere I can find out this?

Thanks!

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Cristian
You are talking about customer personas, there are really helpful to have in any marketing campaign or any sales you may do online. The more you know about your customers the more you can appeal to their understanding and needs.

I think you are right, most freelancers are probably Millennials and Generation X. But as far as the buyers go I think Millennials are not that numerous and they don't have too big of a budget.

My best bet is that buyers are probably Generation X but a huge part of them are not the decision makers, especially for big companies that may be the Baby boomers.
So take it this way, to land "whales" type clients you need to appeal to Generation X but also take in mind the mentality of Baby boomers since they may have the last word in lots of projects.

PS: made some searches just now, didn't found much about the personas of people buying online freelance services. Please share if you find something people. Cheers.



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Lynne
Cristian yes I agree with what you have said there, I suspect you are spot on. The final decision makers would be the Baby Boomers, my parents generation and then the people doing the researching into the services and advising the Baby Boomers would be my generation which is Generation X and Millennials.

Mike if you are looking for the right wording I would target Generation X and Millennials. Baby Boomers might find it all a little overwhelming and look to Generation X and Z for guidance.

At least that is what happens with us in our family my dad always asks me and my sister for any advice about online things.



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RaduV
I had read a little about the topic and according Quora and Elance.com this is the top 10 freelancer countries with the number of registered freelancers on Elance:

United States 1,123,935
India 649,566
Philippines 178,725
Pakistan 176,011
United Kingdom 126,670
Canada 85,639
Bangladesh 66,970
Australia 48,240
Romania 44,305
Kenya 41,865

This is according to Elance geo stats but i didn't find exactly what age do the freelancers have but i would say that most of them are between 20 and 35 years. From what I can see, the age limit is decreasing because the fellas are more tech savy than before.



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Corzhens
This is an interesting topic because my impression is that Asia has the most number of freelancers. Ours is a third world and it is not really impressive when it comes to technical people. But I’m sure that there are more freelancers here than in any other small country in Asia. Freelancing is a now a worldwide phenomenon that people are starting to cultivate.



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