Freelancing is no longer predominantly seen as a ‘side hustle’ or alternative for those who could not find jobs. While it was once a substitute for job hunting, now it’s a whole career path itself. More and more people are now choosing freelancing as a career path.
You can earn now a full time income or even way more than that from comfort of your home through freelancing. As technology has ease the way of working, only in US over 57 million workers alone have switched to self-employment. Whereas, Pakistan stands at No: 04 in a world of freelancing.
Moreover, now companies are also choosing to add independent freelancers to their roster. Why companies are hiring freelancers? Well, freelancers are cost-effective and also very efficient in their specialized skills. Having a specialty in a skill will lend you projects and increase your business links.
Like every other work, freelancing also have their pros and cons to being your own boss. It takes patience and organizational skills (financially and operationally) to handle several projects at once, and when you don’t know when your next paycheck is coming, this can be stressful for many.
Choosing a skill can be stressful for beginners in freelancing. You have to look for what skill suits you more and continually polish your skill with time. This particular path provide high degree of independence and flexibility, most jobs don’t offer.
For those of you who thinking to start their freelancing career now or changing their skills for freelancing, here are the list of top 10 freelance skills in demand that will help you earn from some of the best freelancing platforms.
Table of Contents
Web and App Development
The demand of Website and Application Development have continued to increase with time, makes it the most demanded skill of freelancing. With the increase of internet users worldwide, small businesses are also looking up to get their websites and applications.
The increase in global e-commerce has made it compulsory for almost every business to mark an online presence. As a result, there is a huge demand of website and application developers. Both of the skills experiences constant transformation every year, whether it’s related to tools, coding, languages or design. Every year new trends and technology appear to advance the way developers work.
Developers, regardless of the platform they choose to build the web or app, are in good demand of all freelance marketplaces.
Writer or Copy Writer
Another forever green skill in demand is content writing/copy writing. With content being declared the king of marketing, companies have whacking budget for producing high quality content, articles, blogs, scripts and the list goes on.
For publishing content online, usually the employer requirement is to look for a writer or copy writer who can write a SEO researched articles. You can get orders that has mostly typical length of 500 to 2000 from freelance marketplaces. Clients will ask you to do a keyword research before start writing so the article gets ranked when published.
One should have a highly developed writing skills with stellar grammar to become a freelance writer. Although, not everyone can be skilled writer. You need to write a lot, read a lot and most importantly a creative mind to write good articles that pay well.
Graphics Designing
Graphics designing has been on top in freelance marketplaces from a long time now and its position will remain unchanged in coming years. With the rise of startup culture, the demand of freelance graphics designers are also increased. Mostly because of startups prefer hiring freelancers on a project basis.
Designs like infographic, logos, icon, and illustrations pay pretty well. But like content writing, to become a quality graphics designer, you need to polish your skill with time. Also as more small businesses is preferring to have a website, the demand for UI/UX is increasing.
Data Entry/Virtual Assistant
Despite of all other major skills in demand, data entry and virtual assistant jobs have always been in demand. You don’t need a degree to do these type of jobs, just a basic language and computer skills. Even though it’s very basic nature of work, data entry is popular worldwide as a source of earning high income.
You need to have a very good communication skills for virtual assistant jobs. Since you will not be meeting and discussing tasks in person, you must understand all the information virtually to keep things working smoothly.
SEO Professional
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an amazing field to work on this digital era. SEO comes with a long list of required technical skills, including an understanding of linked building, google algorithms, topic creation, keyword research and many other things.
As every small businesses need to have a website but without a traffic, the site is worth nothing. Search Engine Optimization helps websites to rank better on search engine, primarily Google. SEO is an essential part of digital marketing as search is the primary source of the digital traffic for brands to get greater visibility and rank higher in search results.
However, the search results have been evolving from past few years to give users the required answers and information that is more likely to keep users on the result page instead of driving them to other websites.
Digital Marketing/SMM
Social Media Marketing and Digital Marketing handler manages the entire online presence of the businesses. As the usage of popular social media websites such as Facebook, Instagram, Linked In and Pinterest is increasing day by day, the demand of the DM/SMM is also increasing rapidly.
Small businesses are also looking for DM/SMM experts to help them reach out to their potential clients and do business with them. While it might sound easy, Social media management is a tough job and requires a comprehensive knowledge of social media. You have to deal with almost everything, including the content and feedback of the audience as well.
Animations/Video creation
Animation design uses technology to bring a designer’s creative vision into reality. All major social media websites now prefer Animation/video content over images and text posts. As more and more businesses become aware of the value of animation/video content that drives more sales, demand will continue to rise.
Most of us are already probably the consumer of video content and if you are interested in learning this skill and wants to help brands to boost their sales, this is a great freelance skill to explore. Software such as Adobe Premier, Final Cut Pro, Fimora are very popular for video editing jobs.
Blockchain Development
A Blockchain developer is who has a strong mix of skills such as cryptography, data structures, blockchain architecture, and web development. Blockchain is a programming language that manages and stores information related to cryptocurrency transactions.
Blockchain promises to be much bigger than just a way to get cryptocurrencies to work. Tech giants like Google, IBM and others are also closely looking into it and trying to figure out to use it in financial and cybersecurity sectors. Blockchain is future and if you know how to use this technology the future is yours.
Cybersecurity
The demand of Cybersecurity has increased in past few years and will continue to increase as the cybersecurity attacks are also increasing. No career field has seemed to get so much attention and grow at such pace.
Cybersecurity will be another mighty skill in demand. If you are looking for a moneymaking niche and understands how cybersecurity works, this freelancing opportunity may be right for you. However, you will be continuously challenged by the creative hackers who will be giving their best to breach the security.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Development
Amazon Web Services Development is a comprehensive, evolving cloud computing platform provided by Amazon. It is the largest cloud storage provider and it’s used by many big companies such as Netflix, Airbnb and Pinterest etc.
AWS Developer will be providing cloud manage services to the companies who use Amazon’s online storage. You can manage multiple companies’ storage as freelancer and make good money by providing this service.
Conclusion
The above mentioned Top 10 Freelancing skills in demand is for your help to understand what skills you can have to start your freelancing career online. More freelancing skills to emerge in future as e-commerce is boosting worldwide and better technologies such as artificial intelligence become more sophisticated and popular.
However, people who are interested to try freelancing needs to be more patient. There is no way to get rich quick. It requires hard work to earn money. In the end don’t try to follow a career path just because it pays well. If you want to build a brand and survive as a freelancer, choose to do work that you are passionate about.
In freelancing it will take some time for you to start earning a steady income so learn to be patient as well. The passion and desire to be something will drive you to do better and improve your skills that will eventually lead you to earn more than ever before with the help of best freelancing platforms available in the market.
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