Top 10 skills to earn money from freelancing in 2021 you ask? To answer this, we must first address what freelancers are and how freelancing works. Freelancers are self-employed, independent contractors who are not required to commit to an employer or a company on a long term basis or work on rules set by them.
Freelancing is basically working for yourself, at your comfort, for any number of hours, being your own boss. Freelancers do not have to work for a company for 8 hours every day. Employers and businesses post their requirements to hire skilled freelancers for the completion of their project.
Freelancers can work from home for employers all around the globe and set their own prices for the services they provide. Due to this type of flexible working environment, freelancing has now become a side hustle for many and some even do it full time as one can find work in almost every field of work i.e., from writing to graphic designing, photography to video editing.
Businesses and companies can also benefit from outsourcing their work as they do not have to recruit people permanently or provide bonuses, medical security or other additional job benefits.
Some of the most popular platforms dedicated for freelancing are Upwork, Fiverr and Freelancer.
Table of Content…
Freelancing Platforms…
• Upwork
Upwork is a trusted global freelancing platform where businesses and freelancers all over the world can connect and collaborate on different projects. The ultimate vision of the company is to connect businesses with various talents to work without any limits.
You can offer your skills on Upwork and earn hard cash on a daily or weekly basis. Upwork is open to all firms and agencies, professionals and freelancers. You can provide services from any part of the globe. Clients can post a job that they want to outsource and a freelancer can bid on it.
Upwork is one of the top-ranking platforms where millions of jobs are being posted every day with more than 3500 different skills. To work as a freelancer on Upwork, you will have to create an account by entering your skills and wait for Upwork to approve your account.
Once your account has been approved by Upwork, you can place bids on projects based on your skills and get hired in order to start earning.
• Fiverr
Fiverr is an online marketplace that connects businesses to freelancers. It is the leading marketplace where freelancers can earn by providing freelance services. It allows businesses and clients to create opportunities for freelancers to work from across the globe.
You can use Fiverr to earn money in your spare time by selling services to people, without having any qualification. To start working as a freelancer on Fiverr, you must create a gig based on your services, giving a detailed description of your skills and the services you provide, also mentioning your rates.
Unlike Upwork, you do not have to get your account approved which is one reason why Fiverr being a trusted platform is many times overcrowded.
• Freelancer
Freelancer is a popular freelancing platform that provides thousands of jobs in numerous categories as per your preference which pay you after the completion of the job. This website helps find suitable employees for employers and vice versa. If you are looking for quick money then this website is where you should be.
They allow facilities like browsing portfolios/jobs, bidding your skills and fees to get hired, live chats with clients to give them constant updates on your progress, get paid for the work you’ve done and 24/7 customer support.
Creating a healthy job profile on Freelancer – which stands out from millions of others that are on this platform can give you the added advantage of being hired more often amongst the jam-packed crowd that is present on Freelancer.
Your success as a freelancer basically depends on the demand for your skill. Here are the top 10 skills to earn money from freelancing…
Freelancing Skills…
1. Coding
Apart from your 9-to-5 job, you can also make some extra money by providing freelance coding services to companies and businesses on various platforms. Coding is not as difficult as people think it is. You do not need a college degree – a simple 2 to 3 months coding course will do well.
As a freelance programmer, you must prove your worth that you can help the clients and companies by providing their business with value. Businesses and companies sometimes require you to develop or build a website or application (depending on their need) using your skillset that they can use to generate more money.
Businesses look for programmers who can add value and generate healthy growth and help them sell more or use it to bring in new leads or more customers. Initially, you can begin with selling your services at a cheaper rate and then increase your charges as you advance.
2. Graphic Designing
Graphic designing has become an important and effective tool for communication between businesses and their audience. People are increasingly realizing the value of design in building their own value. Therefore, the demand for graphic designers is higher than ever.
A graphic designer visually communicates the message of a project by using images, symbols, and colours either in the form of logos, business cards, promotional material, brand advertisement, social media post and so on.
Graphic designers basically create a visual identity for the brand. To work as a graphic designer, you must be comfortable with various software like Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator, Quark, Procreate etc and also have web designing skills and expertise in programming languages like HTML and CSS. You can learn these skills online on various platforms like Udemy, Coursera, Skillshare, etc.
3. Animation
All the cartoons that you have grown up watching have been created by animators. In present times, it is a rapidly growing industry with great competition and demand. To be a successful freelance animator, you need to develop your drawing skills and at the same time grow your business knowledge to understand how the industry works.
As a beginner, you must volunteer small scale indie products in order to improve your skills. You must also have knowledge of various software, principles, basics of design, how different workflows and pipelines work, etc. You do not necessarily need a college degree – you can learn these skills online within a couple of months.
You can work on 2-D or 3-D animation in terms of character design, games, work on feature films, series or create animated tutorials. With your creativity in animation, you can create animations as per the clients’ requirements.
4. Game Developer
Game development is a wide and growing industry that is beginning to expand at a much faster rate as the gaming industry has become a major source of entertainment in present times. As a game developer, you can experience great exposure to a variety of jobs and projects.
You can work in various departments of game development and provide a wide range of services – you can work in the audio department and create soundtracks or work in animation programming, systemic architecture – which means to build the systems for the game or design a blueprint for the game.
You will need to create game designing videos in order to show your client how much knowledge you have when it comes to a specific game engine. In this competitive industry, you will have to use your sales tactics to outshine your competitors and convince your client that you’re actually better and worth being paid for your services.
5. Logo Making
Logo making is a respectable and profitable freelancing job. A single logo can make you good money through freelancing. The advancing technology has made it easy for us to learn, create and sell logos on a global level.
People who have no experience and background in designing can also create logos with the help of sites like logomaker.com and sell them on freelancing sites like designhill.com, upwork.com, fiverr.com and freelancer.com.
Sites like these have opened up new and unique possibilities for millions of people to bring creativity to their fingertips and sell it to different people across the globe. Freelancing sites like designhill.com are legitimate and trusted by hundreds of other huge companies worldwide.
6. Website Designing
Web designing requires programming skills in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. You can earn tons of money based on the type of project and the quality of your work. More knowledge about web designing means more fees that you can charge.
A web designer’s task is to meet clients and discuss what they want their site to do and how they want the preferred audience to use it. The designer then prepares a design plan, creates the site structure and then works on linking different parts, branding, text, animations, button positions, multimedia features, then does one final testing and uploads the site to the server for going online.
Being a freelance designer means that you are the ultimate bearer of profits and/or losses that can incur. Through freelancing websites, designers can find many clients and use the full potential of their knowledge and make thousands from the comfort of their living room.
7. Content Writing
If you find yourself creative with words then this is a field that suits you – content writing refers to writing articles, blog posts and giving insights on various topics. You can search for the topics as per the clients’ requirements, do some research on the topic from various authentic sources and write about it (or type it).
This could help you set up an income depending on the job profile or topic. To make your content worth more, you can work on understanding your audience and knowing the answers to their questions and providing value to your content with consistency. The most important aspects that attract clients are SEO friendly and plagiarism free content.
8. Digital Marketing
The concept of digital marketing allows companies to interact and bond with their audience by knowing their preferences and improving trust and loyalty in their brand. Many types of digital marketing techniques help open new opportunities and fewer limitations to your skills.
For example, you can be a freelancer in content marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), pay-per-click social media marketing, email marketing, affiliate marketing etc. – all these forms of digital marketing helps attract an audience from all kinds of networks.
Though it requires consistency but with time, effort and patience, digital marketing can flourish your skills and boost your opportunities.
9. Social Media Management
Social media management is a great source of passive income for social media users. Large businesses, celebrities and entrepreneurs hire social media managers for marketing their products or services, creating content for their social media accounts, planning or scheduling content on Instagram, Pinterest and/or Facebook to promote their businesses.
Social media managers help pages on Instagram, Facebook, and other social media accounts achieve their goals by posting quality content related to the pages’ niche, increase followers by enhancing the pages’ activity and using social media SEO tactics to engage with followers.
10. Virtual Assistant
Virtual assistant is an umbrella term for a vast variety of services that you can offer to your clients. The services are categorised under general admin skills like calendar management, email management, customer services, maintaining social media platforms etc, creative services such as handling ebooks, Pinterest images, social media images, flyers, short videos, etc, technical services like SEO, advertisements, link building, etc.
In order to become a good home-based virtual assistant, it is advised to create your own website and social media presence, find people in your niche, focus on your services and offers, set up your image and most importantly make your clients happy and get their feedback.
Remember to know who you are working for, job offers with unusual payment standards are usually fraudulent. Be careful and work for those who offer you deals that aren’t too flashy and unexpected (and not too disappointing as well). Although there is a risk, like in every other industry out there -the freelance industry is a great place to earn as a side hustle, there is flexibility and saves you lots of time and effort. The only key to shine is to build relationships with clients and be consistent with your progress.
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