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We’ve preached the benefits of going freelance, but without knowing what work you could actually do as a freelancer that inspiration isn’t awfully useful.
To help, we’ve compiled a high-level overview of the best-paid and most popular freelance job categories and roles, the skills you will need to perform them, and if you don’t already possess them, the ways in which you can acquire them.
These are all positions that can be done part-time or full-time, depending on if you plan to retain your current occupation for a while.
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Best Freelance Careers & How to Learn Them
However, before we go any further, one thing needs to be clarified. Several of the jobs below will be tough to break into with no experience whatsoever. If the thought of one day taking them on as a freelancer sounds appealing, it’s worth considering first spending a few months interning in related agencies or companies that will teach you the ropes without you taking on too much initial risk.
This way you can utilize and develop these skills, or try to land a junior role in the same position at a smaller company, so you can learn and gain some experience from more experienced colleagues before going solo.
At the end of the day, the vast majority of jobs can be performed on a freelance basis, but we’re focusing on those which can be performed by working at home, with a PC and an internet connection.
You may also wonder, what’s the point in someone with absolutely none of these skills even attempting to learn them? Well, no one was born a freelancer. I’ve known successful marketers who started out as welders, programmers who learned while waiting tables on the side, and many others who simply wanted to make a change to their lives and jump into something that was at first scary and new – and you can too.
Marketing – Spread the Word about Awesome Brands
The marketing industry as a whole is likely one of the main employers of freelancers around the globe. By its very nature, it is made up of people from a huge variety of backgrounds with diverse skill sets. To name just a few:
Copywriting
The What
Copywriting involves writing text to promote a brand, product, or service, by increasing awareness and ultimately trying to lead the customer to a sale. This can be sales copy as part of advertising campaigns or product descriptions, as well as social media posts or as part of email marketing.
Looking to level up your writing skills? We’ve handpicked a variety of the best copywriting books just for you! Penned by esteemed industry veterans, these gems are sure to enhance your writing prowess and arm you with the secrets to creating an unforgettable copy.
The How
Getting into copywriting can be more difficult than other roles on this list, as it can be tough to land clients to build your portfolio without having a portfolio to speak of. To remedy this, besides working as an intern or in a junior position in-house at a company or agency, you can set up a website and fill your portfolio with examples of “speculative advertising”.
Simply look around you and pick a few products, or think of a range of services, and create ads and copy to demonstrate how you would sell this item if you were in that position. Of course, make sure you only use the examples that you’re truly proud of in your portfolio – quality matters over quantity here.
If you’d like to set up your own public-facing portfolio, you can learn how to build a freelance portfolio site in our free guide. You can also check out:
Similarly to content marketing, it’s all about practice. Write all content, long-form, short snippets, and everything in between, to get a real feel for many different styles and approaches. While the tips above should help stave it off, procrastination boils down to avoidance behavior, and unfortunately, there’s no magic fix for the syndrome, besides just doing.
Additionally, start off by offering your services to people you may know for cheap or free – only the first few, never undersell yourself – to build your portfolio and experience. Once you’re confident in your newfound skills, you can branch further out.
Content Marketing
The What
Content marketing is the creation of relevant, useful content such as blog posts or videos to meet a particular business goal. There are often similarities to copywriting in terms of raising awareness for a company, but content marketing focuses more on longer-form content that offers value to potential customers to pique their interest in the company.
Content marketers often work closely with SEO specialists to optimize their created content to rank well on search engines, and to organically drive traffic and leads to a business’s website.
If SEO feels like deciphering an alien language, dive into our How to Become a Freelance SEO Copywriter guide. With an appetite for learning and a sprinkle of time on your hands, you can transform into a freelance SEO copywriting whizz before you even know it. Just remember, every master was once a beginner, so buckle up and embrace the adventure.
The How
For content writing, set up your own blog on a subject you’re passionate about and churn out a bunch of content (who knows, you might even make some money from it one day). This will help you both practice your writing as well as give you insight into what it takes to make content rank.
Of course, this won’t help you much if your writing is awful. Make sure you practice writing every day if possible, and read as much as you can (some of the greatest writers were prolific readers, after all). Some good books that cover content marketing, in particular, are Content Rules and Everybody Writes by Ann Handley, as well as Content Machine by Dan Norris.
Want to find that perfect freelance-focused book that caters to your unique needs? Say hello to our freelance book finder! It’s designed to help you effortlessly zero in on the right book for your current journey.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
The What
The role of an SEO specialist is essentially to help various types of web content rank on a search engine. Generally, this involves optimizing a website to rank on one of the main search engines like Google or Bing, but it can also extend to e-commerce pages on stores such as Amazon or Etsy, mobile apps, videos on sites like YouTube, and social media pages.
This can be done in various ways, such as with:
- On-page SEO by making sure the page is optimized for relevant keywords and phrases which receive adequate search volume.
- Technical SEO by making sure the structure of the site is properly set up to be easily crawlable by search bots, that internal linking between pages is correctly set up, the site loads quickly enough, and much more.
- Off-site SEO that is mainly the acquisition of backlinks from other authority sites in your industry, giving a digital “thumbs up” to search engines that your website content is good and can be trusted.
Of course, there’s much more to it than this, but these are the fundamental ideas.
The How
You can learn the basics of SEO over with Google themselves, and Moz also has a pretty good free introduction to SEO.
Once you have the basics down, the best way to skill up for SEO is by running one or more websites and actually making them rank. This may be easy if you choose an uncompetitive niche and focus on subjects which no one else has properly covered, but incredibly difficult (sometimes impossible) for highly competitive topics.
This will involve a combination of making sure your site is structured and laid out properly. Google recommends always aiming to optimize the user experience over everything else. You need to also create content (yep, content marketing and SEO go very closely together), and then work on building backlinks to your content in varying ways, which is often the hardest part of the process.
Side note: stick to learning “white hat” tactics. “Black hat” and often “grey hat” tactics are frowned upon by search engines, to put it lightly, and can result in your website being heavily penalized by search engines if they notice what you’re up to.
Whatever your SEO adventure, there’s a myriad of tools ready to make your journey smoother. To save you the treasure hunt, we’ve put together a list of the best SEO tools for freelancers from our SEO experience.
Digital Advertising Specialist
The What
Digital advertising specialists work with a number of different online advertising platforms, with Google Ads and Facebook Ads being the big players here. They engage in so-called PPC (pay-per-click) advertising and will launch advertising campaigns in conjunction with creatives before continually optimizing them by using the data gathered.
The How
Luckily, Facebook and Google have their own free learning platforms. Facebook Blueprint will help you get to grips with Facebook Ads, while Google Ads has its own courses and certifications to get you qualified.
In terms of getting a portfolio together for this kind of work, it’s quite a bit harder than the others on this list as you actively have to spend money to build a portfolio, unless you actually run your own business that you’d spend money on anyway.
This is why, in this case, working for someone and running their digital ad campaigns while learning the ropes is probably the smarter approach before you consider taking things freelance.
Graphic Design & Video Editing
The What
These two roles are of course quite different, but as they’re similar enough and both lie in the creative field, I’ll kill two birds with one stone. They’re both likely obvious enough to anyone reading, but just in case I’ll quickly summarize them.
In the case of graphic designers, these creative wonders will dream up and conceptualize any kind of still art that is needed for the running of a business or its marketing efforts, ranging from logos, advertising graphics, or reports – primarily to inform and compel the consumer to make a purchase or raise awareness of a brand.
Video editors engage in more or less the same work but from a video standpoint. Videos have quickly become the most popular form of online media, and this doesn’t look likely to change anytime soon, so a good video editor is always in demand.
The How
To become a creative, you need to get creative. Practice your skills as much as you can and build up a healthy body of work. Besides your own personal projects, you can at first offer your work to friends or family at a discounted rate (or free if you’re feeling generous and are happy to do some work pro bono), to build up a wide-ranging portfolio.
Just be aware of working for people who ask you to work for free, in return for “exposure” on their online channels. The likelihood is that their exposure won’t generate anything tangible for you and they’re simply taking advantage of someone trying to get their foot in the door. Having said that, I’ve done my fair share of free work at the start of my career – but primarily for local businesses – and likely do it the same way due to the contacts I made and as a quick way to build out a professional-looking portfolio.
Social Media Management
The What
Social media dominates what people see online, even though social media empires seem to rise up and fade from our collective memory every few years for the last decade or two (remember MySpace?). However, the internet will likely always center around some form of the social network – we’re social creatures, after all.
In that vein, brands will always need someone to take care of their social media channels. This includes posting the latest posts, curating content, interacting with fans and other pages, and plenty more.
In a way, a good social media manager should encompass several skills we’ve talked about here. They should be able to write good copy, have a good understanding of what their fan base wants to see, and potentially even be able to create their own graphics or video content if needed. However, they’ll often work with specialists in those particular fields.
The How
The barrier to entry here is lower than most other roles on this list, so you’re likely to have plenty of competition for any of the positions you’ll be applying to. The best way to make sure you stand out from the rest is by getting out there and setting up your own social media channels.
If you know anyone who owns a business without a social media presence, offer to take on setting up and managing it. Just make sure you play it safe if you’re looking after someone else’s page and don’t go putting their brand in jeopardy. Additionally, focus on where their clients are – Twitter won’t be great for a café, for instance.
Whether you do or don’t have this opportunity, you should set up your own social media channels and try growing them organically. Choose a subject you’re passionate about and feel that you can put out good content about, or can at least curate content (without stealing it), from around the internet. Your own channels will be great venues to experiment with what works without potentially aggravating a client.
“Simply” create a great-looking page, put out consistently good content, and interact with your audience in a meaningful way, and you’re bound to see results.
Programming – Speak the Language of Computers
The What
This shouldn’t need much explaining; programmers are who we have to thank for essentially any of our digital freelance success. Programmers themselves forged the internet and all the applications that make our lives simpler. As such, they also perfectly position themselves to work as digital nomads, coding away from the comfort of their own homes.
Being a programmer makes for a fantastic freelance setup for several reasons – the barrier to entry is higher than all other categories on this list, meaning the competition is lower, and at the same time the demand is always high. This also means that pay for freelance programmers can be high, to say the least.
The How
Depending on what you’d like to code, this can hugely vary. A good language to start out with to understand the basics of coding is Python. It’s by far one of the easiest languages in terms of syntax (the way the code is written and structured), and will clue you in on most of the fundamental concepts you should keep in mind when it comes to programming.
These same concepts can then be applied to other languages going forward, although the syntax of other languages will need to be learned from scratch.
When I started learning Python, my favorite 2 books were Automate The Boring Stuff With Python, which is available to read for free on the author’s website, as well as Python Crash Course: A Hands-on, Project-based Introduction to Programming.
Learn the basics, and, similarly to many other roles on this list, get building! Python is a very versatile language and will allow you to realize a huge number of projects you may have always had in mind.
Don’t forget to set yourself up with a GitHub account, which allows you to store your partial or finished projects in an online repository, and doubles as a great place for your coding portfolio when it comes to client-seeking time.
Web Development – Create Websites that Wow the World
The What
While this does come under programming to some degree, there’s also quite a large degree of variation between a full-on programmer (or someone with “full-stack” capabilities), compared to someone with a pure focus on web development. Web development is simply easier, more accessible, and can be learned in a shorter amount of time.
Not just that, but web development can also be performed purely with the use of so-called “no code” options, or CMS (Content Management System) platforms such as WordPress or SquareSpace. It is quite possible that as long as you have enough experience with a particular platform, you can niche down and market yourself as an expert on development with it.
The How
So, you want to learn web development via code and have no experience. Many people start simple with HTML and CSS to learn the framework behind building a website. This will give you a great foundation, after which I’d recommend getting into Javascript. The Odin Project runs a great HTML, CSS, and Javascript course completely for free which will help you with all of the above.
In terms of barrier to entry, Javascript is quite an approachable language, so don’t let the age-old stereotypes of coding being akin to rocket science fool you.
Whatever you choose to start with, make sure you stick with it. Similarly to programming above, once you feel that you’ve reached a point where you understand the basics, get stuck into your own projects. It’s the best way to improve when you have your own motivation behind learning!
If you prefer going the no-code route, you can get to grips with WordPress, which is by far the largest CMS and supposedly powers around 30% of the web. There are many places to learn, one of the best being the WordPress codex itself, but if you prefer video guides, Udemy has got you covered, and YouTube has a glut of free guides available.
Once you’ve got the basics down, the best way is to simply set up a test site of your own and test and iterate until you’re comfortable. Have friends or family who need a website? Help them set it up for free or cheap, and build up your portfolio before moving on to bigger clients.
Of course, there are other fantastic beginner-friendly languages out there, as well as other CMS platforms, but to get started I recommend you begin with my suggestions above. Once you nail them you’re bound to be confident enough to pick up other languages or systems quickly and without breaking a sweat.
Translating – Bridge the Gap Between Languages
The What
In our increasingly interconnected world, the value to companies of having their content in multiple languages is becoming ever more important. This means that translators who are highly proficient in multiple languages are greatly in demand. Translating articles, captions, user interfaces, and much more is the name of the game, and the pay can be surprisingly good.
The How
It’s pretty simple: just be really good at all of the languages you want to translate. Make sure you can translate between languages smoothly and without a hitch, and make sure you’re clued up on any specialist vocabulary if you want to niche down. Challenge yourself to translate obscure words from both languages and dive into dictionaries to see if you can fill up your internal lexicon any further.
Essentially, do everything to make sure you’re a language pro. If a company hires you and you end up making basic grammar mistakes or misspelling half of the words you’re translating, you’re unlikely to be hired for their next job.
Virtual Assistant – Be the Right Hand of Busy Professionals
The What
A virtual assistant (VA) can in truth be a huge number of things all rolled into one. If they possess the skills to do any of the aforementioned jobs on this list, then those skills are instantly part of the VA package.
Generally, VAs will know their strengths and specifically pitch these to clients. At a fundamental level, this can involve answering emails and phone calls, managing a calendar, customer support, processing sales and orders, and basic data entry and management. This can then snowball to a huge variety of services, depending on how confident you are in them.
The How
In reality, if you already have a fairly good understanding of the basic skills I mentioned above, then you could start as a VA. However, once again due to its low barrier to entry, it is a highly competitive field and there are VAs aplenty. If you want to stand out as a VA you need to have your own unique angle, so try to gain or foster a particular skill that’s in demand and that not all VAs can supply.
In essence, basic VA work has you acting as a virtual secretary of sorts, meaning you need good social skills and superb time management. The more services you can offer to clients, however, the more interesting and diverse the work will become.
Many of the above jobs are also listed as the best jobs for work-life balance. They’re renowned for fostering that sweet harmony between career and personal life. So read on, and find out how the right job choice can bring a breath of fresh air to both your work and leisure time.
Just About Anything
The jobs mentioned above are just a small slice of some of the most sought-after freelance jobs out there, but in reality, just about any job can be done on a freelance basis. Successful lawyers can take their talents away from a law office and be their own boss, architects can draw up their concepts in their living room, and even event planners aren’t bound to a corporate lifestyle.
At the end of the day, you shouldn’t want to follow any of these paths just because you think they’re a fast path to financial success, but rather because you feel a passion for them and won’t get burnt out learning and pursuing them. Motivating yourself as a freelancer can be a challenge – the last thing you want is to be doing something you hate!
If you’re still contemplating the direction you’d like to take your online career, you can find your freelance niche using Ikigai! It’s a fascinating concept that can help you discover a freelance niche ripe with opportunity.
