Freelance working is an exciting and highly controllable way for you to shape your own career progression and take charge of your own financial future. Highly skilled and dependable freelancers enjoy a variety of benefits and are always in high demand. If you are considering a career in freelancing, then it would be useful for you to get a sense of where the freelance market sits. Below are a handful of reliably in-demand freelance trades that allow you to govern your own business.
What You Need to Find Success in Freelance Work
There are many factors to consider when transitioning from a salaried job to working as a freelancer. However, the essence of this boils down to three main processes: gaining skills, building reputation, and cultivating the right attitude. By properly engaging with each of these steps, you should be able to prime yourself to most easily break into the freelance market.
Gaining Skills: A vital aspect of your prospects as a freelance practitioner is the breadth of your skillsets. The more you can do, the more you can be hired to do. So regardless of whatever skills you already possess in your chosen fields, you should be constantly learning new skills and honing your existing ones. In this way, you maximize your “hireability” and, as a result, your revenue potential and reputation.
Building Reputation: Your reputation as a freelancer is every bit as important as your actual ability. It could be argued that your reputation is actually more important than your ability because, at the end of the day, you can only put your skills to use if you get hired. As soon as you are able, you want to start taking jobs and completing them to a high standard. Happy customers are vital to your success, and the more you have, the more chances you’ll have to make customers happy.
Cultivating the Right Attitude: Last but not least, when you work as a freelancer, your time is money. This is a fairly well-known saying but, make no mistake, it has never been more true than in freelance work. When you are salaried, you are paid a set amount for each hour you are at work, regardless of what you produce in that time. When you are a freelancer, you are paid only for the value of the product that you produce, regardless of how long that takes you. This is a major shift in the way you interact with your work. The vital takeaway for a freelancer is this; you cannot waste your time even if you have no clients. You must treat your freelance career as a full-time job, or else you will have no hope of finding success.
So once you understand all of this, what can you do as a freelancer?
1. Programming and Software Development
With the increasing shift of business towards a digital landscape, programming and development skills are only becoming more desirable. If you can build up a good basis of programming and software development skills, along with a portfolio displaying your abilities, then you should have no issues finding a plethora of freelance work opportunities in this particular industry.
The actual process of breaking into freelance programming and software development is well documented and succinctly explained by a number of articles already online. This means that all you need to focus on, as is mentioned above, is ensuring that you have a range of relevant skills that you can engage in these fields.
2. Web Design and Development
Similar to programming and software development, the digitalization of content has led to a surge in the importance of web design and development work. To most easily understand why, simply ask yourself how often you search for something online to get a better idea of what it is and where you can access it. A strong web presence has become synonymous with success in business, and that creates an opportunity for you.
Creating a website and developing your web presence can be a consistent job, but more likely than not, companies just want to establish themselves online and move on. This means that they will be in the market for skilled freelance web developers who can design and implement a winning website for them and have no further commitment afterward.
3. Social Media Influencer
With the blooming emergence of ideal web-based marketing practices, such as SEO and other inbound marketing techniques, social media is becoming a big player in the way businesses conduct themselves online. This creates plenty of opportunities for you to engage in freelance social media activity. Companies want to work with people who are able to cultivate large followings online, and that takes a very specific and dedicated skillset. This means that if you are one of these people, you have a very lucrative market available to you if you play your cards right.
To add to the viability of this avenue of freelance career, companies like Open Influence, a leading Los Angeles-based influencer agency, provide an effective method for freelance influencers to communicate with large companies that have an interest in social media marketing.
4. Content Writing and Editing
Content marketing techniques require, well, content, and a large portion of that content is professionally written copy. As a result, there is a swiftly growing need for highly skilled writers and editors in the world of online marketing. This is fantastic for anyone who has these kinds of skills as this type of work is a source of consistent, well-paid employment.
Writing content for online marketing is a specific skill, one that can be learned just as you would any other freelance skill. Once you have this skill in your toolbelt, you can begin working on a versatile market that will provide both practice for your craft and professional experience as a freelance writer. As was mentioned earlier, this experience will do wonders for your reputation and make it far easier for you to find freelance work online.
These four potential career paths are merely the tip of the iceberg. There is a sea of freelance work available; all you have to do is learn to swim.