Introduction

• Freelancing is the ‘in’ thing, quite officially. The largest corporations out there are hiring freelance IT developers, website designers, copywriters, and app developers for short term and long term projects. Of course, freelancers also continue to thrive by taking up paid projects from the most recognized global job exchange marketplaces with equal success. The point is, freelancing is no more just an additional little drip of dollars, but a gushing brook of decent income, which is comparable to, and sometimes even exceeds that of people with similar skills employed in corporations. All this notwithstanding, here we focus on telling you more about the highest paid freelance jobs, and the skills that are highly in demand.

Marketing

• Do you have experience in marketing? Didn’t land a job after that marketing diploma? Have you acquired some experience in digital marketing? This is the time to hop on the freelance bandwagon, because marketing gigs can pay you anything between $40 and $50 per hour. Freelance engagements in marketing range from anything like brand management efforts, product promotion strategies, and real sales, to niche digital marketing efforts such as social media brand management, email marketing, etc. Even reputed employers are engaging freelancers to provide impetus to their marketing efforts. Some reselling options are there as well where you don’t need to invest something and based on your marketing skills you can start making money for each sales/sign ups.

Voice Over

• Did you realize how the advertising winds have been blowing in the direction of video content from the past couple of years? Yes, most advertisers now prefer creating short but catchy videos. If you have a great voice, and have some experience or idea about voice over and dubbing, you can offer your services, and earn up to $70 per hour. People respond well to videos, which has created a large market space for voice over artists and dubbing artists, which means there’s a lot of money to be made for candidates with the right skills.

Recruiting

• Freelancers are finding great short term opportunities of being a part of HR operations at growing organizations. They can offer services such as drafting of job descriptions, managing recruitment drives, handling documentation aspects of hiring, and even conducting preliminary interviews to shortlist candidates. Better paying opportunities in HR freelancing can go up to $50 per hour, whereas the ones more restricted to documentation can pay up to $30 per hour. The one downside, however, is that freelancers need to aggressively hunt for newer projects to keep the income stream strong. Another downside is that you probably won’t get access the health care from your freelance employers.

Programming

• This is the umbrella mini-market for all kinds of web development, software development, and app development assignments. Programmers who work with conventional technologies such as Java can make up to $40 per hour by developing programs for projects. However, people with knowledge and experience of lesser known and more contemporary programming languages can make almost double the amount every hour. The key to success as a freelance programmer is to give quality work, and let the positive feedback bring in more clients.

Graphics Designing & Animation

• Though this is among the oldest vistas of earning via freelancing, skilled graphics designers are in high demand. Experienced Photoshop artists with impressive portfolios can earn up to $40 per hour. Within graphics designing, there’s a niche called ‘info-graphics’ design, which pays as much as $80 per hour. Info-graphics are content heavy designs, with lots of stats and facts organized in the form of a vertically extended graphic. If you have animation skills (2D or 3D) there are many companies in need ot animated content who aren’t big enough to hire full-time animators.

Search Engine Optimization

• Because of the frequent updates brought on by Google, search engine optimization continues to be a lucrative field for freelancers, especially those with updated knowledge and skills to get good rankings for client websites. The great part about freelance SEO experts is that they land projects that pay up to $40 per hour, and the number of hours they can bill to the client are on the higher side. That’s because freelance SEO engagements extend over a few weeks. Freelance SEO experts can get repeat business from their clients, and can hence earn significant incomes.

Copywriters

• The number of blogs and websites on the web has had an exponential surge in the past decade. In parallel, search engines have aligned themselves to treat websites with great content with good SEO ranking. These factors have enabled copywriters to sustain their incomes from freelance assignments. Mid-level copywriters can make up to $30 per hour, whereas experiences writers can make up to $55-60 per hour. Like SEO, freelance copywriting comes with the advantage of repeat business from clients, which makes it a lucrative freelancing option.

Final Words

• So those are some of the most sustainable, highly paying, and in demand freelance skills. If you’re looking to expand the scope of your freelance work, or looking to join millions of people who are already freelancing, you might want to invest effort towards honing skills relevant to these engagements.

Danielle Ward

• Danielle is a Blogger by profession and loves sharing my thoughts over wealth and wellness blogs so that people can live a healthy life with a handsome income. She is based out in the UK but planning to move to Malta soon.

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