Do you want to take control of your own work hours? Are you tired of working full-time or being stuck in the traffic for several hours? When you think about working 9 to 5 for the next years to come, does it usually stress you out?
If your answer to these questions is “yes” or if you usually find yourself researching “how to de-stress at work” or “secret to work-life balance,” a freelancing career is good for you. In fact, millions of people are switching to working online every year.
One of the challenges to switching from the traditional office setting is stepping out on your own. Especially if you have bills to pay, mouths to feed, and other hobbies and vices, you might be thinking twice before stepping into the world of freelancing.
If you want to become a freelance web designer, a writer, an illustrator or you simply want to start a side job, learning from people who are already doing it pays a lot. Although you don’t need a bachelor’s degree or you don’t even need to graduate from a university to become a freelancer, studying from online courses can help you. Taking online courses is a great way to start learning before diving into freelancing.
As a freelancer, there are a couple of skills that you need to have to improve your chances of finding clients:
You need to work hard.
You need to learn new skills.
You need to keep improving your skills.
Whether it is writing, coding or data entry, you must learn how to do the job first before offering your services. Don’t worry! This guide is all about helping you to develop your skills so you can monetize them as a freelancer.
Here are 8 freelancing skills that you can learn for free.
- Coding
Coding is a major component of an online business. From making custom plugins to mobile apps, coding is probably one of the most in-demand freelance skills that will not go away for a while.
You can get paid a lot in this field. You can become an Android developer by learning the free training provided by Udacity. Udacity’s Developing Android Apps: Android Fundamentals is an online training course featuring different Google Developer Advocates such as Katherine Kuan, Dan Galpin, and Reto Meier who are introducing advance and technical skills for those who are new to Android. This course offers step-by-step training starting from building an Android app up to the best practices of mobile development.
- Graphic Design
If you think you are completely not good at drawing or other visual art, maybe you have just never been given the tools to become a good artist. Although some accomplished graphic designers are self-taught, you can also start by learning the fundamentals of graphic design.
SkillShare offers FREE online training for aspiring graphic designers. Their Branding Your Creative Business Course by Faye Brown is a 1-hour course that teaches you about the importance of branding through graphic design.
- Copywriting
Whether it is writing for blogs for companies to use as marketing materials, restructuring the existing pages to increase their SEO scores or writing sales pages, copywriting is something that companies are using every day.
Companies pay very well for copywriting too.
Unlike article writing, copywriting is not hard to learn. Other than having a grasp of good grammar, you can become an average Copywriter by studying the free resources from Kopywriting Kourse. This is a 25-minute course that is made for complete newbies who barely know what copywriting really is and how to start.
- Editing and Proofreading
Writing is a broad field and editing or proofreading it is a separate field. Entrepreneurs and companies are looking for a proofreader to skim through their new articles before they publish it in their blogs or websites.
Although some people are doing it without training, if you want to brush up your skills before trying to find some side hustles in editing or proofreading, you can try the free The Elements of Style training guide.
This training covers everything, from the usage of punctuations to tenses as well as the common words and expressions commonly misused to help you in determining the corrections you will make in the piece that you’re editing.
- SEO
Most people think of SEO as a game where they need to get backlinks from different websites or inserting the keywords in random place just to rank their websites. Although some of these can be true, SEO boils down to attracting more and more visitors to your website and understanding how you can get them to visit your site.
This is why some companies are hiring freelancers to help them. They need to know someone who can understand everything like knowing where the traffic is coming from and how to increase it.
If you want to learn more about SEO and data analytics, Google offers a FREE course in the field. This shows everything that you need to learn, from the basic features of Google Analytics to using it for ecommerce business decisions.
- Social Media Management
If there is one field of freelancing that many people already have experienced in is being a social media manager. Almost all of us have experienced owning and managing our own social media pages.
Learning the business side of handling social media accounts and knowing how to manage social media campaigns for a company is a great way to start with freelancing. If you have an eye for creating and curating contents, you can apply your skills with managing social media channels.
Lynda, operated by LinkedIn, offers a FREE online course entitled Become a Social Media Marketer. In this course, you can learn the foundational skills of social media marketing, how to utilize social tools for business, and how to advertise on social media platforms and measure their effectiveness.
- Facebook Advertising
If you’re already into social media management, handling Facebook Advertising can increase the number of niches you’re doing.
Facebook Advertising is a booming field right now. The amazing part of it is that it’s easy to set up and anybody can build a campaign. However, even if it’s easy to setup, it does not mean that you can easily get results.
This is why many entrepreneurs are willing to pay a price for Facebook Advertisers who can give them results, especially if they spent thousands of dollars trying to figure it out.
And the best part? You can learn about Facebook Advertising and use it as a business for FREE! Facebook offers a free online course that will teach you everything that you need to know.
- Web Development and Designing
Web development and web designing are two different fields. Many people are often confused about these two.
A web designer is a person in charge of the front-end side of a website. This involves developing the user interface and graphical part of the website development. Meanwhile, a web developer is someone in charge of the back-end of a website. They are involved in creating the algorithms for a website to function. These include membership areas, checkout systems, dashboard, database, and a lot more.
Lynda offers FREE online courses for both. Their Become a Web Designer and Build a Web Design Business are catered to those who want to start becoming a web designer. It involves building a lucrative career around your web design skills and the fundamentals of HTML and CSS based web design.
For those who want to learn or enhance their skills with Web Development, the Web Development Training and Tutorials can teach you how to make a website using web applications such as PHP, MySQL, CSS, and more. It also includes web development basics such as how to build an ecommerce website or the more advanced skills like building a database or HTML5 app.
Freelancing should not be expensive. There are a lot of free resources for different skills. Although taking courses can expand your skills as a romote worker, you can also get these trainings for free.
If you want to start gaining clients without spending a dime or you are looking for a skill to experiment with, check the online courses mentioned above. After taking the training, don’t forget to update your resume and impress your future client.
0 Comments