How To Learn The Top 5 Freelance Skills With Online Courses

You don’t need a bachelor’s degree or even graduate from college to become a freelancer.

But, you do need a set of skills to offer as a service to your clients.

Whether it’s coding, writing, or even data entry, you must learn how to do the job before you can offer your services.

This guide is all about helping you develop the right skill set that you can monetize as a freelancer. Here, I will show you how to learn 5 freelance skills with the highest demand by enrolling in the best online courses to get started and master each skill.

Let’s dive in.

Can You Learn Freelance Skills Online?

Let me answer this question with a story.

I’m a high school dropout. I don’t have any fancy degrees or diplomas. I didn’t even graduate from college. The only thing I had was a hunger for learning.

After getting tired of jumping from one job to another, I discovered this amazing thing called the Internet.

I’ve downloaded eBooks, read articles, and followed a ton of online courses to learn how to design websites, write like a professional, and developed a set of valuable skills.

This hunger for knowledge is what paved the way for me to become a successful freelancer earning $5k a month, launched my own web design business, and start this blog to spread my knowledge.

My story is enough to prove that you can actually become a successful freelancer without any experience or a degree. Because everything I know I learned online!

To sum up: Yes! You can learn skills online to become a freelancer. You only need to have the will and determination to learn.

Of course, you also need to know how to follow a proper course of learning to build your skills the right way. But, let me tell you one thing, the best investment I ever made is on learning new skills.

TIP: I recommend getting the Skillshare subscription for learning more at an affordable price. With the subscription, you can access over 20,000 online classes for a single price. It’s the best value for money you could get. You can also get the first month free by registering using this link.

1. Become A Copywriter

Even though I had experience working at a locally published tech magazine, I had to learn everything from scratch when I started working online as a freelance writer.

$5,000 a month is a possible target for a copywriter. There are writers who even makes around $250 per hour as well.

First I had to learn to write proper English. Get a grasp of good grammar. And then learn to write for online audiences. Because writing for magazines and online blogs are two different things.

I followed several online courses to learn the basics. But I also practiced the craft by developing my own blog. This combination helped me to get better at writing faster than ever and I’d recommend you to do the same.

It’s all about finding the right niche. For example, there are people out there who pay for essay writing. This is a highly marketable skill that you can easily learn online.

Here are the courses you should follow to become a copywriter:

1. Copywriting For Beginners: How To Write Web Copy That Sells
2. Copywriting Basics for Successful Sales
3. Social Media Copywriting Masterclass
4. Simple Copywriting Secrets: How to Write Killer Sales Copy

You can also start your own blog by signing up with Medium. It’s free. Or, if you can invest a few bucks, start your own WordPress blog.

2. Become A Web Designer

When I discovered this great HTML framework called Bootstrap, I found myself in love with web design. I paused my freelance writing work to pursue a career in web design.

You can easily make more than $5k a month as an experienced web designer.

I learned to code and design beautiful websites using Bootstrap and user experience design methodologies. I quickly improved my skills to be an expert on designing websites.

Then I teamed up with a friend of mine to launch my own web design agency that targets local businesses. We worked in the business for over 2 years before shutting it down.

We were really good at crafting great websites but, unfortunately, we didn’t have the funds to market our business to reach more clients and the costs were a little difficult for us to handle. Eventually, I shut down the business and got back to what I’m truly good at: Writing.

Here are some of the courses (and new ones) that I followed to learn web design:

Learn how to design websites that function well and offer great user experiences.

1. Responsive Web Design Essentials
2. Learn Adobe Xd Webdesign: Design professional websites from scratch
3. An Introduction to Responsive Web Design
4. PSD to Bootstrap 4: Turn your web design into a web page

These courses will help you learn the basics of web design. It’s up to you to take things to the next level. Keep practicing and creating websites to improve your skills.

3. Become A Web Developer

Web design and web development are two separate fields. Most people often get these two confused.

A web designer is a person in charge of the frond-end side of a website where user interface and graphical part of a website development takes place. A web developer is someone who’s in charge of the back-end side of a website. Such as creating algorithms for website functions like checkout systems, membership areas, dashboards, etc.

Veteran web developers make over $1,000 an hour.

Web development work is more difficult than web design. And the courses you should follow will depend on the type of web developer you want to become. These are some of the basic programming languages you should learn to become a web/app developer.

1. Learn How to Learn Coding Faster
2. Hand-Code Your First Website: HTML + CSS Basics
3. The JavaScript Toolkit: Write Cleaner, Faster & Better Code
4. WordPress Academy: Learn WordPress step by step

Continue learning according to the path you’d like to follow as a web developer. You can find more courses on edX.org and Udacity.

4. Become A Graphic Designer

Graphic design is fairly easy to master. I know this because I used to work at an advertising agency. I mostly did ad and banner designs at this agency as the lead designer. It was fun and pretty easy, too easy actually. I often got bored on the job.

You could make $85 an hour as a professional graphic designer. Logo designers make even more.

However, just like with copywriting, you do need a little bit of creative juice to become a great graphic designer. These courses will only help you learn how to use the software and the tools to get started. The rest is up to you.

1. Graphic Design Basics: Core Principles for Visual Design
2. Logo Design with Draplin: Secrets of Shape, Type and Color
3. The Business of Graphic Design: Protect & Perfect Your Passion
4. Adobe Illustrator CC – Essentials Training

Once you get your way around the apps, start practicing and perfecting your skills. Use portfolio sites like Behance and Dribbble to showcase your designs.

5. Become A Social Media Manager

A social media manager is someone who takes charge of developing the different social media channels for a brand or a company. It sounds easy, but it actually takes a lot of work. In fact, it’s one of the high-demanding and high paying freelance jobs in the market today.

There are social media managers out there who make around $70,000 per year.

In order to become a social media manager, you should learn how to work with advertising in different social networks, learn to design branded graphics using Photoshop, curate content, and more.

These online courses will help you get started:

1. Powerful Social Media Marketing for Beginners
2. Start Freelancing as an Instagram Manager
3. Powerful Storytelling Today: Strategies for Crafting Great Content
4. Social Media Marketing: Top Tips for Growing Your Followers & Going Viral

Another great way to learn quickly is to make a list of your competitors and study how they post content and grow their following on different social networks. Also, get familiar with the right tools for scheduling and delivering posts with less effort. CoSchedule is a tool worth checking out.

Over To You

You must be willing to make an investment to learn the skills. Because most of the best online courses aren’t free. Keep in mind that it’s an investment you make for your future career.

Don’t lie to yourself thinking that you can’t afford it when you spend hundreds of dollars on Starbucks and Netflix every month. Try to go a month without Netflix or postpone buying that expensive dress you’ve always wanted and invest that money in learning the skills you can use to make more money.

Stop making excuses. Go learn something new!

Note: Skillshare is a subscription based service, which means you’ll get access to all of its 20,000+ classes on the site for just $12 a month or lower depending on your region.

Image credit: freepik.com