Landing online jobs that pay well is pretty strategic. More and more companies hire freelancers every year, from law firms to medical tourism companies, to business entreprises. New and established businesses recognize the perks of working with skilled individuals, while cutting out their administrative costs: in other terms, they get the job done every time, yet avoid the administrative “tralala” that comes with hiring a new employee. Each company or individual employer has a specific skill set that they seek, certainly.

Freelance work from home has opened the doors to several companies and freelancers. In my 7 years of working as a freelancer, I have seen the online work platform evolve tremendously. However, when it comes to landing online jobs that pay, here are the top 9 freelance skills that are in high demand right now.

Freelance Customer Service 

Every company or business that has customers need a customer service agent. For the online work marketplace, working as a freelance customer service agent provides one of the most consistent incomes. This is the perfect job category for someone who is getting started with working online, and also the most competitive. Customer service care can include: phone support (eg: call center agents that usually pick up the phone whenever you call your bank overseas), live chat support (chat agents that answer to you instantly when you’re doing your online shopping) and email support (those who send emails whenever you ask for a refund at one of your shopping sites!). Based on the company you work for, you can secure job positions starting at $5 USD/hour, to up to $40/hour and even more. 

Freelance Writing/Content Creation

Remember all the text you see on the homepages of websites you visit? (Apple, Bestbuy, etc.) or the product descriptions of the items you see on online shopping websites? Or perhaps the blog posts or pages you see on all these entrepreneur websites? This text is created by “freelance writers”. As marketing becomes more and more digital, the need for freelance writers keep rising, and this is why it is one of the top online jobs that pay. Moreover, freelance writers are a type of content creators that focus on writing only. Other types of contents include images, and videos (and this is where freelance photographers and videographers become useful). 

Freelance Photography/Videography

A picture is worth a thousand words, and in the online marketplace, it can make you earn thousands of bucks! It is not by chance that 99.9% of businesses nowadays have a social presence on the world’s renowned picture curation platform, Instagram.

Human beings are visual creatures. In fact, the human brain is said to process pictures more than 60.000 times faster than text. The proof? When we look at a picture, it instantly triggers emotions: joy, hope, melancholy, anger, sadness and more. Visual information is critical to any business out there, and people who know how to capture these, are definitely in high demand. When it comes to videos, I’ll just leave you with one statistic: approximately 75 million people watch online videos in the US, everyday. 

Freelance Graphic Design

Just as photography, graphic design is one of the skills that can get you online jobs that pay well. Whilst it is important to know how to take pictures, it is even better to know how to incorporate them with different elements to create a story and share a message for a given brand. Businesses will always need to tell their stories to new customers, market their products, and establish an online presence. Therefore, graphic elements such as logos, marketing flyers, promotional materials, will always be in demand. So kudos to you, if you know how to manipulate a software or two!

Freelance Data Entry

Data entry is a skill that is particularly important to solo entrepreneurs online and new business owners. With the demands of running a business online, a business owner does not have time to do the nitty-gritty work, and that is where a data entry agent comes in. A lot of companies outsource data entry agents for a wide variety of tasks.  For this skills category, the entry level salary is not the highest out of all the online jobs. However, the steady pay makes it a reliable source of steady income. 

Freelance Social Media Marketing/Management

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest are all platforms where potential customers spend their time. For a business, this means that they need to have an online presence on at least one of these platforms. So if you’re already familiar with the ins and outs of Instagram or Facebook as a user, why not take that knowledge further, learn how you can monetize that skill and offer your services to an entrepreneur or a budding company? This is definitely one of the online jobs that pay (and pay really well). 

Freelance Virtual Assistance

A virtual assistant is basically an all-rounder for a business/entrepreneur. He tends to do a wide variety of tasks, on demand: from managing social media accounts to monitoring emails, ordering products, or interacting with clients. In general, the scope of work is very fast. However, some companies have specific virtual assistants for specific tasks. Working as a virtual assistant is also a great online job that pays well. You get a steady source of income for a long period of time, and you get to learn new skills that you can use for future contracts. 

Freelance Language Translation

One of the perks of speaking more than one language is, you can use that skill and make money out of it online! Whether you learned English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese or Thai or any other language, you have an advantage when it comes to working online: there is always a need for freelance translators and interpreters. And even if you don’t feel 100% confident in your skills, you can always take a learning course to improve your language skill before dipping your toes in the online work pool!