by James Sowers |
Last Updated: October 17, 2019 This post may be sponsored or may contain affiliate links, which means we may receive a commission, at no additional cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link. Read the full disclosure.
Today I am going to share 13 high income skills that you can learn quickly and start making money from it.
Give it a thought: There must be some reason why some people manage to make more money than others without even putting as much work into it.
Take the regular job environment for an example. There are some positions that pay low salary, some pay average and some pay the highest.
Why do some employees get paid higher? That’s because they have mastered those high-paying skills that are in demand.
And if you want to learn those skills that make money more than the others, be sure to read this article till the end.
After you’ve learned those skills, you can either put them into a 9-5 job, start freelancing or even better, build a business around it.
If that sounds interesting, lets dive right in.
How To Learn Those High Income Skills
There are a ton of websites online that’ll help you learn new skills, but I have a favorite and that is Skillshare.
It is an online learning community that has over 18,000 classes on different topics like marketing, designing, writing etc. These classes are taught by real people with real experience behind the topic.
No matter if you’re a beginner, intermediate or an expert, there is something for everybody to learn.
For example, just a simple search for “Photography” brings me all these classes:
Most of their best-quality courses are under the “Premium” section so you would usually have to pay $8.73/month to access them.
However, the good news is – if you’re new to the site, you can avail 2 full months of premium membership for FREE when you sign up using my link.
Yes, that’s 100% free access to 18,000+ classes on all categories. I am sure you would want to take up this insane offer before they change their minds.
Keep in mind: If you don’t like their service, you can easily cancel the subscription before the 2-month trial period ends to avoid getting charged.
Another option would be to check out Udemy. Their quality of courses are brilliant and much more detailed than Skillshare.
They don’t have a monthly plan so you’d have to purchase individual courses as per your requirements.
However, all of their courses come with a 30-day money back guarantee. Which means, you can get a full refund if you didn’t like the course.
Both Udemy and Skillshare have different courses on their platform, so the ones you find on one of them might not be available on the other. It’s always wise to sign up on both of these websites for variety.
How To Make Money Off Those Skills
It is pretty evident that if you’re here, you’re looking to make money. And that’s what this article is all about – learning those skills and making money off them for LONG TERM.
Keeping that in mind, here are some ideas that’ll help you better utilize those high-paying skills and put them into good use:
Start Freelancing
I regard this as the emergency income generator mainly because I initially started out as a freelancer and was able to bring in money from the very first month.
Selling your skills as a freelancer is a profitable business model that can bring in a steady monthly income working from home.
In fact, research shows that 31% of freelancers in America earn at least $75,000 per year. (Which is INCREDIBLE!)
With freelancing you can:
- Work remotely
- Take up multiple projects at once
- Choose your own working hours
These benefits make freelancing a dream business model as a whole.
Write An eBook
Turning your skills into an actionable eBook is a great way to make passive income out of it. All you do is write and publish the eBook once and enjoy recurring income for years.
Though it’s not THAT quick and easy but at the same time, it’s not impossible either. Don’t take my word for it. Check this stat:
The market is rapidly growing and will continue to do so as long as there are quality eBooks to buy.
My friend Ana jumped into this business model quite a while ago and she’s already making over $3,500 per month from it. Check out my interview with her where she reveals some of her secrets.
Create An Online Course
Just like any other business model, creating and selling online courses takes a lot of time, especially when you have to create a ton of videos and worksheets.
But if you keep the time-frame aside, online courses are highly profitable and can make you boatloads of money if you can create a great one.
People don’t mind pulling out their credit cards to learn new skills and acquire knowledge. In fact, they love it and that’s why Udemy (An online learning platform) has over 30 million students.
This is a great time to create and sell online courses.
Offer Coaching Service
There are a lot of people who don’t like to take online courses or read an eBook. What they want instead is to come 1-1 and acquire the knowledge directly from the expert.
So, once you’ve learned any of the high-paying skills mentioned in this article, you can go on to offer your own coaching service where you take up clients and help them with your knowledge.
The sessions can be in the form of:
- Phone calls
- Video calls
- Face to face
Or a mix of all of them. You can charge hourly or a flat monthly fee, whichever works for you and your client.
Being a coach isn’t THAT tough but the selling aspect of it surely is. It requires you to really put yourself out there and emerge better than your competitors, which can only be done with great networking and marketing.
Start A Blog
Starting a blog is a fantastic way to share your knowledge into chunks of different blog posts and make money at the same time.
In fact, it can be much more relaxing as compared to the above options.
There are also a lot of ways to make money with your blog including:
- Displaying ads
- Selling own products
- Selling others’ products for commissions
- Sponsored posts
The potential and possibilities are totally over the roof. In fact, bloggers like Sarah Titus, Melyssa Griffin and Pat Flynn make over $200,000/month.
And some other big ones such as The Huffington Post makes $28 million/year.
My favorite thing about blogging is you don’t have to exchange your time for money. Which means, even if you’re on a 12-day vacation to Maldives, you’ll still be making money from the blog posts you had written long back.
Over time, it all just becomes passive.
If you think blogging is the right fit for you, then be sure to read how to start a blog today.
Start A YouTube Channel
While we were busy watching Netflix, a 7 year old kid just made $22 million a year from YouTube by reviewing toys.
Ryan loves reviewing toys and his audience loves seeing him do that. So much so that he currently has 21.8M subscribers on his channel.
What does this tell you? That there’s a ton of money to be made on YouTube and it is open for almost all the niches.
Don’t just think that reviewing toys fetches the most views. You can learn one of those high income skills mentioned in this article and go on to create YouTube videos around it.
There’s a huge demand for every single skill in this list. Taking Copywriting for an example:
Or Photography:
See the amount of views? That tells me YouTube is a huge platform and there is something for everybody.
Put It Into Your Job
This is probably the least interesting option, but still worth mentioning.
Not all of us are ready to quit our job today so while we’re still working in a 9-5, why not make a little more money every month than usual?
Once you learn a high income skill from this list, you can go on to add it as an extra service to your job.
For example, if you just learned a decent amount of Graphic Designing, all you need to do is ask your boss if he/she would like to get some creatives designed. Such as:
- Social media graphics
- Business cards
- Flyers
- Pamphlets Etc.
If your boss is satisfied with the designs, you can ask to continue doing this alongside your normal post or even better, totally migrate to it.
List Of 13 High Income Skills
Below is a list of 13 high-paying skills you can learn and make money.
1. Digital Marketing
Every company in this world needs a digital marketer in order to have a better online presence. Just for this fact alone, there is a huge demand for them.
Digital marketers are usually very well paid. In fact, an average digital marketer makes about $73.114/year in the US.
As a digital marketer, you’d be responsible for handling various tasks such as:
- Running social media campaigns
- Optimizing website for search engines (SEO)
- Writing and sending out emails
- Improving the overall look of the website
- Developing video content
- Coming up with great blog posts
- And a lot more!
Trust me when I say there’s a lot more to it. It’s a really broad niche.
A great way to make the most out of this skill is to start off as a freelancer and then migrate to something bigger like starting an agency. Neil Patel Digital is a fabulous example in this case.
2. Graphic Designing
I was just browsing the internet this morning and I came across a question on Quora that read “Does graphic designers make money?”
Here’s what the top answer was:
It’s interesting because not many people think you can earn that amount of money as a graphic designer. In fact, you can earn much more than that if you know how to put yourself out there.
As a graphic designer, you’d be creating:
- Posters
- Flyers
- Illustrations
- Business cards
- Logos
- Bus wraps
- And much more!
In order to design those graphics, you’d need tools such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator along with others once you progress.
Reminder: You can learn graphic designing and other skills over at Skillshare and Udemy.
3. Copywriting
Ever read a sales page that literally forced you to take out your credit card and make the purchase? That’s the power of persuasive Copywriting.
As a copywriter you’d be writing emails, sales pages, ads and much more. The main goal of writing these copy pieces is to convince the reader to take action on making a purchase or opting into an email list.
There’s a huge demand for people who can turn their words into selling points and you could be the one doing it. In fact, copywriters like Dan Kennedy make a killing income from it.
Here’s a brilliant video from Alex Cattoni that shows you how to become a copywriter:
Now it’s necessary to mention that you cannot become a copywriter within a week or two. You’d need at least a few months training and practice.
But once you’re past that stage, you can go on to charge as much as $25,000 for a single-page website copy.
4. Public Speaking
Public Speaking can be tough but it’s really rewarding at the same time. It is probably the highest-paid skill in this list.
Whether you’re a coach, author, influencer, entrepreneur or just an interesting person, you can actually make a lot of money as a public speaker (Especially if you’re good at engaging with people).
So, how do you begin?
#1 Pick a subject
You need to start off by identifying what you really want to speak about. Probably something that you can connect to on a deeper level.
It could be anything from business strategies to life experience to motivation to what not.
#2 Take tiny steps
Once you’ve finalized your subject, you’d want to take tiny little steps towards your goal of making money as a public speaker.
Maybe inquire about a speaking event nearby to your locality or host one of your own related to your subject.
#3 Speak for free
A great way to get involved in a speaking event is to offer your public speaking skills for free.
When you’re starting out, people don’t really know what you’re capable of so they probably won’t give you the gig.
You need to start off by not charging anything and speak for free. Majority of the well-known public speakers started this way.
#4 Get paid for speaking
Once you’ve contributed to a handful of speaking events for free, it is finally time to get paid for your skill.
In most of the cases, if your speech was good, brands and organizers would come directly for a potential gig offer.
If not, you can contact them and inquire about future events.
5. Software Development
Software developing can be really challenging and might take a fair amount of time to learn. But that doesn’t make this skill any lesser.
In fact, it is a very highly-paid one.
Software is the hottest thing on the internet, especially SaaS. Almost everything is built on software whether it’s the article you’re reading or the phone you’re using.
6. Game Development
We all love playing games on our consoles and there’s a huge demand for it. In fact, there are over 2.5 BILLION video gamers in the world.
With that growing number of gamers, it is only expected that more and more games will be produced in the coming years. Brands are shelling out tons of money to have them created.
A great thing about developing games is that if a company hires you, you’ll be working with them even after the game is developed because of future updates and bug fixes.
Needless to say, you’ll be making more money if you develop and sell games yourself rather than working under a company.
I believe it is a great time to become a game developer and have a slice of the huge market.
7. Web Development
As the name suggests, web development is all about building websites.
Almost every business needs a website to have an online presence, but less than 64% of the small business have one.
Also, there are many of the businesses that already have a website but not mobile-optimized or nicely designed.
This tells you that there’s plenty of opportunities for you to make money off this skill.
After you’ve learned web development from either Skillshare or Udemy, you can go and sell your service on sites like Upwork and Freelancer.
You can also look out for clients on Facebook groups. I believe it is a great place to start looking for work as a freelancer. That’s where I got my first client.
And just so you know: You don’t necessarily need to learn any hardcore coding. These days platforms like WordPress makes it super easy to build beautiful websites without having any coding knowledge.
8. Mobile Apps Development
How many apps do you have on your phone? 5? 10?
I have about 19 that I use on a regular basis. Crazy right? It is but that’s how I am able to do things accordingly.
Some apps help me stay in touch with people while some help in productivity.
Everything combined makes it a smooth process for my day-to-day tasks.
And it’s not just me. I believe everyone of us use apps on a daily basis because they’re just so important. Using mobile apps will literally never go out of trend.
That’s why mobile apps development it is a great skill to learn and make money. There are 3 major ways to make money off your own apps:
- Enable ads within the app via AdMob
- Allow in-app purchases
- Or make the app premium so users have to pay to download it
As an addition, you can also build apps for others and charge money.
9. Video Editing
Videos are a big thing on the internet. In fact, a majority of the people would rather watch online videos instead of television.
Keeping that stat in mind, it is normal for businesses to jump on this trend, which is why video editors are highly in demand.
In fact, people are charging up to $70/hour of work on Upwork:
Imagine if you work only 3 hours a day editing videos, you pocket a nice $210 EVERY SINGLE DAY. That makes it $6,300/month.
In order to edit videos, you would need software like Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects. And of course, a little bit of creativity.
10. Proofreading
Ever find yourself pointing out grammatical mistakes on social media? That is a sign of a Proofreader.
If you can spot writing errors and fix them, then you can make a nice amount of money from home.
In fact, I recently interviewed Beth who quit her job after starting a proofreading business online. You can read it here.
Proofreading has a lot of income potential and is not as technical as compared to some of the skills mentioned in this article.
If you feel this is for you, I highly recommend taking this FREE class that’ll cover the grounds for you to kick-start your proofreading journey. Just so you know, the class is hosted by Caitlin Pyle, who makes a living as a proofreader from home.
11. Photography
Who doesn’t love Photography? At least I don’t know anyone who doesn’t. Photography is super fun and rewarding at the same time. There’s a lot of money to be made through this high income skill.
Two of the easiest ways to make money off this skill is to:
- Sell photos on stock sites
- Create an online course around it
Sites such as ShutterStock allows you to list your photos and get paid whenever someone downloads it. They pay you $0.25 for each download.
And by the way, you don’t need to own a professional camera (Though it’s always better). You can click photos from your phone and upload it. That’s how easy it is.
You can also create a Photography-related online course on Skillshare or Udemy.
12. Virtual Bookkeeping
Virtual bookkeeping is another skill that is not THAAAT technical.
It however requires a bit of brain power as you would be taking care of:
- Handling payments
- Maintaining yearly budget
- Creating invoices
- Taxes
- And others!
Recently I came across Karla, a mom who makes $6,000/month from home as a virtual bookkeeper. You can read her story here.
13. Transcription
Transcription is all about listening to audios or videos and writing the words down. There are many companies that require this service mainly for video interviews that are to be diversified into written format.
Don’t mean to make this monotonous, but I love interviewing people so here’s another example of a stay-at-home mom who makes $4,000/month as a transcriptionist. She reveals everything in her interview here.
She initially took this FREE 7-day mini course that helped her get started the right way.
I wouldn’t say transcription isn’t technical, but it’s not that tough either. In fact, it’s a great work from home job that pays well.
Your Turn
So you just discovered 13 high income skills that can make you money without really even slogging.
I am excited to know which ones you are going to learn and put into practice.
Let me know in the comments below.
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