Freelance work on the Internet is not much different from offline earnings at all. If you are freelancing, you don’t need to get up early in the morning and spend precious minutes on the road to the office. Besides, making money freelancing, you choose the optimal working hours for you, but otherwise, it’s exactly the same work. Freelance includes almost all possible ways of earning on the Internet and many qualified professions that require certain skills. Let’s find the answer to the question of how to make money freelance.
The Main Aspects of Freelance Work
Work on the Internet is characterized by an effective way of interaction between the customer and the contractor. It’s convenient to find your employer on the network and provide work results to him, receiving an instant reward. That is why freelance is so popular nowadays. The difference between a freelancer and an employee is that the second receives a salary for pre-agreed duties, and the «free worker» decides what conditions and rewards are suitable for him.
The main advantages of this type of activity are a free schedule, the ability to work in a convenient place (it is not necessary to get up early and go to the other end of the city) and earn money freelance online. It is much more pleasant to sit at home and drink hot tea, and not to stand in the morning traffic jam or crowd in the subway.
Freelance ways to make money?
How to start to earn money freelance online? First of all, you need to decide on the job you will do. This is should be one, that you know best. There are a lot of types of work that you can do on the Internet:
- Website development. Creating diverse resources on the Internet is an important component of modern business, due to the growing online customers auditory. The activities include the site development; refinement and testing; content management; design work; web programming (back-end, front-end, etc). Due to the complexity of high-level web development work, it’s one of the most highly-paid fields of making money freelancing;
- Copywriting. It is a professional activity in producing informational, advertising and presentation texts. Editing and proofreading are also related to copywriting. Abstracts, term papers, dissertations, the creation of poems, scripts and writing news — in general, everything related to the texts could be called copywriting. Due to the constant development of web-optimization, copywriting has immense potential for making money. Also, it’s one of the most unspecialized freelance ways to make money;
- Translations. Technical and literary translations from foreign languages. Earning differ depends on a text complexity level — technical and professional blog post translation are paid much higher usually;
- Design, digital art. Broad skills list refers to this sphere — everything from website design, mobile applications and ending with the development of the corporate identity of the company, hand-made (handicrafts and souvenirs), creation of drawings and even digital graffiti. This profession requires pretty high skills and specific software, so qualified web-design work has pretty high money pay-offs;
- Programming. Programs or applications development, database operations, software testing, system administration, game development — programming is the most high-payed and demanded field of freelance. Senior-level specialists earn hundreds of thousand dollars per year ;
- Outsourcing. Outsourcing — measures to transfer certain processes and functions of an enterprise to another organization. The category includes bookkeeping, jurisprudence, management, personnel records, communications support, technical support, financial consultations, payment processing, working as a virtual assistant and much more;
- Audio/video/photo. Directing, filming, editing, announcer services, creating subtitles, photographing. It is one of the most high-professional and qualification-demanded fields of make money freelance, and the pay bills have related amounts;
- Advertising and marketing. Work on creating contextual advertising, working with social networks, collecting and processing information, market research, business plans, events organizing, sales. This employment field depends on personal traits. Sales specialists could earn thousands of dollars per week easily;
- Graphics and animation. Modeling, animation, character and illustration creation, video design. 2D, 3D, flash graphics. Digital graphics professionals mostly don’t differ from some types of programmists, and money earnings are pretty similar;
- Engineering. Providing engineering consulting services. Creation of drawings, diagrams, and estimates. High levels of this profession require specific skills, such as programming and math analytics. Top-specialists could earn six-digits amounts;
- Architecture/interior. Visualization (graphics display of objects), landscape design, 3D-modeling, etc;
- Training and advising. Education in technical and humanitarian disciplines, tutoring, preschool education;
- Search Engine Optimization. Website promotion activities. Contextual advertising, work with search engines, filling resources with unique content. While working with several projects, specialists can earn quite large amounts, so it is one of the most convenient freelance ways to make money.
How much money freelancers get?
The Payoneer payment system, which provides financial services and online money transfers, conducted a related study of freelance work revenues. It showed that the average rate of freelancers according to 180 countries is $ 21 per hour. The highest fees are received by tax law specialists ($ 49), and the lowest — copywriters and translators ($ 11 per hour).
Worth noting, that this research could be far from the truth. Firstly, not all freelancers use the Payoneer payment system. Some generally receive compensation, not in dollars, but, for example, in cryptocurrencies or stocks (when working for startups). Or just via other e-commerce or banking services.
The vast majority, highly skilled work on freelance is paid on a project basis. This means — some specialists, say, in programming, may not receive a salary for several months, and after the project is completed they will immediately receive several thousand or tens of thousands of dollars.
Besides, far not every freelancer works at an hourly rate, so the numbers obtained from the Payoneer research can be very far from reality.
On average, programmers and project developers (engineers, system architects, back- and front-end specialists) have the largest revenues. They are followed by team leads and professional web designers (including computer graphic specialists and architects savvy in 3D design), right after — sales managers. Already behind them, there is a long queue of approximately equally paid areas of freelance — advertising, financial and legal advice, digital art, website promotion and administration, translators, copywriters. At the initial level of payment are unskilled specialists — employees of outsourcing call centers, technical support, customer relations, etc.