What Services Can I Offer on Upwork to Earn Money?

Welcome! I am Sunday, a top-rated plus freelancer on multiple platforms who have earned thousands of dollars online. I’m here to help you make money online.

Today, my attention is on aspiring and new freelancers who are wondering:

What services can I offer on Upwork?

What kinds of jobs can I do on Upwork?

What can I do to make money online?

How can I get remote jobs online?

What can I do on Upwork?

If your thoughts are similar to these, fasten your seat belt and let’s dive into this!

According to CNBC, the gig economy has seen a sharp rise in the number of professional freelancers and their incomes, which has directly boosted the US economy by 1.2 trillion dollars.

Hence, the gig economy has attracted many, but a greater percentage of people don’t make it past the entry stage before getting frustrated. This is because of the skills they present or their low knowledge of how to optimize their chosen freelance platform of choice.

Photo by Hello I'm Nik on Unsplash

Before I get into the skills you can easily learn and earn as a freelancer, let’s talk about how you can use the skills you already have for freelancing on Upwork.

Here are the options:

1. Convert an existing skill to a digital skill.

For instance, you work full-time as an accountant. You don’t necessarily need to switch. You can freelance as an accounting officer, Peachtree expert, freelance auditor, and so on, depending on your level.

2. Focus on the digital aspect of your current profession.

Most professions perform multiple functions. A surgeon, for example, may be able to provide medical consultation and medical research. He cannot freelance as a medical surgeon because that service requires his physical presence for the best delivery, but some aspects of his profession can be offered digitally, for instance, he can freelance as a medical writer or medical adviser on Upwork, Fiverr, and other freelance platforms.

Photo by James Scott on Unsplash

For example, photography is a valuable skill, but it is too geographically restricted; that is, only people in your geographic area can use your services. However, an aspect of photography, which is photo retouching and photo manipulation, can be offered remotely. That’s the best part of that profession to position yourself on Upwork, Fiverr, and other freelance platforms.

3. Focus on the digital aspect of your profession.

Now, let’s consider some of the lucrative skills you can learn for the purpose of offering services on Upwork.

Photo by Jodie Cook on Unsplash

Skill 1: Video Spokesperson

There is a high demand for people who can be the brand’s face in a video advertisement. You simply dress well, stay in front of a camera, and present a script. You can start with your phone.

Skill 2: Video Script Writing

Many brands and YouTubers are on the lookout for someone to write the scripts for their videos. The majority of these jobs are “retainer jobs,” which means you keep getting paid. You might need to take courses and watch some tutorials to improve, but your basic education has equipped you enough to start.

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

Skill 3: Web Designing

• Designing: It’s easier using WordPress, WiX, and the like. If you are willing to invest in a longer learning period, you can opt for Web Development, which requires coding.
• Maintenance: You can offer to help manage an existing website in terms of content, plugin updates and sectional redesign.
• SEO: “Search engine optimization is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic”. - Wikipedia
• Web content: The text, images, sounds, videos, and animations that website visitors see and hear collectively constitute the content of a website. This is for you if you can assist businesses in achieving their marketing objectives and customer communication with good web content.

Website skills above, especially development, are in high demand, and these are large projects with big payments.

Skill 4: Graphics Design

You can specialise in many areas as a freelance graphic designer. such as a logo designer, UI/UX designer, Canva designer, business card designer, flyer designer, brochure designer, 2D and 3D animation designer, package designer, book cover designer, and infographics designer.

Every serious brand needs good visuals in all forms of their communications and marketing, hence the increasing demand for designers.

Learn design. You can learn from friends, YouTube tutorials, and courses. I learned design in a computer training centre, then improved over the years by watching YouTube and learning from colleagues.

Skill 5: Video Editing

The world is migrating from still image content to video content.

Photo by Skye Studios on Unsplash

Hence, smart marketers are skewing towards video ads and creating video content for social media platforms like TikTok, Twitch, YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and even for commercial TV ads.

It’s interesting that you don’t have to learn sophisticated software like Adobe AfterEffects to be a video editor. You can use Descript, CapCut, InShot, and others with simpler interfaces and very impressive results.

You can be a transcriber, translator, or subtitler. That’s for those interested in words.

Skill 6: Content Writing

This service is one of the most demanded on most freelance platforms. A large demographic of freelancers are content writers. You can either do this or learn about a related niche, copywriting. Copywriting involves writing advertising or sales copy. Being able to offer this helps you make money online as a freelancer.

Skill 7: Digital Marketing

This is a broad niche. You can specialise in one or more of these aspects of digital marketing:

• Search Engine Optimization (already discussed under web design above)
• Set up Google and Social Media Campaign: If you can handle online advertising for clients, you can specialize in this to make money online.
• Social Media Marketing: You can set up your Upwork account to enable you to become the social media manager for brands across the globe. You can help personal and organizational brands create engaging content, and project their brand image and reputation. Therefore, this is a great way to make money online.

Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash

• Content Marketing: If you can create, publish, and distribute valuable, timely, and consistent information in order to draw in and keep the attention of a target audience and, ultimately, to encourage profitable online customer action, content marketing will be a big cash cow for you on Upwork.
• Email Marketing: If you can help brands enhance website traffic and sales volume for businesses through creative email content. You can watch YouTube tutorials on how to use MailChimp, Sendgrid and other mass email services

You can even go platform-specific, for example, by posing as an Amazon expert to help clients set up their Amazon stores. You can learn Kajabi, shopify, thinkific and other platforms

Skill 8: Coaching and Consulting

A coach’s responsibility is to support a person as they advance, improve, or take positive action. A coach’s mission is to assist their client in problem-solving and improving existing solutions.

Photo by Hunters Race on Unsplash

Consultants inform a company or its personnel of what they must do and what they require in order to identify problems and provide solutions. Typically, a consultant’s primary method of producing results is their experience.

You can offer consulting services and coach clients on marriage, divorce, law, careers, personal finance, fitness, and marketing.

Skill 9: Virtual Assistant Services (VA)

A virtual assistant is an independent contractor who works outside the client’s office to provide administrative support to clients remotely.

• Respond to emails and phone calls.
• Schedule meetings.
• Book travel and accommodations.
• Organize managers’ calendars.
• Create presentations, as assigned.
• Manage social media and so on.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

The good part of VA is that most clients you get will be retainer clients who will keep paying you as long as you do a good job.

Skill 10: Music Production and Music Lessons

If you are into music and can help people all around the world develop, create, and refine recorded music for public presentations, you can offer this as a service to make money online through freelancing.

Photo by Marcela Laskoski on Unsplash

I know a couple of people who tutor kids in Canada and the US on how to play musical instruments. Suppose you can give instruction in playing a musical instrument or singing, that can be your freelance honeypot.

Other Skills you should consider:

• Voice Acting and Voice Over
• English Tutorial
• Blog Editing
• Proofreading
• Project management
• Copyediting
• Translation services
• Website and app testing
• Data entry
• Ebook writing
• Brand strategy and consulting
• Online and Academic research
• Freelance artist/illustrator

Note that you are not limited to my suggestions above. There are a thousand and one other services you can offer.

Accordingly to Upwork, here are the current most demanded services on the freelance platform:

Let me know in the comment section what services you are considering, and if you have a specific service you offer already, let me know in the comment section. I can hire you someday, and someone else might see your services and hire you or partner with you.

Thanks for reading this. Hit the clap button if you got value from this.

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