Freelancing is the exchange of time for money. If you’re not working, you’re not making money. But while it may not be a passive income, it can be quite lucrative.
Most of these are skill-based jobs. But they're a great way to make money online from home.
To make this a success you need a talent or an ability other people don’t possess. You’ll find this is usually your hobby or interest that you can turn into a job.
I love it as a way to make money, and if you think you might too, here’s every possible way you can do it…
1.1: Freelancing Websites
For all of the types of jobs you’re going to read about, you can get work for all of them on one of these websites. So, instead of explaining them to you 500 times throughout the article, I’m going to do it just once, right here.
I’ve also put the more specific ones in with their respective jobs.
The money you can make on all of these sites is usually pretty entry level, from $2 to $30 an hour, but it’s not unusual for prices to go above that, either.
This is a one size fits all site for every Freelancer to replace the two separate sites, Elance and oDesk.
You can find work here in any field, and you can still use this article I wrote about making money on elance to build a $1,000+ a month business in just a matter of weeks.
Another of the ‘if you can do it you can charge for it' websites. Prices here all start at $5 an hour but can go way beyond that if you do it right. There's a tutorial right here on how to make the most from Fiverr.
Fiverr used to be one of many $5 job sites, but they all appear to have dropped off the face of the internet. So, stick to Fiverr if this is your preferred style.
Guru is a lesser-known site but still good for you beginner Freelancers. It’s got a little less competition than UpWork does, especially now they’ve merged two sites together. So, it can be good to get a little experience under your belt.
While reports and strategies for making money with Guru are few and far between this in-depth look from SparkPlugging shows how they used Guru to get their freelance business off the ground, and keep it afloat.
Freelancer is a site that tends to attract a higher calibre of client, and makes you more money, but it also has a few drawbacks in the way it will ask you to pay for basic essentials, like taking tests. Some people love it, some hate it, I’ll let you decide.
When AskEustache put Freelancer to the test. he found that he made $250 through their affiliate program, and was able to charge $30 per hour straight away.
So, not only can earn a little more than your average first-time freelancer here, you can also make a few bucks on the side recommending people to join too.
Another site similar to UpWork with an abundance of jobs in any field.
I can't find any conclusive case studies or reports of experiments using iFreelance, but this in-depth review from Comparakeet shows that they don't take commission from what you are earning, however they do charge you a range of membership fees.
So, it may not be the best place to head for your first month.
One of the newer sites I’ve come across, and it’s easy to use and find clients with. But it seems that they’re geared more towards the clients the person you’ll be working for than to you as a freelancer.
Whether that’s good or bad though, comes down to your preference.
Again, reports on money generated from People Per Hour are pretty much non-existent, even though people are definitely making money there. But the UK TrustPilot site gives them a 7.3 star review from over 500 reviews. so they must be doing something right.
This is a different kind of freelancing, where you get paid for micro - or mini-jobs. For example, commenting in a forum or signing up for a mailing list, that takes no more than 10 minutes.
Payments vary on the client and the job, but you can quickly build up a lot of quick tasks that can make you a decent amount of money.
In recent months, up to October of 2016, case studies like this one from Paul Goodman on Hubpages. have seen a decline jobs and availability on the site.
While there is still money to be made there, it's more of a couple of bucks on the side job, as opposed to an income replacing system.
Okay, that’s it for the non-specific freelancing sites. Now, let’s look at the different types of jobs you can do, and where else you can make money from them.
1.2: Copywriting
Copywriting is writing for, well, pretty much anything:
Sales Pages Websites Magazines Leaflets
If a business, company or industry has it, and you write for it, that’s copywriting. If you think of yourself as a skilled writer this is a great way to make money. Especially because clients for copywriting are often corporate and pay in big bucks.
The best way to make money copywriting is to go directly to the business and pitch yourself. But you can also find copywriting-specific jobs posted on:
How Much Can You Earn?
This can vary on your experience, the industry you work in and how many clients you build up. When you're a freelancer you pretty much become your own little digital agency. But, an hourly rate could look like:
Entry Level: $10-$25 per hour Intermediate: $30-$50 per hour Expert: $60-$70+ per hour
There's also the option to charge per word, per project or on a monthly retainer. But, like Carol Tice has done. this can easily turn into a six-figure-a-year business in a short space of time.
In fact, my own personal income started out at $10 an hour in August 2017, and became $60-$80 per hour in less than 12 months. You can read about that growth from myself, right here.
1.3: Journalism
The age old profession, right?
Journalism now extends beyond the newspapers and their sites and into much bigger online-only publications, too. Admittedly, the pay here can be less frequent. But if you’ve got an itch to write, and you want to scratch it, this is a great place to start.
There aren’t any specific places I’d go to look for these jobs. I’d recommend just finding the publication you want to write for, and pitching them.
Although Sophie Lizard at Be A Freelance Blogger has an interesting free download on her site that offers some in-depth information on it.
How Much Can You Earn?
This really depends on the publication you're writing for, how often, and the subject you're writing about. There are publications that offer $20 per article, others $250, and some will even still pay you $1 per word.
Linda Formichelli of The Renegade Writer started off making $0.10 per word writing for publications but has been paid as much as $2.50 per word to write for national publications.
That's $2,500 for a 1,000 word article. So, there is a lot of money to be made if you go looking for it.
1.4: Blogging
Blogging is a big industry right now. And you can make money from it in three ways:
Running your own profitable blog Writing for blogs full time Guest blogging
The first is arguably the best, and most sustainable, of them. For example, Jon Morrow’s Boost Blog Traffic makes $100,000 a month in sales. and Stuart Walker made $80,000 last year.
So it depends on how prolific you are. You can read from Matt about how to make a successful blog here. and more about owning your own blog later in this article.
The second is what I do for a living. And I easily built a $3,500 a month business from it in less than a year. You can use the methods and sites you’ve read so far but you can also find work on the ProBlogger Job Board.
Guest Blogging is only for certain publications in different niches. You’ll have to research this more yourself. But, it’s easy to make between $30 and $150 per guest post. if you find the right one.
How Much Can You Earn?
Blogging is pretty lucrative because businesses, and people, are now seeing that they need a blog to content market effectively. But there are always people who want to pay less for it too, which is part of getting started.
Hourly rates look a little like this:
Beginner: $10-$20 per hour Intermediate: $25-$45 per hour Expert: $50-$100+ per hour
But, a little like journalism, this will depend on the publication and how you charge. For example, a Fortune 500 blogger might make $0.75-$1 per word, whereas a low-level fitness and nutrition site may only pay $20 per article.
I wrote an article for StartUpBros here about how to start a Freelance Business and build up an income from it, if you want to take this approach.
1.5: Ghostwriting
Want to know how to make money online? Get into Ghostwriting.
Ghostwriting is super lucrative, because people don’t always have time to write for themselves. And there are a lot of Gurus on the internet who don’t write their own content.
This can come in the form of:
Books eBooks Blog posts Articles Press Releases
Or anything an author can put their name on. Again, this tends to be easily done through approaching the client directly, or looking for posts on job boards like the ones listed earlier. But the success stories are everywhere for this kind of work.
Even as far back as 2016, Kelly James-Engar made $25,000 for an 80,000 word nutrition eBook. that her client actually wrote the first 25,000 words of anyway. Which is no small amount of money to be sniffed at, eh?
You can find a really good tutorial on how to become a professional Ghostwriter from Write Non-Fiction Now, right here.
How Much Can You Earn?
Corporate Ghostwriters can make stupid amounts of money a year. Their wages can be between $59,000 and $92,000 a year. but even at a basic freelance level on a content site, you'll be earning more than your average blogger or copywriter would.
Because you're not getting the credit for the writing, you can charge extra on top of it. For the hourly rates I'd add an extra 20-40% of what a blogger or copywriter would earn per hour.
1.6: Graphic Design
Graphic Design is now one of the most essential industries ever, because it covers:
Website design Logos Branding Printed Materials Interface and User Experience Illustrations
And that’s just scratching the surface. There are probably a hundred variations of all of those, too. But this is a service that people always need, and if I’m honest, a good reliable designer is often hard to come by. So, maybe it could be you?
You can find Graphic Design jobs at these places, or by going directly to companies or agencies:
How Much Can You Earn?
You can pick up Graphic Design work from lots of places, so the prices you can charge will vary. Most Graphic Designers I know, or have worked with, charge a per-project fee, and those fees can easily exceed $500 for a project even at a basic level.
There are even success stories, like Jacob Crass. who started out doing graphic design on the side through University and ended up becoming an award-winning, high-earning, designer. All from starting doing low level jobs.
But from research, I've found that an hourly rate would look like this:
Beginner: $15-$30 per hour Intermediate: $35-$60 per hour Expert: $65-$100+ per hour
1.7: Programming And Development
The ins and outs of programming are beyond my mental capacity. The are so many TLAs Three Letter Abbreviations that my head might fall off if I hear another one. But, if you’re here, you understand it or have an interest it in, so I take my hat off to you.
It tends to be broken up into these seven categories, and I’ve included their median wage too:
One of my favourite stories about success as a developer comes from Spencer Foreman who went from successful freelancer. to flat broke, to six-figure freelancer in the space of a couple of days.
Through networking, persistence and not giving up on wanting to make a career of it. If you want to find work, here are some of the most prolific job boards for programming and development out there:
And like the rest, you can go directly to the clients themselves as well.
How Much Can You Earn?
There are a few payment models that Freelancer Programmers follow:
Per Project: Where you charge for the amount of work that will be done for a specific project, or piece of work. Project + Percentage: This is less common, but designers can take a cut on their project fee, and earn a percentage of the profits from what they've designed. Although, do be cautious of this (see Freelance Best Practices at the end of this section). Hourly: Rates for credible programmers and developers begin at $20 per hour, and finish at around the $300 per hour mark.
If you market yourself well, like Glenn Stovall did here. you can find yourself earning double or triple your starting rate in no time at all. Even if you're learning as you go.
1.8: App Building
This is a little less common, but still a booming industry. It comes a little under the programming and development tab above, but in the interest of being thorough, it gets its own section.
Mobile apps are huge business, if you remember the success of Flappy Bird that was making $50,ooo a day. you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
And independent developers have had thousands of dollars of success, like Baptiste Greve, who created the game Rolly Candy for just $20 that generated 500 downloads in its first two weeks alone.
So, now is a good a time as any to get into the freelance app building market. Who knows, you might play a part in the world's next Flappy Bird or Clash of Clans?
You can find all of these jobs in the same sections as above.
How Much Can You Earn?
According to this thread on Quora, an iOS developer will make a minimum of $25 per hour, whereas an Android developer will start at about $20, and the prices just seem to keep rising into the $200-$300 per hour range depending on the size, or the audience, of the app.
1.9: SEO
This is a real money maker industry, and if you’ve been to Matt’s site before, you know it. People need it, but they rarely understand it.
SEO can break down into a lot of different services at the freelance level:
Link Building Copywriting (different to copywriting before) Site Analysis Full campaigns Traffic generation
Basically anything you would do at an agency can be broken into individual services and sold at a price.
As well as the sites at the start of this section and hitting companies up for work, you can pick up jobs on these boards, too:
How Much Can You Earn?
For SEO, the sky is really the limit. For example, Mike Ramsay of Nifty Marketing started out as a $20-$30 an hour freelancer, and now runs an agency worth over one million dollars .
By bootstrapping, growing purposefully and setting his prices to fit the clients he wants, he was able to go from lowly freelancer to industry leader in just a few years.
I've found that at an entry level SEO (in all capacities) you can start comfortably at $30 an hour, but once you build a portfolio, you can start heading to the $100 an hour price range with no trouble at all.
But there are plenty of other ways you can charge for SEO services, too, as outlined in this post by SERPs.
1.10: Editing Services
Where there is a need for writers, designers, videographers and SEOs, there is as much need for editors. To check mistakes, keep creative people in check, and make sure the Internet isn’t plagued with bad writing and terrible designs.
For example this stay-at-home mum. Rachel, managed to supplement her family's income with jobs ranging from $100-$200 each for editing blog posts, and even had the occasional $5,000+ editing job on larger pieces of copy like eBooks and White papers.
You can find all these jobs on the industry-specific job boards for your chosen type of editing.
How Much Can You Earn?
Freelance Editing jobs can be a little hit and miss in terms of earnings, and the reports are vastly different all across the internet. The main figures I could find for hourly rates look a little something like this:
Basic: $5-$10 per hour Intermediate: $25-$40 per hour Advanced: $50-$100+ per hour
1.11: Virtual Assistants
Virtual Assistants are online life savers, angels and birthday-rememberers. It’s like having an actual assistant, but online.
And if you want to make some money from helping people, you can definitely make a decent amount of money doing this.
You’ll cover lots of different things depending on who you’re assisting, but for a lot of people online it’s mainly:
Emails and Phone Calls Research (for meetings, presentations, blog posts, copy etc.) Client relations Calendar/Meeting management Editorial work Remembering to send my girlfriend flowers on Valentine's day
But there are lots of extras you could be doing to that are more specific to your client as well. And you’re often an essential part of the team.
You can find work as a Virtual Assistant on some of these jobs boards, as well as the sites mentioned earlier:
How Much Can You Earn?
Virtual Assistants are often people willing to work for low wages from central Europe and the far east. But, there is also a growing contingent of Western virtual assistants, too.
Now while you have little control over where you're from, you have to be aware that you'll be in competition for the value of the cheap ones, or the quality of the second ones.
That being said, there are plenty of success stories, like this one from Michelle Mangen. who have gone from zero to six-figure VA businesses in just a couple of years. Here are some hourly rate ideas to get you started, though:
Basic: $2-$10 per hour Intermediate: $15-$25 per hour Advanced: $30-$50+ per hour
1.12: Voice-Over Work
Got a voice that can make knees weak, angels weep and people listen? Or, just fancy yourself as a narrator or voice over artist?
Well you can sell your voice as a freelancer and make a pretty penny doing it.
In fact, I once wrote an eBook about this, and it’s far more lucrative than you’d expect. You can find work for this on these sites:
How Much Can You Earn?
This is a really flexible industry, and comes down to far too many variables for me to give you an exact number.
For example, my friend Mike Jansen makes a full time living from voice over work he's the voice of many independent and short films, as well as the Indianapolis Colts' stadium announcer while there are others out there who only make enough for it to be a side project.
Meaning it depends on how you want to approach the work, and how much money you're looking to earn.
1.13: Teaching and Coaching
Freelance teaching is a growing industry online, and offline. Because people need tutors, and location can often prevent you from finding a good one.
So, becoming one online (and accessible from the world over) is a great idea to make money.
You’ll need to be a specialist in something to make this into a job, but some viable industries are:
Languages School Basics (Math, English, Science etc) SEO Programming Health and Fitness Writing Design Musical Instruments Life coaching
And just about anything you can find a video about on YouTube. Or, any skill you have that people could learn from you about. Remember, you don’t need to be an expert, you just need to know more than your students.
The places to find these jobs will be specific to each industry, so you’ll have to do some of your own research here. But you can start by offering services on sites like Fiverr, or by looking on Tutor.
How Much Can You Earn?
Dependent on who and what you teach, this can be anywhere from $60 a day, through to $100 an hour. I personally used to make $40 an hour as a Freelance Personal Trainer on a remote, online only basis.
1.14: Translation
Unbeknown to a lot of English speakers, not everybody in the world understands English. In fact, it’s safe to say most people don’t understand it.
So, there is a whole market out there for translating content from one language to another.
Especially content like:
Blog posts Articles Legal documents Podcasts Marketing materials
If you’re bilingual, this could open up a whole new market for you. You can find a lot of translator work here at Translator Base. or you can apply with firms like Debonair Languages.
How Much Can You Earn?
This can actually be a really lucrative business if you do it right. Because, translation is a really in demand service.
There are some Freelancers, like Nataly Kelly. who charge the same rate per hour as a lawyer in their local area, which is in the $200 to $300 range in some places.
Because you're not only changing words for words, but you're also branding, copywriting and editing all as one package.
1.15: Accountancy
Where there are people making money, there are people who need accountants. And not everyone (myself included) can afford to work with a big firm or agency.
So, you can provide your services to a company or client at a discount.
Of course, you’ll need to be a chartered accountant to do this and not just own an abacus/calculator/dummies guide to accountancy.
How Much Can You Earn?
I really can't find enough information to give a true rate on this. But, according to my friends in accounting circles in England their firms bill out between £150 and £300 per hour for a middle of the road accountant.
If you're targeting smaller businesses, you could look around the bottom end of that scale (if not lower), or even creep higher for bigger businesses or work with firms.
1.16: Consultancy
Almost all of the jobs listed so far also leave you the option to be a consultant for them, too.
I'd just recommend that you're of an above average skill set before you try getting into them.
Here are some consultancy job examples:
Copywriting consultant: How to improve in-house copywriting for a business. SEO Consultant: As above. Design Consultant: You get the picture…
You’ll often have to advertise for these jobs yourself, or reach out to clients. But these jobs also show up on the freelance sites too.
How Much Can You Earn?
A little like accountancy, this is hard to define. A Freelance Copywriting consultant, like Art Copywriter. will start at around £240 per day.
But, Management consultancy can go up into the $1,000 to $2,000 range in no time at all. If you're just getting started, an hourly rate of $30-$40 is a good place to start.
Freelancing Best Practices…
Okay, I don't want to tell you all the good stuff, without letting you know how to cover your back, either.
Because while Freelancing is a great way to build a business, income and career online, you can also find yourself in a bad situation pretty quickly if you don't know what you're doing.
So, here are a few things you need to have in order to make sure everything goes smoothly…
Set Clear Terms And Conditions: Before you agree to anything, have clear defined terms and conditions about your rates, how you work, when it will be delivered and what the end product will be like. Learn The Invoicing Systems In Your Country: For example, all invoices in the UK must have specific information. and your country will likely have its own variation. Never Accept Payment On A Product-Profit Basis: At least not as the only method of payment. This is usually a scam for free work, or ends up leaving you with a lot less than you would expect. Just don't do it. Join A Union: There are people out there looking to take advantage of you, so being part of a union can help. They can advise you how to get compensated, or deal with clients who have taken your work and run with it.
You'll learn how to adopt these for yourself as your business grows and expands, and information that is more specific to your niche. However, be vigilant and always look for ways to make sure your best interests are protected.
