by Varun Mayya
Here’s what we’ve seen make money online. We’re going to fondly call them the Pyjama Categories and rank them based on the time it takes to learn the basics, client demand and average billing rates. Client demand and average billing rates.
Admin Support
Marketing
Content Writing
Design
Web Development
Game Development and 3D Modelling
Product Management
App and Back-end Development
Later in this chapter, we’ll dive deeper into each of these categories. Hopefully, you’ll be able to find something that interests you.
The life cycle of a skill
Whenever new technology comes along, it is first adopted by a small number of enthusiastic users, and if it has merit, eventually trickles down to everyone. The same is true for skills and technologies you apply to servicing freelance clients.
Some clients might continue to use old technology because it’s easier but several clients will switch to new technology because it usually allows them to move faster and build things more quickly. So despite the fact that there are freelancers with a lot more experience than you, you can make a good entry into the market by offering newer skills to clients. There will also be fewer freelancers with new skills, so they can usually bill higher rates and find clients with relative ease.
You’d be surprised at how many freelancers decide to stop learning because they are happy with their current project flow, skill set and billing rate. A positive attitude towards learning and picking up new skills goes a long way—especially when our skills tend to become outdated every few years—something we’ve learnt the hard way.
The Pyjama Categories have been selected keeping current and future demand in mind. Much like a typical adoption bell curve, each Pyjama Category goes through stages of early adoption, acceptance, peak popularity, commoditization and eventual automation. Your goal as a freelancer entering the market is to find a skill that is in it’s peak popularity phase, or one that is in the early adoption or acceptance stages.
The Adoption Bell Curve applied to illustrate the life cycle of a skill
Let’s take an example of one of these skills: web design.
Early Adoption
The early stages of a skill or an industry are marked by low awareness about it but high enthusiasm amongst the early adopters. In 1990, Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web. Following this, web pages began to come up and more early adopters were attracted to this new technology.
Acceptance
Seeing the excitement amongst early adopters, entrepreneurs began to start creating commercial applications on the internet. This led to the initial public offering (IPO) boom towards the end of the 21st century as they created applications for everything imaginable and the frenzy led to overvalued start-ups.
Peak Popularity
After the boom, there was an inevitable bust in the early 2000s. However, over the next two decades, it became clear to everyone that the web was here to stay. As more consumers were coming online and getting comfortable with the internet, it made more and more sense for a business to be present online.
Commoditization
Now that the demand for web design is huge and everybody needs a website, tools started to pop up to let businesses take control themselves instead of hiring a specialist. There are amazing do-it-yourself (DIY) tools available now like Squarespace and Webflow that have already become popular in the design community. While these might not be for everybody, it shows that web design is on its way to becoming a commodity.
Automation
The next step after commoditization is naturally complete automation. Why rely on a human for something that a machine can do much better? There will of course be a demand for web design specialists and consultants at this point, but most of the heavy lifting will be automated.
Now keep in mind that while these stages apply to any skill worldwide, the rate at which these stages creep in varies from country to country. Businesses in developed countries might require these skills before those in developing countries. For example, businesses in the US knew the value of websites in the early 2000s, but in a country like India, that has only started in the past five years.
The Pyjama Categories
Let’s get one thing straight; when you start freelancing, you are automatically in sales. You are effectively selling your skills and services and you will be compared to people selling their skills and services in the same price range. Much like a customer might pick one model of mobile phone over another because of a few features they might like, customers will pick one freelancer over the other not just based on their technical skill but also on brand name, past experience, presentation, certain quirks and a list of things that can be referred to as “gut feel”.
The point I’m trying to make is that you don’t just have to be good at what you do, but also at selling yourself.
We’ll be going over each skill one by one and I’ll try to outline what you should learn to enter the market and what background you’ll need. We have recommended courses and learning material that we’ve taken ourselves and had a good experience with, but you’re free to find resources online that best work for you. Some of these are paid courses—we recommend always saving a little money from the freelance gigs that you do and using them for self-learning. This will ensure that you’re always keeping up to date and investing in yourself.
Admin Support
Admin support roles are those that involve a lot of repetitive manual work, typically around data entry. It is considered the pioneer of online freelancing because it enabled millions of people in countries like India and Bangladesh who knew how to use Microsoft Excel to suddenly make more money on the side than they would in their day jobs. This job doesn’t pay very well in India, or in a developed country like the US. But remember that Big Mac Index we were talking about? Suddenly, having a knowledge of data entry and an internet connection allowed people to start making US minimum wage instead of Indian minimum wage. A dollar an hour an hour suddenly jumped to $8 an hour – eight times the income they were previously making!
Some types of skills that fall under this Pyjama Category include transcription, data entry, personal and virtual assistantship, customer service and seb research.
Personally, I don’t recommend this Pyjama Category today because of its low earning potential and high chance of automation. While data entry is a great supplementary skill to have and everyone must know a little Excel, it usually involves repetitive work that isn’t fulfilling.
Examples of admin support projects on Upwork
If you’re still interested, here are the resources you’ll need:
Timeline Course Link
Within 1 month Step-by-Step Spreadsheets for Absolute Beginners https://www.udemy.com/step-by-step-spreadsheets-for-absolute-beginners/
Within 3 months Become a Fast Typist in 14 Easy Steps https://www.udemy.com/become-a-fastest-typist-in-14-easy-steps/
Within 6 months Ultimate Excel Programmer Course https://www.udemy.com/ultimate-excel-programmer/
Marketing
Digital marketing is today what computer programming was in 1999. It’s the coolest new kid on the block with every business trying to get it right. This Pyjama Category includes Display Advertising, Email Marketing, Lead Generation, Market and Customer Research, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Marketing (SMM).
The general perception around marketing is usually posting things to social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. But SMM is just one part of the pie. Dig a little deeper and the intricacies reveal themselves. It involves figuring out what channels might work best for a client’s product and figuring out strategies specific to it. Is the client’s product selling to businesses or to consumers? Would email be a more suitable channel or would it be social networks? How do you drive more leads when people search for related queries on Googl
e?
If email is the primary channel, how do you generate high quality leads that are looking for the product your client is selling? How do you effectively send cold emails such that you don’t get marked spam? How do you create a funnel of leads eventually leading to sales of a product?
If social networks are the primary channel, what kind of content should you post? What, when and where should you post this content? How would you tweak paid campaigns to drive traffic to a page? Would paid campaigns on video content perform better as compared to text based content?
If search traffic is a primary channel, how do you optimize web pages to rank higher? Are blog posts effective in driving traffic or are longer case studies and whitepapers more effective? What keywords should you use? What call-to-actions should you add to content such that you can convert visitors to leads by capturing their email?
These are the questions you will need to grapple with daily, form hypotheses around and validate your assumptions.
Examples of marketing projects on Upwork
At Jobspire, we worked with several senior marketing executives. I learnt that digital marketing was mostly trial and error—some things work and some don’t, and with experience you get a better feel of what works and what doesn’t. There are a few basic techniques and tools that a marketer uses and with some expert help, here are the courses that I recommend:
Timeline Course Link
Within 3–6 months
Digital Marketing by General Assembly. If you can afford it, this is the absolute best course to get started and master digital marketing.
The Complete Digital Marketing Course –12 Courses in 1
eBooks by Marketo
https://generalassemb.ly/education/digital-marketing
https://www.udemy.com/learn-digital-marketing-course/
https://www.marketo.com/ebooks/
Within 1 year
Full Scale: How to Grow Any Start-up Without a Plan or Clue
Facebook Ads and Facebook Marketing Mastery Guide
https://www.amazon.in/FULL-SCALE-Grow-Startup-Without-Plan-ebook/dp/B00NTC5G28
https://www.udemy.com/facebook-ads-facebook-marketing-mastery-guide/
Content Writing
Over the course of running several businesses, I’ve hired over 200 people. At least 40 of them were content writers—an ode to the increasing demand for content and its effectiveness in driving organic traffic to a website. This Pyjama Category includes article and blog writing, academic writing and research, copywriting, creative writing, editing and proofreading, web content and so on.
As a freelance content writer, you have to understand the business and decide what content works best, how to convey the message in the best way possible and how to drive a point that will affect the business goal.
A company usually has an implicit set of beliefs and values in place, and good content aims to get that knowledge out into the world to become the voice of the business. When a business has an authentic voice, it attracts customers who share the same beliefs.
I would suggest not thinking of content writing purely as writing blog posts, but from the holistic lens of communication. While blog posts and articles are the most popular types of jobs available, written communication can have a wide reach in multiple channels. It involves generating ideas and then executing upon them.
To give you an example, you could be hired to write a blog post, the content for a website’s home page, a company’s values on a careers page, captions for social media campaigns, e-books and case studies for a business and so on.
Each of these projects is technically writing, but the intent and goal varies. The goal of the blog articles might be to drive more traffic and hence knowledge of SEO techniques will be valuable. The goal of the case studies might be to generate leads and hence you might have to research to get an in depth understanding of what potential customers might want.
The skill you have to develop is to distil the purpose and goal of the business and then to figure out how to communicate it to customers in the best way.
Often, you might also be asked to set up a Wordpress blog or to work within an existing team of content writers within a content management system (CMS) like Wordpress. Therefore, it also helps to get familiar with the tools and platforms you will be working with.
Examples of content writing projects on Upwork
Timeline Course Link
Within 3 months Content Is King: How to Write Killer Content for the Web https://www.udemy.com/how-to-write-the-best-online-content/
Within 6–12 months Complete Wordpress Training for Beginners
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Basics
Ninja Writing: The Four Levels of Writing Mastery
https://www.udemy.com/complete-wordpress-course-for-beginners/
https://teamtreehouse.com/library/seo-basics
https://www.udemy.com/ninja-writing-the-four-levels-of-writing-mastery/
Design
This one is my favourite because it’s how I started my freelance career. This Pyjama Category includes graphic design, user Interface and user experience design (UI/UX), web design, illustration, logo design and branding, presentations, video production, animation and so on.
That’s a pretty wide net of skills, but we’ve included them under the same category because the boundaries between them are often fluid, with designers usually proficient in some combination of them.
The tools you would need to learn would depend on the exact work you’re doing. Adobe Photoshop is the Swiss army knife that every designer needs to have familiarity with. It can handle almost anything you throw at it including logo design, presentations, web design, animations, 3D models etc.
Beyond Photoshop, there are a lot of tools specific to the kind of design work you will be doing. For example if you’re working in UI/UX design, we would highly recommend Sketch App or Figma App. For logos and illustrations, vector design tools like Adobe Illustrator and Affinity Designer work well. For video production and animation, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro are widely used.
There are huge overlaps in what you can create with these tools. You can pick one of them to start with and move to others if the need arises, based on your specialization, projects and interests.
There is a lot more to design than just the tools, but we recommend starting with one of them to have a visual playground to play in. The theory of design and what the steps of a design process are, will be much easier to grasp once you have this foundation in place.
Examples of design projects on Upwork
Timeline Course Link
Within 3 months Udemy’s Biggest and Most Popular Photoshop Course
After Effects for Beginners
Adobe Premiere Pro for Beginners
Switch to Sketch by Invision
Mobile App Design in Sketch: UX and UI Design From Scratch
Learn Figma App
https://www.udemy.com/photoshoptraining/
https://www.udemy.com/aftereffects-beginners-complete/
https://www.udemy.com/adobe-premiere-pro-video-editing/
https://www.switchtosketchapp.com/
https://www.udemy.com/the-complete-design-course/
https://learnux.io/course/figma
Within 6–12 months Advanced Photoshop with Dave Cross
Adobe Illustrator Masterclass
Design Lab’s UI/UX courses
iOS Human Interface Guidelines
Cooper Crash Course: Design Thinking in 3 Steps
2D Character Animation in After Effects
Free Digital Painting Course by CtrlPaint
Creating Icons with Purpose
https://www.creativelive.com/courses/advanced-photoshop-techniques-dave-cross
https://www.udemy.com/illustrator-cc-masterclass/
http://trydesignlab.com/?v=d
https://elementary.io/docs/human-interfaceguidelines#humaninterface-guidelines
https://www.udemy.com/cooper-crash-course/
https://www.udemy.com/2d-animation-with-no-drawing-skills/
https://www.ctrlpaint.com/
https://www.skillshare.com/classes/Icon-Design-Creating-Pictograms-with-Purpose/2139039143
Web Development
Web development has been one of the most popular and in-demand skills. This Pyjama Category includes web design and front-end development.
Web design involves designing web pages that effectively communicate the business’ goal visually on a web page. There is an overlap here with the previous Pyjama Category, design because many freelancers start as web designers and gradually transition into web development. Sketch App and Figma App are currently two of the most popular web design tools available.
Web development involves programming web pages to be accessible on a web browser. While developing, you will have to think about how the website works across different browsers and different devices including mobile phones and tablets. You will also have to work with front-end frameworks and understand how to interface with databases and back-end languages.
You don’t necessarily have to be good in design and development both, but doing so would definitely give you a competitive advantage.
We’d recommend doing both parts, getting well versed with the basics and finding your balance. Over time, you might realize that you enjoy one over the other, and you can diversify and niche down accordingly.
Examples of web development projects on Upwork
Timeline Course Link
Within 3 months HTML and CSS Basics
Switch to Sketch by Invision: Design Basics
https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-html-css
https://www.switchtosketchapp.com/
