If you are struggling financially in today’s economy, your problem is not lack of money but lack of skill, or rather lack of skills the market needs.
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While the majority of people are chasing after money, people who understand the times are chasing after skills that will open doors of opportunities for them.
Some may ask:, but what if I don’t have the money to go to school to learn this skill? If you can see the times we’re living in, you’ll know that you don’t need a university degree to gain a skill that can earn you the kind of money you want.
You want to know the skills that are relevant today that earn a high income and how to develop the skills.
In this article, you will learn seven new high-paying skills that do not require a college or university degree. You can learn these skills through self-education.
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Copywriting Skills
Copywriting is the act of writing for advertising or other forms of marketing. The purpose of this form of writing is to increase brand awareness and ultimately persuade a person or group of people to take a particular action.
Copywriters are some of the highest-paid writers in the world. To become a proficient and profitable copy expert you will need to invest time and energy in studying the craft.
Copywriting is a skill that has been around since the dawn of advertising and will remain relevant as companies will always need copywriters to help market their products to become proficient copywriters.
It goes beyond just being a brilliant writer. You need to understand how people behave in human psychology, the use of language, and importantly, how to get people to take action.
Consulting Skill
If you have experience in this specific field, you can offer consulting services and generate huge sums of money. With the internet today, you don’t have to be of a certain age or have academic qualifications to succeed as a consultant.
With proper branding and positioning and a unique selling proposition, one can build a successful consulting career. Today, there are a lot of social media, digital marketing, business start-up investment eLearning technology, and study abroad consultants.
You don’t have to be the best in your field to start as a consultant. If you have knowledge that can help a niche of people to achieve better results, you can start a consulting career and grow your expertise, one client, at a time.
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Sale Closing Skill
Closing is your ability to persuade a prospect to complete a purchase. While a marketer brings in the prospective buyer, the closer gets them to make the purchase.
It is a term that has its origin surprisingly in real estate. I mean, have you come across more persuasive people than real estate agents? This is a skill you don’t learn in school.
You stand a better chance of learning this skill on the streets. In the most closing scenario, you’re paid a percentage of the sales you make, so it is more profitable to target businesses with sales involving a huge amount of money like real estate.
That way you can make a significant amount of money for every successful sale you close.
Chatbot marketing skill
A chatbot is an artificial intelligence AI software that can simulate a conversation or chat with a user in natural language through websites, mobile apps, or the telephone.
Just like the iPhone Siri, chatbots are quickly rising as a new voice in consumer communications.
These chatty computer programs respond to texts or digital chats, effectively carrying out conversations with the current and potential customers on the other end.
Being able to design chatbot applications to communicate seamlessly in any one-on-one communication is a valuable skill companies want to put to use, it could even make more money as a freelance chatbot marketer.
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Coding Skills
Although the concept of coding may seem like a foreign language, it’s probably the most useful language to learn today. In an increasingly technology-driven society being able to code is a valuable and in-demand skill.
Jobs that require basic coding knowledge are going faster and pay more than jobs that don’t. There are plenty of online resources where you can learn how to code at home without needing to get a degree or even take a class. In the digital age, almost every company needs a good coder.
Coding has various additional uses outside the more complex tech-oriented skills. Every business needs an online presence and basic coding skills will earn you a lot if you’re good at it.
Lead Funnel Building Skills
The success of a business depends largely on its ability to fish out prospective customers from the crowd and get them through the process of eventually doing business and this is done best through a sales funnel.
A sales funnel, also known as your revenue funnel or sales process leads prospective customers through their buying journey.
A well-designed executed sales funnel has four stages awareness, interest, decision and action. It helps a business to convert their leads into paying customers with digital technology tools today.
This sales process can be automated to maintain a consistent flow of customers to a business and those who are skilled in reading efficient and effective sales funnel using the right tools are increasingly in high demand.
Some of the skills required to be proficient in funnel building include search engine optimization, email marketing, social media, advertising, and other digital marketing skills.
Public Speaking Skills
If you look up eventbrite.com, you’re likely to find a list of events lined up from this week through to the end of the year. Some of these events are paid, some of them free or marketing avenues and people are going to be speaking at these events.
There is so much innovation going on in almost every industry today and people who appear to be at the forefront are the ones you find speaking at one event or the other. The ability to speak before an audience will amplify any skill you have.
If you acquire the ability to speak to an audience effectively, you can make a lot of money speaking for companies, corporations, and individuals. Not many people are willing to stand and speak before an audience. So those who have this skill move faster in their career.
Digital Marketing Skill
By digital marketing skills, I’m talking about being able to deliver results for businesses on the internet and not just getting more fans on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Digital Marketing has become a cornerstone of any 21st-century business.
Every company or individual offering a service a product needs an online presence in an age of smartphones and computers. If you can make things happen with digital marketing tools, you have a highly valuable skill that can pay huge benefits.
Web design
Any online business needs designers to decide how their web pages should look. So if you’re interested in technology/web business, but don’t want to learn to write code, you could consider learning web design instead.
It’s not quite as lucrative as software engineering on average, but the best web designers still earn $100,000+, so I consider it a good high-paying skill if working in tech seems interesting to you.
And it provides a great alternative for people who have a background in some type of art or visual design and want to earn a lot with that skill.
SEO
Businesses can make a lot of money by appearing high in online search results, so they’re willing to pay big money for help with this.
(Example: If an online store is selling natural fitness supplements, they’ll earn a lot of money if they can get their website to appear first when someone searches for, “Buy natural supplements.”)
This is where SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization, comes into play.
SEO professionals study the best practices for helping a company’s website appear higher up for online search terms (typically in Google).
SEO is one of the highest income skills on the market and lends itself particularly well to freelancing or starting your own business.
Many SEO freelancers have multiple clients on a monthly retainer, and they’re paid a flat monthly rate (often $1-2K or more per client per month), to manage a company’s search appearance.
There are sub-areas within the field of SEO, too.
For example, some professionals specialize in local SEO, where they help small businesses appear high up for searches like, “Locksmiths in Paris,” or “Plumber in California,” or “Best orthodontist in Florida.”
Trade skills
If you’re wondering whether learning a trade can be a high-income skill, the answer is yes! You can potentially earn six figures working in the trades.
Not everyone in the trades will earn six figures. Most of the jobs these days have a median salary of $45,000-60,000 (USD), but on the top end, there are certainly people earning six figures in these trade fields.
Final Comments
In concluding these skills do not require a degree to start, but can pay high income if you get good at any of them.