Recently I’ve been getting emails from readers along these lines:
I don’t have any skills to freelance therefore I plan to start a far more complex business that requires way more skill and experience to succeed.
One person told me they weren’t skilled enough to freelance so they were looking at doing e-commerce instead 🤦♂️
Fact is, if you don’t have the skills to earn a living online as a freelancer, your chances of earning a living doing something like e-commerce or affiliate marketing or SaaS are approximately 0.01%.
Freelancing is great for getting started because it requires only two skills: the skill of doing the work (eg. SEO, writing, web design) and the skill of finding the work (eg. submitting great proposals).
Meanwhile, businesses like e-commerce, affiliate marketing or SaaS require a whole array of complex skills.
You can definitely learn those skills, but it’s going to take a while. Quite often, the best way to learn them is as a freelancer, because you can earn as you learn.
Take some free courses, then start charging $5-20 an hour for your service. Increase your rate as you increase your skill and experience. Offer a more complex (and expensive) service as you learn and layer on more skills.
Eventually you’ll know enough to take a crack at more advanced types of online business, and actually stand a fair chance of success.
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