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We analyzed more than 2 million freelancer profiles on Upwork to better understand which skills are paying the best right now.
Specifically, we identified which skills and categories have the most freelancers earning at least $1000 per month (ie. $60/hour rate with at least 100 hours billed in the last 6 months).
Details and additional data from our study below.
Best Paying Freelance Jobs | Best Paying Programming Jobs | Best Paying Writing Jobs | Methodology | Limitations | Bonus
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Rank | Skill / Category | Number of freelancers earning at least $60/hour, minimum 100 billed hours last 6 months |
---|---|---|
1 | full stack | 199 |
2 | full stack developer | 144 |
3 | wordpress | 126 |
4 | react | 73 |
5 | C++ | 64 |
6 | DevOps | 61 |
7 | python | 58 |
8 | javascript | 50 |
9 | node | 45 |
10 | php | 44 |
11 | Angular | 42 |
12 | .net | 40 |
13 | iOS | 37 |
14 | laravel | 35 |
15 | Vue | 35 |
16 | machine learning | 33 |
17 | azure | 30 |
18 | front end developer | 30 |
19 | java | 27 |
20 | Android | 26 |
21 | django | 23 |
22 | data visualization | 20 |
23 | react native | 18 |
24 | ai | 16 |
25 | fullstack developer | 16 |
26 | data science | 11 |
27 | backend developer | 8 |
28 | frontend developer | 6 |
29 | scraping | 6 |
30 | TypeScript | 6 |
31 | back end developer | 5 |
32 | game developer | 4 |
33 | artificial intelligence | 2 |
34 | amazon web services | 1 |
35 | Firebase | 0 |
36 | springboot | 0 |
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Rank | Skill / Category | Number of freelancers earning at least $60/hour, minimum 100 billed hours last 6 months |
---|---|---|
1 | copywriter | 84 |
2 | editor | 59 |
3 | content writer | 31 |
4 | marketing writer | 18 |
5 | technical writer | 16 |
6 | copywriting | 15 |
7 | seo writer | 14 |
8 | business writer | 11 |
9 | blogger | 8 |
10 | creative writer | 6 |
11 | grant writer | 6 |
12 | proofreader | 6 |
13 | author | 5 |
14 | financial writer | 5 |
15 | ghostwriter | 5 |
16 | medical writer | 5 |
17 | creative writing | 4 |
18 | legal writer | 4 |
19 | health writer | 3 |
20 | sales writer | 3 |
21 | tech writer | 3 |
22 | bid writer | 1 |
23 | blogging | 1 |
24 | finance writer | 1 |
25 | ghost writer | 1 |
26 | ghostwriting | 1 |
27 | press releases | 1 |
28 | proofreading | 1 |
29 | white paper | 1 |
30 | ghost writing | 0 |
31 | screenwriter | 0 |
32 | screenwriting | 0 |
33 | speech writer | 0 |
34 | travel blogger | 0 |
35 | travel blogging | 0 |
36 | travel writer | 0 |
(Want to become a pro writer? Do it for cheap with this list of the best writing courses on Udemy.)
We collected our data for this study over a two-day stretch: January 20-21, 2019.
Data was collected manually by searching Upwork freelancer profiles and performing calculations in this spreadsheet:
Here’s a quick video showing how to use the spreadsheet:
(Note that you must be logged in to Upwork to search for freelancer profiles. It doesn’t matter if you’re logged in as a client or freelancer β the search results will be the same.)
We used the following filters while searching on Upwork (pre-selected for you here):
Combined, those filters allow you to see all the freelancers on Upwork who currently charge $60 or more, and have billed 100+ hours in the past six months.
That roughly translates to a minimum of $6000 earned in the past six months, or an average of $1000/month.
In other words, those filters effectively give you an answer to this question:
Hey Upwork, how many freelancers have earned at least $1000 per month on your platform over the past six months?
When we ran the numbers, the answer was 2,728.
2,728 freelancers on Upwork have earned at least $1000 per month over the past six months.
To see how many freelancers fit the criteria within a specific skill or category, use the advanced title search, like this:
More details for each of those filters…
This filter shows us freelancers on Upwork who currently charge at least $60 per hour. This is the highest option available in Upwork’s “hourly rate” search filter.
This excludes agencies from the search.
For our purposes, Upwork’s search results are unusable if we include agencies, as they can specify a broad range of hourly rates. That makes it impossible to know how much they’re actually billing clients.
Here’s an example of an agency showing up in an unfiltered search:
Two closely related filters.
Combined, they show us freelancers who have been active doing billable client work on Upwork in the past six months.
This eliminates freelancers who might have earned a lot on Upwork 1-2 years ago, but haven’t been doing much work on the platform lately.
Freelancers usually specify their primary skills in their profile title(s). This filter lets you search for keywords within those titles.
Our aim with this study was to better understand which freelance skills are paying the best right now.
While the results do provide some useful insights, they should be interpreted with caution, for the following reasons…
Upwork is recognized as the largest freelance marketplace in the world (source).
That makes it an ideal target for this kind of study, as it’s as good a representation of the entire freelance industry as is available.
That said, Upwork remains a single freelance marketplace, and may differ in significant ways from others.
For example, zero life coaches met our criteria on Upwork, but coach.me lists several life coaches who look to be regularly earning at least $60/hour.
We used Upwork’s built-in search to collect our data, but private freelancer profiles are not included in Upwork’s search results:
It’s unknown what percentage of Upwork profiles are set to private, or how many freelancers with private profiles would fit our search criteria.
Our keyword search is limited to profile titles, and not every profile title accurately describes the skill(s) of the freelancer.
For example, it’s possible that a successful freelance copywriter could have a profile title like thisβ¦
…and would therefore never show up in a title search for “copywriter” or “copywriting”
We had to filter out agencies for reasons explained above, but there are surely many agencies on Upwork who regularly bill $60/hour or more.
The search filters we used for the study show us freelancers who currently earn $60/hour or more. But we can’t know how long their rate has been that high.
It’s possible that a freelancer like this could show up in our results:
Here are some other interesting findings from our study…
As noted above, our study shows that 2,728 freelancers on Upwork have earned at least $1000 per month over the past six months.
According to Wikipedia, there are twelve million registered freelancers on Upwork, which would mean about 0.02% of them earn a decent income.
That’s 1 in every 5000.
However, 12 million freelancers is likely too high a number.
Up until mid-2019, you could see in Upwork’s search results how many freelancers were on the platform:
There are surely more freelancers on Upwork now, but let’s roll with that number of 2,164,157 total freelancers.
That would mean only 0.126% of freelancers on Upwork have earned more than $1000/month in the past six months.
Or put another way:
For every 800 freelancers on Upwork, only 1 earns more than $1000 per month.
Many freelancers on Upwork declare themselves to be an expert, professional, guru, wizard, or ninja.
According to our search criteria, here’s how many of each have earned at least $1000 per month for the past six months:
Key takeaway: if you must brag, call yourself an expert 😎
Let us know in the comments below.
This article is part of an 8-part series:
I am new to online marketing and have no idea on how to setup a web page, add content etc., and earn money online. I came across Clickbank and assumed that this could be good starting point to my online experience. Could you reference any affiliate programme with similar potential as clickBank and the potential of making a online business my full time income source.
Thank you for your ebiz facts.
Hi David,
ClickBank is an affiliate marketplace, where you can find lots of products to promote. Generally I don’t think the quality of those products is very good. You can also be an affiliate for Amazon, but their commissions are very low. I think you’re better off just finding a product you use and like yourself and then signing up for its affiliate program, if it has one.
Honestly though, finding products to promote is easy enough. The hard part is creating content and building a relationship with your audience so they’re likely to trust your recommendations.