Never Forget: Skills Pay the Bills

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.