11 Freelance Business Ideas for Beginners
I found 11 best freelance business ideas for beginners these are ways that you can either make a little bit of extra money on the side, start a full-time freelancing job, or in some cases even start a business out of this. And I can almost guarantee you haven’t heard of most of these on the list.
11 Freelance Business Ideas for Beginners
Let’s get into it with number one on the list, which is going to be a beta reader.
Beta Reader:
This is somebody who reads and provides feedback on a manuscript or a book before it’s published. And oftentimes you’re going to be offering insights and suggestions to improve the work. Many different authors, publishing houses, and literary agencies are hired for this position.
And because of the nature of the position, because authors usually only put a book out maybe once a year or once every few years, oftentimes this is going to be a freelance type role. Now you might think you have to be a master writer, right?
You’d have to have an English degree or you’d have to be someone who’s been writing their entire life to do this position. But actually, in many cases, they’re going to be hiring people who aren’t masters at writing.
Because the truth is, most of the people who read their books are not going to be literary geniuses. And they want to get feedback from the types of people who are likely to read their books. However, if you are good at writing, this is going to be a good role for you as well.
Now if you get hired for a job in this role, you’re typically going to make around $20 per hour. However, if you do this as a freelancer, you can make much more than that. Some good websites to look into would be guru.com or upwork.com to get started.
So yeah, this is a pretty good one. I’ll go ahead and give it an 8 out of 10 opportunity score.
Color Season Analyst:
My next freelance business idea is going to be a color season analyst.
What? I’m just confused is all. And if you didn’t know what this is, I don’t blame you because I didn’t know what this is either. I’m glad to hear that.
And basically what you do in this position is assess different color trends and you provide guidance on color selection for industries such as fashion, design, and product development.
And you might get hired by fashion companies, interior design firms, cosmetic brands, and consumer product manufacturers. Now obviously in this position, you do have to have a good sense of fashion and you have to be someone who’s into that type of thing.
But color analysts, when they get hired in a job, make about $48,000 to $72,000 a year. And of course, you can make much more than that as a freelancer. So overall, I’m going to go ahead and give this one a 7 out of 10 opportunity score.
Interesting Thing:
Next one of the best freelance business ideas is going to be an exciting thing. And that is a style advisor. There are many different types of style advisors, but the one I’m going to pick is going to be a hairstyle advisor.
Hey, that’s probably something that I could use, huh? Yeah. Have you ever wondered what type of haircut would look best on you? Apparently depending on your face shape, certain types of haircuts look better than others. Now I’m not going to lie, this is something that I’m not very into.
But with that being said, there is a lot of people out there that will pay good money to get this kind of service. Now you can see quite a few gigs online related to this, but really the good money is when you actually work one-on-one with a person. One of my friends is actually a fashion advisor and she basically advises men on how they can dress better.
And she was making well over six figures a year. And part of what she did was of course helping them with their haircut. So yeah, this is another really good one.
I’ll go ahead and give it a seven out of 10 opportunity score. By the way, comment down below if you like any of these or if there are some other ones that you’d like me to cover, and there’s a good chance that I will cover it more in a future video.
Podcast Show:
Next is going to be a podcast show notes writer.
This is someone who creates written summaries and in some cases descriptions for podcasts. This would include key highlights, topics discussed, and relevant links or resources.
Various types of companies, hire podcast show notes writers, including podcast production companies, marketing agencies, content creators, and individual podcasters who seek to enhance their content and engage their audience through informative episode summaries.
Now this also has another benefit of making it much easier for people to discover your podcast by typing in different keywords. So it’s a great strategy to get more people to discover your podcast.
Now, one secret that I’ll tell you here is different types of AI-related software will kind of help you do this.
It’s not perfect, but the AI software will do 95% of the heavy lifting for you. One of those tools is Descript. Now you can see there are many people making money doing this as freelancers online.
On Upwork, they typically charge $25 to $50 an hour. So yeah, this is another pretty good one. I think it’s an untapped market as well.
And if you get good at using the AI software, that can speed up your production by like 10 times. So I’m going to go ahead and give this one an eight out of 10 opportunity score.
Game Coaching:
The next one of the trending freelance business ideas on the list is going to be game coaching.
And this is for my gamers out there who are good at a particular video game. So if there’s ever been a video game that you’ve gotten extremely good at, where you think you’re basically like the top 1% in the entire world, this might be a good opportunity for you. So if your KD on Call of Duty is like 2.5, then you could look into this.
And there’s a story of a 32-year-old high school dropout who turned his video game side hustle into a $105 million startup. He started off by streaming his gameplay, and then he offered coaching to people and made $40,000 right away. And there are lots of different examples of what’s known as eSports coaches as well.
And if you get employed doing this, you’re typically going to make $15 to $18 an hour. However, you can make much more than that as a freelancer. There are also a lot of people online who are making a ton of money coaching in the game of chess.
Chess recently kind of had a resurgence and got extremely popular after the show The Queen’s Gambit dropped on Netflix. There was a bunch of content creators, if you follow chess, you know exactly what I’m talking about, that blew up on YouTube. Now they’re making millions and millions of dollars a year.
And many of them are doing it through coaching or creating online programs. For instance, Gotham Chess is estimated to be making between five and $10 million a year. And by the way, if you want to learn how to make money on YouTube, I do coach people on how to do YouTube myself.
After figuring it out on my own and getting to the point where I was making six figures per month, I kept on getting request after request for coaching. And finally, I started accepting a few people here and there and I ended up getting a ton of people crazy good results.
So some of my students are making more than me now they’re doing multiple six figures per month.
And I do accept a small amount of people for YouTube coaching every month. So if you’re interested in it, and you’re serious about having success on YouTube, you can apply by clicking the link down in the description as well as the pinned comment below. So yeah, game coaching is really big.
It’s getting even bigger. I’m gonna give this one an 8.5 out of 10 opportunity score.
SEO Writing:
Next one of the best freelance business ideas from home is going to be SEO writing.
So SEO stands for search engine optimization. And as an SEO writer, you’d likely be working for what’s known as a blog. A blog is a website that publishes lots of articles.
And these articles are designed to rank on search. So when someone types something into Google, your goal is to be on the first page and even better at the top of the first page. And you accomplish that by SEO writing.
Now, this is seriously one of the most valuable skills you can learn because not only can you get hired as an employee, but you can also do this as a freelancer or you can just start your own freelance business from home. And freelance SEO writers make about $52,000 to $81,000 a year. And SEO writers on Upwork usually charge between $15 and $35 an hour.
Now, the big secret to this one and the way that you’re going to set yourself apart and make a lot more money is specializing. You must specialize in a particular niche. So for instance, you could become a finance SEO writer.
And it’s very easy for people who are finance experts to see whether a writer knows what they’re talking about. The only way you’re going to know what you’re talking about is by writing in that type of niche for a long period. So it’s extremely important if you become an SEO writer to specialize in something.
So there are lots of opportunities to get started on websites like Upwork, Freelancer, Guru, or Fiverr.com. And by the way, SEO is a type of digital marketing. And digital marketing is one of the easiest ways for you to get a job or start making money online.
I’ve interviewed many people on the channel who have been able to get jobs or start freelancing with digital marketing.
For instance, Ivy was able to get into digital marketing after being a server, and she made $65,000 her first year, she didn’t have a college degree or any previous experience. And they were all able to do it through my friend Seth.
He is a world-renowned expert on getting into digital marketing, and he has helped thousands of people get jobs.
And Seth actually does offer a free masterclass where he’s going to go over the different types of digital marketing and which ones might be the best for you and your personality type. You can check that out by clicking the link down in the description, as well as the pinned comment below. So this is a good one.
I’m going to go ahead and give it a 9 out of 10 opportunity score.
Web Researcher:
The next best freelance job is going to be a web researcher. And this is kind of like being a digital detective armed with a mouse and a magnifying glass.
And you’re going to be hunting down information in the vast wilderness of the internet. Think Sherlock Holmes, but with Wi-Fi. Now you might not think this would be worth much.
How hard is it to just Google, right? I mean, everyone can do that. So of course, they’re not going to pay people a lot of money for this, right? No, not exactly. So freelance internet researchers make about $113,000 a year.
And there are many different ways to get paid for doing freelance research. In many cases, it’s going to be a lead generation type role. So you’re going to be searching for people who would make really good leads for a particular company.
And then the company is going to take those leads and try to sell them a product or service. And again, if you’re good at that, that is going to directly contribute to a company’s bottom line. And therefore they are going to pay you extremely well.
So again, you can get started doing this on websites like Upwork. And I like this one. I’m going to go ahead and give it an 8.5 out of 10 opportunity score.
Proofreading and Editing:
Next is going to be proofreading and editing. Now this one is really easy to get into and start making money right away. But it is going to have a lower ceiling when it comes to how much you can make and how much you make is going to vary greatly depending on your skill level and your niche.
So in general, editors and proofreaders make about $51,000 to $80,000 a year. And proofreaders on Upwork make about $18,000 to $35,000 an hour. There are also lots of different websites where you can apply for these different proofreading-related jobs and gigs.
Proofreadingservices.com is going to be one of them. Flexjobs.com is another. And yeah, this one is relatively easy to get into and start making money, especially if you’re good at English.
And it’s even easier if you’re bilingual. But it does have a lower ceiling. So I’m going to go ahead and give this one a 7.5 out of 10 opportunity score.
Voiceover Actor:
Next is going to be a voiceover actor. And you’ve probably noticed there’s lots of different content out there that’s just a voiceover where you never see the person’s face. Whether you’re watching Netflix with David Attenborough, or you’re watching random faceless channels on YouTube.
And guess what? These channels have to hire voice actors for this. And voiceover artists make $57,000 to $105,000 a year. Now this one is a bit harder to break into.
You kind of have to establish yourself and establish your brand to get steady, stable work. But there are websites like Voices.com, Upwork.com, and Flexjobs.com, where there are a lot of opportunities. So this is one where you’re probably not going to make much money right off the bat.
But once you get a few jobs, you start getting some good reviews, and you get a few steady, stable clients, this one can take off. However, you typically do have to have really good audio equipment. And it takes a lot of technical knowledge to know how to set that up.
So overall, I’m going to give this one an 8.5 out of 10 opportunity score.
Bookkeeper:
My next freelance job idea is going to be a bookkeeper. And this is a surprisingly good side hustle.
You’re going to be helping out accountants, and usually, it’s going to be during the tax season. So this is kind of a seasonal side hustle, but there are a lot of opportunities here during certain times of the year.
And basically, there are many different things that bookkeepers can do to help accountants out. And accountants kind of, in many cases, just kind of look over everything, and make a few changes here and there.
They’re more in charge of the big-picture strategic part of saving money on taxes, whereas bookkeepers would be the ones who are crunching a lot of the numbers in many cases. And remote bookkeepers make $48,000 to $71,000 a year.
And during tax season, you can make even more than that. So a lot of the time, what will happen is different accounting companies will just hire you for a contract during tax season, you’ll make a bunch of money, and then the next year, they’ll hire you again. But you can also advertise your services as a freelancer on websites like Upwork.
And a lot of normal companies will just hire you to balance their books and make sure everything is kept up so that tax season is less stressful. So overall, this one is surprisingly good. You can make a ton of money with this, you can also get hired for a full-time job with it.
And there are even people who start their own bookkeeping companies. So I’m going to go ahead and give this one a nine out of 10 opportunity score.
Social Media Manager:
Next one of the trend freelance job ideas is going to be a social media manager.
So this is basically where you manage the social media of a company or a brand. And more and more companies are using social media to reach their ideal clients. And it’s honestly one of the easiest and most cost-efficient ways of acquiring customers.
But somebody needs to be there to manage it. And that’s where you come in as the social media manager. Now for jobs, social media managers make about $64,000 a year.
But if you specialize in a particular platform, for instance, being a social media manager for YouTube or Instagram, you can make much more than this as a freelancer. And there are lots of different opportunities on websites like Upwork, for instance. So yeah, this is another really good one.
I really like this one, actually. I think the creator economy is just blowing up. And it’s very obvious when you see people like the billionaires on the All In podcast creating content, that content is the way to go.
