High-Income Skills for 2023 (Guide with Examples) ??

The journey to financial freedom can be different for everyone. Some invest in stocks while others start (and scale) their own businesses. But in all cases, you need to invest in your skillset to achieve financial success!?

As the world continues to progress faster than ever, it’s important that you stay on top of trends and continue to learn new, high-income skills regularly. You might have learnt a skill such as how Amazon Dropshipping or Facebook Ads work back in 2020, but most probably you would need to polish those skills and catch up with the latest updates!?

Similar to Amazon or FB Ads, there are some skills more valuable than others by nature. So in this article, we'll learn:

• What are some of the high-income skills you can learn?
• What to do if you don't know what skill to choose?
• What should be your next step?

Let's get going. ??

What are high-income skills?

Nowadays, everyone throws around the term ‘high-income skill’ quite often, what does it really mean? Well according to Urban Dictionary, it means ‘a larger salary’ ??

In a more detailed perspective, high-income skills are those skills that are more demanded in the job market and give you higher salary too! If you have a skill that most people have, you won’t be valued as highly. Simple demand and supply:?

Highly demanded jobs + Low supply of skilled people = High-income skills/professions.

With that being said, that doesn’t mean you can't be paid well if you have the same skill as everyone! If you’re specialized in that specific skill with years of experience and a proven track record, you can bet any company or client would throw money at you just to get the job done!?

Examples of high-income skills

In this beautiful age of globalization, we have quite a number of skills that are high-income in nature but we’ll cover only 4 of them here! Who knows we may even have a part 2 of this article in the future? ???

1- Design

The world of design is growing day by day, and the demand for designers is growing even more.?

Let’s face it, you can’t:?

1- Brand your business without a designer.?

2- Have a social media presence without a good designer.

3- Build a good app without good design.

4- Create your user journey without design

And the list goes on ?

You can explore this field altogether, but you can specialize in a certain type of design too! Some of the most in-demand design jobs are UI/UX Design, Motion Graphics Designer, Product Design, Animations Design, and of-course Graphics Designer.?

And not to mention, as the Web3 space continues to develop, more designers are being sought after to create NFT collections and help Web3 founders create a brand around their project that their community loves and admires! So take your time, do your research, explore your options, and make sure to specialize in whatever path you go for. ??

If you’re a creative thinker and have a knack for arts, you can build a good (and passive) income stream by doubling down on your passion! Learn different types of Design and Branding by The Futur for free here!?

2- Copywriting

Copywriting is salesmanship in writing. Have you seen an ad or a website with a nice catchphrase or a witty dialogue? Yup, that’s copywriting.

The best thing about copywriting is how little you need in order to get started and how much you can get in return! You just need a laptop, Google docs, and Wi-Fi and you’re good to go.

But copywriting is less about writing and more about research! You need some basic marketing knowledge for this, for example:

• Customer Persona or Target audience (Who are you writing to?)
• Marketing Campaign objectives (What do you want to achieve from this campaign?)
• Product Benefits (How will your product help the buyer?)?
• USP or Unique Selling Point (What differentiates you from your competitor?)

These are some basic pointers of how copywriting works and how you can get started. If you want to know more, you can head over to Alex Cattoni’s YouTube channel where she shares all sorts of copywriting examples, exercises, and tutorials for free!

And besides, copywriters are highly paid because they’re among those directly responsible for improving sales of any brand. Better messaging in ads = Better Conversions = Better sales, simple!

3- Blockchain Development

2021-2022 was a rollercoaster of a year for the Web3 and NFT world. There have been a number of developments in this space and many big companies like Nike, Adidas, Gucci, Pepsi, and many others made notable entries!

Even though the hype is amazing, there is a worldwide shortage of quality Blockchain developers. However, the best part is that Blockchain Development jobs don’t need years of knowledge or experience. You just need dire commitment and persistence to learn and experiment everyday (and of course good soft skills too). However, it’s recommended that you have good knowledge in Web2 before you dive deep on Web3!

You can also easily get access to free courses on YouTube by talented developers such as those in Dapp University! So start learning and building as you go! I’ll be posting an article this week on how to become a Web3 developer, stay tuned if you’re interested in this space!

4- Data Analysis

Let’s face it, data is the new currency. The new oil. Call it what you like but it doesn’t change the fact that data is like a goldmine for businesses! Gone are the times when businesses used to make decisions based on hunches and assumptions only. In today’s age, every business choice you make should be backed by data.

But that being said, not all every sort of data is valuable. For this, businesses hire people to do this job for them!

Learn how to work with different types of data, how to clean it, understand it, visualize it, and explain it. To learn Data Analysis from scratch, this 8-course specialization by Google & Coursera will be a perfect way to kickstart your data journey! If you can’t pay for the courses, try applying for financial aid for each individual course and you’ll get the course for free in under 15 days! Like you need to learn different languages to code data, you also need to learn different languages to analyze and visualize data. Data analysts use SQL (Structured Query Language) to communicate with databases, but when it comes to cleaning, manipulating, analyzing, and visualizing data, you're looking at either Python or R.

For me, I understand the importance of it, as a marketer myself, data analysis might seem like a totally different field, but honestly it’s required to a certain degree for any role you opt for in any field. As a marketer myself, I need to look at internal BI tools, different ads dashboards, web analytics, app conversions etc, and for that this was an essential technical skill that I had to improve on a daily basis. There’s many ways to get better at it, one is on the job, getting certified, doing self paced learning etc.?

Confused about what skill to choose?

More often than not, it’s not about the skills you can acquire to build more wealth and achieve financial freedom. Sometimes it’s about following what you want to do for the rest of your life. The idea of not following your passion - or at least hating what you do - is our biggest fear. It fills you up with toxicity and regret.

But this problem creates another obstacle: How do I know what skill I would enjoy? And how do I know if it’s the right one for me?

To keep it simple and productive, I like to apply the Japanese method: IKIGAI.

Ikigai is the combo of:

• What you’re good at
• What the world needs
• What you enjoy
• What you can be paid for

A simple example: I may LOVE singing, but I know there’s little chance of me becoming a professional singer player because I never trained in it or learnt it professionally. So I know I won’t be paid for it at least!

Long story short, you won’t get a calling randomly from life, telling you that you’re supposed to be a chef, lead a startup, or join a corporate job. But the good thing is that your choices are under your control!

So if you’re confused on what to do next, a good strategy would be to research and list down 10 skills that you think are cool, then further shortlist any 3-5 that seem REALLY interesting to you. Then start with any random 1 that you feel might be best and then stick to it for 90 days! If after 90 days you feel uninterested to continue, then open your list again and hop on to the next skill, and the best part is you’ll have another 90 days to learn!

I know it might sound like too much time, but it’s better than sitting on the couch, complaining and wasting time on analysis (or Analysis Paralysis as they say), don’t ya think? Even if you don’t go ahead with it, you’ve still built a skill and you can add it to your CV as well!?

Your Next Step

Starting with the 90-day rule that we just talked about, let’s assume you’re sticking to Graphic Designing for now. The best step for you would be to ACT.?

Although that sounds cliche, I see many people spending weeks and months trying to perfect their knowledge or complete a course before applying what they’ve learned. I know this because I’ve been guilty of this too! ??

Learn and apply as you go, and you’ll already have a portfolio of projects by the time you finish a course! Make sure you also network with people online (read: LinkedIn) and share your projects there too! You’ll be able to connect with people on the same journey as you and learn from many industry leaders along the way.

Summary

To wrap it up, there are some skills more valuable than others in the market and it’s majorly because of 2 things:

1- Scarcity of the skill

2- Growing demand of the skill

And because of ever changing business trends, some occupations are *immediately* more needed than others. That’s why you need to be on top of your research game and see what skills you can invest your time and energy in so you can join the high-income skilled club! ??

Just a recap of what we’ve learnt:

• What are high-income skills?
• Some high-income skills you can start learning today
• How to pick a skill if you’re confused?
• What should be your next step?

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought of this article in the comments below. ??