15 High-Income Skills that Can Make you Rich (without College!) – Tiffany Domena
If you’re looking for a list of high-income skills to help you take better control of your financial security, you’re in the right place. Here, we’ll be discussing 15 high-income skills and where you can learn them!
The workforce is changing. Job security is no longer as safe as a bet. It’s important for each person to secure their own future by developing skills that are valuable to the marketplace, and that translates well into a job, a business, a side hustle, or as a freelancer.
What are High-Income Skills
Dan Lok is a leading business consultant who broadcasted the concept of acquiring a high-paying skill as the entry-way into starting a business and becoming wealthy. According to Lok, a high-income skill is:
A skill that can make you a minimum of $10,000 per month, which is a healthy six-figure income. A high-income skill is a skill that delivers value to the marketplace, that you can charge a lot of money to deliver.
High-income skills enable you to work independently because the demand is sufficient to replace a job. A high-income skill offers more financial security than a job because:
- You can control your prices
- You can control your income
- You can have more schedule flexibility and pick the times you’ll work
- and, You can choose to work with a broad pool of customers or a narrow one
Of course, you can’t forget this quote by Sam Walton that says:
There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
So, you’ll have to keep your pricing, schedule, and customer qualification standards in context with the market, but a high-income skill can give you a lot of flexibility and enjoyment because you participate in the process, whereas, most jobs will control your pay and pay increases.
If you’d like to see the 15 High Income Skills in video format, check it out here:
Statistics on Job Security
Added to the flexibility of a high-paying skill, Forbes contributed to the discussion on the change of job security by illustrating this story. They said:
Picture a newly-minted MBA – a finance specialist who earns more than $120,000 per year, working just over 50 hours a week. Not a bad gig, right? Except he’s not working on Wall Street (where he’d be putting in far longer hours) or at a Fortune 500 company. Instead, he was Jacob Morgan’s Uber driver on a recent San Francisco trip.
Employees who want to go up the pay scale to achieve more than the middle class must take on lots of responsibility, typically that comes with long hours, and they can still abruptly lose their job without regard to their performance. Employees lose their jobs for reasons like:
- Poor management of the company finances (even if the employee had no connection with the financial management)
- The company found someone with comparable skills at a lower cost of living economy
- Technology replaces many of the duties
- Or, even the “good ole boy system” causes them to replace a hard-working employee with an “inner circle buddy”
Whereas, there’s a growing number of opportunities for people of all skill levels to work independently and get paid very well. All of this contributes to stats gathered by Pew Research like:
- 6 in 10 adults (63%), believe there is less job security today than it was 20-30 years ago
- 80% of American respondents say outsourcing jobs overseas is a threat to American jobs
- 77% say foreign products sold in the US is a threat to American jobs
- and, 70% say the internet and technology is a threat to US jobs
Why High-Paying Skills are a Better Route
High-paying skills are the best way to ensure your financial security. If you develop skills that are valuable enough to the marketplace that people are willing to pay high prices, it can eliminate a lot of financial uncertainty that other people have to deal with at some point or another.
But, you might be asking, “what are high-paying skills?”. Having high paying skills means you’ve mastered a trade or activity that people pay very well for. Here is a list of 15 high-income skills to give you some ideas:
1. Lead Generation
Lead Generation is quite a broad category. It includes any skill that helps businesses to get more customers. This includes:
- Paid ad management
- Paid ad setup
- Search engine optimization
- Social media marketing
- Promotional Product advertising consulting
- Marketing consulting
- Sales
- Email marketing
- and, any other activities that can attract customers for businesses
2. Internet Marketing
Internet marketing overlaps a lot with lead generation because it’s a smaller subset of it. Internet marketing is the ability to use the internet to attract more customers for a business. In addition to many of the skills I included above, internet marketing can also include:
- Ad creation
- Digital content creation
- Graphic design
- Blogging
- Podcasting
- Online market research
- Video Marketing
- and more
3. Copywriting
Copywriting is the skill of selling thru words. It includes buyer psychology, persuasive writing, and sales. Copywriters are valuable to the market because a highly skilled copywriter can create a sales letter or advertisement copy that can generate very high returns.
4. Public Speaking
Public speaking enables you to get a message across to many people at once. A good public speaker can help to evoke positive change and action within a crowd, and many companies are willing to pay speakers to influence their organizations in that way.
5. Sales
Sales and negative manipulation get confused all too often. Sales should be about influencing people to achieve their goals by connecting them to products and services that would help. Once you get good at connecting ideal buyers with a solution they want, this can largely catapult your success.
6. Consulting
We are social beings, and most people need accountability to achieve their goals. Whether they’re trying to lose weight, stop smoking, build a business, teach their kids to read, or fix their marriage, there are so many challenges people face, and it’s difficult to navigate them alone. As a consultant, you can help people to solve problems in a 1-on-1 setting, group setting, or even thru courses.
7. Entertainment
If you’re a good singer, actor, artist, musician, or comedian, and you can couple that with a captivating performance, people will pay you for that. Entertainers can be paid very well if they know how to attract attention and satisfy those who give it.
8. Investing
Investing is the art of spotting something with the potential to appreciate, and being able to see it thru until it generates a profitable return. Investors can spot things (from artwork and ideas to physical property) invest the money, and transform the opportunity into hundreds, thousands, millions, or even billions of dollars in returns!
9. Technology Innovation
Technology innovators have brought us amazing advancements including the internet, the search engines, social media, e-commerce, and so much more! People who can advance technology that’s currently out, or create new options can also find opportunities to earn very good incomes.
10. Software Development
Software is growing in capabilities. I currently serve to make many things more efficient: from managing projects to keeping track of income and expenses. There’s a lot of opportunities to develop software that can improve efficiency and make life easier for people, and when you do, there is great income potential for you.
11. Web Development
The internet is growing massively: up to 40% of income countries! Despite the growth, there aren’t as many people that know how to customize the internet for various functions. Web developers help to create and customize the internet for various uses, so businesses can conduct their functions online similar (or even better) than they would offline. If you learn coding or website design well enough you can enable businesses to operate in the market online, there are lots of high-income opportunities you’ll find.
12. Mastering a Trade
There are high-income trades like:
- HVAC
- Electrician
- Plumber
- Handyman
- Real Estate Investor
- Property Manager
- Real Estate Agent
- Seamstress
- Blogger
- Youtuber
- and so many more!
These trades offer high demand services to the market and have a wide pool of people who would be willing to pay you well for what you do.
13. Teaching a Trade
Once you’ve mastered a trade, you can consider teaching it. There are likely going to hr people who will want to transition or learn what you do. Teaching a trade can be done in a consulting-style setup or you can teach by creating courses.
14. Leadership
Leading is the ability to influence others. You can lead people you know and those you don’t know, but those who have a larger circle of influence can find ways to monetize that by creating products or services that help those following them to achieve their goals. In that way, leadership can be its own high-income skill.
15. Management
Management is the ability to provide continuity, to track resources, and to provide guidance that upholds a standard. Those that can help with management include:
- Project managers
- Operations managers
- Quality control managers
- Human resource managers
- Marketing managers
- Sales managers
- and more
Where can you Learn these High-Income Skills?
After you’ve decided on a high-income skill you want to learn, the next dilemma becomes, “Where do I learn?”, and I’ve got you covered! These are my two top recommended places to learn high-income skills:
1. Wealthy Affiliate
If you’re looking to learn lead generation or internet marketing, my top recommendation is Wealthy Affiliate. You’ll learn technical skills to grow an online business, multiple ways to drive traffic to a business using the internet (paid ads and organic methods), and you’ll learn multiple monetization options. You can use the skills you learn at Wealthy Affiliate to build your own business or to freelance and build an agency that helps others build theirs. You can create a free account to explore the platform here, or you can check out my full Wealthy Affiliate review and tour here.
2. Udemy
My top recommendation for where you can learn the majority of the other high-income skills (not available at Wealthy Affiliate) is Udemy. They have the widest library of courses with expert instructors that can teach you how to hone the skills on the list including:
- Coding
- Software development
- Project management
- Photography
- Videography
- Operations management
- Consulting
- and more…
Conclusion
High-income skills can give you much more leverage in the market and can enable you to have work opportunities that are more flexible than the traditional job route when done right. You can acquire one or more of these skills to add even more leverage and security. For questions or concerns about this, don’t hesitate to leave your questions and concerns below.
Now, it’s Your Turn…
What are some other high-income skills I left out? Do you have experience with any of these high-income skills you can share? How do you think high-income skills add to financial security?
Leave your answers below.
