Company demand for freelance work is increasing by the day. Many workers are quitting their jobs to the point that the industry has dubbed it the Great Resignation seeing as countless skilled workers have left their jobs due to stress, burnout and a plethora of other reasons. Now, faced with a worker shortage and a need to fill gaps quickly, businesses are eager to bring freelancers onboard.

For this reason, it may be worth expanding your skill set to get ahead of the competition. Here is a list of the most in-demand freelance skills this year.

• Website Design
  According to an expert marketing organization, WebFX, almost 90% of customers decide to go with a competitor if a business’ e-commerce website is poorly designed. Companies are aware of this and invest millions of dollars into their designs as the general trend shows that each dollar spent on web design generates $100 in sales.
• Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Programming
  Even though it’s still a fairly new cryptocurrency technology, blockchain has quickly established itself as the #1 data-managing technique. Due to its unbreakable transaction security, companies (especially in law, finance, and logistics) are predicted to invest as much as $15.9 billion into blockchain by 2023. Luckily for freelancers, as it’s such a specific area of expertise, there still aren’t enough experts with sufficient knowledge to code and manage blockchain. That’s why, as long as you have the skills to show, you’re highly likely to find multiple clients looking for a blockchain specialist.
• Graphic Design
  The graphic design market offers a tremendous variety of projects to take on. With 73% of companies investing in designs on their websites and social media posts, freelance opportunities have never been more apparent. With the right skills, you’ll be able to work on projects in marketing, web development, user experience design, and corporate communications, just to name a few.
• Writing and Editing
  With the fast development of online media, 62% of businesses hire external talent to create content on their blogs or virtual magazines. This creates an enormous opportunity for those who know how to catch attention through the written word. As the freelance writing world is overpopulated at times, it’s best to decide and develop the knowledge to create informative and engaging pieces in one specific area. It can be tech, history, medicine, education, motherhood, and so on — there really is no limit. If there’s one specific topic you’re especially passionate about, you’ll have no problem turning it into profit as a freelance writer.
• Videography
  Freelance videographers work with businesses and individual clients to capture their creative vision in video form.The projects range from shooting short ads and promotional clips to creating training videos, or even documentaries. This variety of projects is predicted to create a much bigger demand for videographers with experts predicting a 12% industry growth until 2026.
• SEO
  SEO marketing is another very specific branch of digital marketing that requires freelancers to ensure that a client’s website shows up on the first page of a Google search. Consumers are more likely to use Google to research services and products prior to making a purchase, but 67% of all link clicks go to the first 5 results. This means that companies that don’t rank high enough miss out on potential customers. Even though an increasing number of companies are investing more money in their SEO rankings, the general number of experts in the field is still quite low. If you want to avoid the fierce competition in digital and social media marketing but still enjoy the marketing world, SEO will create the right opportunities for you.
• Meta Marketing
  Meta runs Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and a bunch of other social media channels. There are approximately 3.8 billion social media users worldwide and each one of them is a potential customer to any company active on the internet — but only if its products are marketed properly. In order to grow in popularity and revenue, businesses of all sizes must showcase their services online and they do this by hiring skilled social media marketers.