Today we’re going to be talking about how to build a marketable skill set.

This is the second part in a little series. I’m going to be talking about each essential stage of freelancing. So this post shares some tips about the second stage: Building your skills.

Last week we talked about Stage 1: how to choose the perfect freelancing niche…how to determine if you want to be a bookkeeper, a proofreader, a freelance writer, that kind of thing. 

So once you’ve chosen your niche, you’re on to Stage 2: Skills Building. 

If you prefer to watch the video, just scroll down.

So there are two categories in this:

1. You already have the skill set 
2. You have decided to acquire this skill set

Meaning if you’ve chosen, for example, to be a bookkeeper and you’ve kept the books for your company, you already have this skill set, but if you’ve chosen to be a bookkeeper and have no idea what accounting principles are, you need to spend this time acquiring this skill set. 

So those are the two different categories, and there are different lists of requirements to be met at this stage before you should move on to the next stage of online freelancing, which we’ll discuss next week. 

How to Acquire a Marketable Skill Set

So for the ones who are acquiring the skill set and are starting from scratch, there are a few different options that you can take. 

Let’s use bookkeeping as the example:

1. You can find a bookkeeper and pay them to teach you, or trade them for something…if, say, you design websites really well, they might need a website and, in return, they’ll teach you. So you can do something like that and find yourself a teacher. 
2. What you can also do is go to a skills platform, something like Lynda or Skillshare, and the good thing about those is that they’re very affordable. You can find classes that are targeted to your specific needs. 
3. The one that I recommend the most is a skills-based course. 

Now, the wonderful thing about those is that they teach you the skill in a very ordered, structured, and comprehensive way, so it’s very powerful. It’s a really good way of keeping yourself from getting information overload from too many different sources and just making sure you get a very complete education for that skill set. 

A skills-based course will do that for you. So if you need help finding a skills-based course, look at the interviews that I’ve conducted of successful freelancers in their industries and which skills-based course they took to learn the skill set. 

For example, the best skills-based training for virtual assistance is Katie Chase’s Skill-Building Bootcamp.

Another reason why I do recommend skills is because you usually get access to a private group of students, and those students become your colleagues and become your friends, and when you all start marketing, they actually help send you clients and you send them clients, and that’s a very powerful thing, too.

So I also recommend it for that networking aspect. 

How to Monetize An Existing Skill Set

For those of you who already have the skill set, in this stage, what you are doing is you are making sure that you know how to perform your skill set online in the virtual arena. 

So if you’ve only ever kept the books for your company, now I need you to ask yourself, “Can I keep books for a company across the country I will never see physically? Do I need to learn a new accounting software, so that I can perform my service online?”

That’s what you are focusing on in this stage: How do you perform your skill set online in a virtual way? 

So it’s a little bit simpler, not as much to do, not as much work in this stage. 

Those are my tips on building an online marketable skill set. 

It comes from having chosen your niche, so if you haven’t yet chosen your niche, or you want to see that video, go here. 

And let me know in the comments where you’re at!