Transitioning from a traditional nine-to-five to become a freelancer is no walk in the park. You will lose a couple of things like retirement benefits and a steady paycheck. But, you’ll gain so much more- the freedom of movement, ability to determine your own schedule and you’ll generally be more satisfied. A study by ReportLinker revealed that up to 84% of freelancers find a sense of purpose working in the gig economy while another 32% believe that they’re a lot happier than their employed colleagues. Furthermore, there are many freelancers earning a full time income without answering the daily call of 9 to 5. Below are your best bets for freelance careers that can lead to high steady pay. Medical Transcriptionist Before I move onto how much you can, I should explain the role of a medical transcriptionist. This is a trained individual who transcribes, in medical terms, what a physician or clinician dictates following a surgery, patient visit, test results, pathology and more. The field of medicine has a language of its own, consisting of synonyms, antonyms, along with the rules of the English language. Missing just one punctuation mark can alter a whole diagnosis. Based on this, you can already tell that medical transcription requires specialized training. But with training and experience, you’ll be guaranteed of a handsome pay, especially because there’s a surge in demand for medical transcriptionists. A quick visit to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reveals that a full time medical transcriptionist earns an average of $34,000 per year. Payscale.com estimates that, on average, a freelance medical transcriptionist earns $16.48 per hour. However, this rate varies significantly depending on the industry you work in and the number of clients. Freelance transcriptionists who work for insurance firms, specialty hospitals and laboratories are the highest earners. If you’ve never transcribed before, you might try general transcribing first as a good way to practice. Some of the best transcription jobs that are non medical all have very low barrier of entry. Web Developer and Programmer The BLS projects that by 2024, the employment of web developers will have increased by 27% from 2014. That growth rate is faster than the average for all other occupations. This is not surprising given that more companies are relying on their online presence to get that competitive edge. This makes web design and development a lucrative freelancing job. To determine how much they earn, Code Mentor queried 5,302 freelance developers. Unsurprisingly, they found that those working in the U.S. are the highest earners, making up to $70 per hour. This study revealed that other than geographical location, the type of programming language that a developer is skilled in also determined the rate. JavaScript, despite being the most popular, did not command a high pay. Developers skilled in JavaScript earn about $61 an hour while those who deal in AWS earn up to $74 an hour. In a nutshell, how much you earn as a freelance developer varies depending on […]
