Global Freelance Market Trends – Aug 09

If you are to consult a fortune teller just to be able to tell the future of freelancers, she will surely give you one ‘predictable’ answer— there shouldn’t be any worries at all on these home based workers’ end as earning opportunities through freelance jobs are here to stay. We suppose you remember this exact line from last month’s Global Freelance Market Trends – July 09′ post— well, we are surely not in a lost of words. We are just simply trying to put emphasis on an important fact: Freelance Jobs are a great source of stable income provided that you know where to get projects when you want them. Below are the lists of Top Demanded Skills and Top Searches for the month of August that will help you determine where your freelance career SHOULD be heading now.

50 Most Required Skills

There has been a sudden turn of events for Data Entry as it was replaced by MySQL on its spot on Donanza’s last month’s Top Demanded Skills. MySQL proved to be a rising freelance job as it moved from the sixth spot to the fourth on our current list. SEO also gave way to it by moving from the fourth spot to the fifth. Indeed, freelancers who are skilled on database management, particularly on a system such as MySQL, are undeniably in for some more freelance job opportunities in the coming months.

The movement in the trend is not that drastic at all that it is best to refer to it as a shuffle. This only implies one thing: If your skill is on a high-demand now, it is highly recommended that you continue to hone it in order to be a better value provider for the freelance jobs available for your skill rather than to consider a shift to a different skill that you find interesting at the moment. This is of course just an intelligent suggestion to a freelancer who wants a constant stream of work and income. However, if you do freelance jobs for the sake of being able to use your skills and to self-gratify, this piece of advice won’t really be for you.

DoNanza’s Index Skills Trends – August 2009
#Rank	Skill	#Rank	Skill
#1	PHP (-)	#26	Illustrator (+4)
#2	Website Design (-)	#27	XHTML (+8)
#3	Graphic Design (-)	#28	C/C++ (-3)
#4	MySQL (+2)	#29	Blog (-2)
#5	SEO (-1)	#30	XML (+2)
#6	Flash (+1)	#31	Data Processing (-9)
#7	Data Entry (-2)	#32	Research (-4)
#8	CSS (-)	#33	Excel (-)
#9	Copywriting (-)	#34	Script Installation (-3)
#10	HTML (+1)	#35	Sales (-6)
#11	WordPress (+1)	#36	iPhone (+1)
#12	Javascript (-2)	#37	Link Building (-14)
#13	Photoshop (+1)	#38	Proofreading (-2)
#14	Logo Design (+2)	#39	e-Commerce (+3)
#15	Joomla (-)	#40	ASP (-2)
#16	AJAX (+1)	#41	Technical Writing (+35)
#17	Marketing (-4)	#42	Video Service (+2)
#18	.NET (+1)	#43	Linux (-4)
#19	Content Writing (+7)	#44	Facebook (-1)
#20	SQL (-)	#45	Drupal (+8)
#21	Web Promotion (-3)	#46	Lead Generation (+5)
#22	Social Networking (-1)	#47	Telemarketing (+1)
#23	JAVA (+1)	#48	Internet Marketing (-7)
#24	Advertising (+23)	#49	Animation (+23)
#25	Article writing (+9)	#50	C# (+34)

You may be wondering what the green and red numbers across each skills are for. These numbers are the movement determinants. Through them, you will be able to tell which skills made tremendous leaps on freelance job demands (the green ones) and which ones failed to maintain a good standing on clients’ needs. Amongst those who have made noticeable improvements are technical writing, c#, advertising and animation which number climbed up our list by 35, 34 and 23 slots respectively. Temporary poor performers for this month, however, surprisingly include link building, data processing, internet marketing and sales which demand dropped from our list from the relatively high number of 14 down to 6. This should be no cause for any apprehension though because as it was already mentioned; freelance jobs are here to stay. A favorable trend or a sudden decline on a demand for a skill is perfectly normal— what’s not is you taking it against your own career. No matter how limited your skill has to offer, you are still the manager of your profession. Look for work; they won’t look for you.

10 Most Popular Searches

10 Most Popular Searches
#1	Graphic Design
#2	Writing
#3	Software Dev.
#4	Web Dev.
#5	PHP
#6	Translation
#7	Web Design
#8	iPhone
#9	SEO
#10	Multimedia

Now, we’ve come to the moment of truth. What do you think is the best way to determine if your skill has its appeal to clients? Check our month’s Top Searches! Similar to Donanza’s August Top Demanded Skills list, our Top Searches list has not had much movement. It has just been literally shuffled. It is, however, notable that admin support has been replaced by multimedia on our top ten, but this does pose any possible source of worry to admin support freelancers at all. This simply appears to be a ‘seasonal’ movement to be expected from time to time. After all, freelance jobs never promised stability.

Constant stream of work and earnings are still highly dependent on the freelancer’s competitiveness and resourcefulness. Needless to say, no matter where your skill is on Donanza’s Top Demanded Skills and Top Searches list, it is still entirely up to you to be able to find and ‘bag’ freelance jobs and gigs for yourself. Therefore, equip yourself with the knowledge and proficiency your career field requires— and explore bidding sites such as www.donanza.com which collectively gives you all the opportunities available across the web— and you are surely going to be staying the world of freelancing for a long time while loving it.

Related posts:

1. Global Freelance Market Trends – Sep 09
2. Global Freelance Market Trends – July 09