The hottest gig on the freelance job market isn’t coding or graphic design, as you might expect — it’s writing.
That’s at least according to new research from Freelancer.com, which found creative writing to be the most in-demand skill employers are hiring for on its platform, based on an analysis of nearly 300,000 jobs advertised on the site between April and June.
Even as more companies turn to AI for content creation, the demand for human writers to edit manuscripts, write SEO-optimized blog posts, and draft scripts for creative projects has increased since the beginning of the year, says Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.com.
“AI can’t replace creativity yet,” he says. “We saw a similar trend occur in the first quarter of the year, as creative design jobs were flourishing despite interest for generative AI tripling.”
Other writing-related skills that have become more popular on Freelancer.com include copywriting and ghostwriting, Barrie adds.
An accessible career with six-figure prospects
While some writers find success with a bachelor’s degree, it’s not a requirement to build a successful freelance career. What’s far more important, per Indeed, is the skills you bring to the table: Most writing gigs require fact-checking, research, editing, and a basic understanding of SEO.
You can create an online portfolio with samples of your writing, join a writing group, and network with other writers in your area of interest to find paid opportunities.
Most freelance writing jobs are remote, too, requiring writers to submit and publish their work online. In some cases, writers are able to work from anywhere, and set their own hours, as long as they meet their deadline, according to FlexJobs.
The more experienced you are, the higher you can set your rate: Writers on Freelancer.com charge as much as $250 per hour. At this rate, working as a freelance writer full-time could earn you upwards of $400,000 per year.
How freelance writers are leveraging AI to make more money
Fiverr, another freelancing marketplace, has also seen steady demand for writers despite the rise of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, which was launched in November 2022.
Yoav Hornung, head of verticals and innovation at Fiverr, says the platform continues to see demand for general writing services, like book editing, but also more interest in hiring freelancers for AI-related writing services, like AI content editing — those jobs saw an 80% increase last quarter, compared to the first quarter of 2023.
Gabrielle Gerbus, a freelance copywriter and SEO specialist who splits her time between Thailand and Los Angeles, says she was “a bit scared” at first about the impact AI would have on her job prospects.
But she decided to leverage AI in her professional writing, learning the ins and outs of Chat GPT and other generative AI tools so she could add AI content editing to her repertoire. She charges $100 and up for the service.
That business, the 28-year-old says, has “grown significantly” since she launched it a few months ago.
“Business owners know that high volumes of AI-generated content aren’t the end-all-be-all, it’s more nuanced, it needs a human touch,” she says. “I’m happy to support at any point along the creative journey, and I actually think I can make a sometimes more meaningful impact when I come in to add that human touch to something AI produced.”
Like most venture capitalists, Jennifer Stojkovic receives dozens of inbound messages a day from founders, asking her to review and hopefully invest in their startups.
She doesn't often have the bandwidth to reply to all of them, she said – par for the course for the job. "We have invested in three companies out of 200 pitches, so it's near 99% rejections," she told Insider. As a general partner at the $23 million social-impact emerging fund Playful Ventures, Stojkovic backs early-stage startups in the alternative or sustainable protein market.
But when Stojkovic sent a short rejection message last week to Aaron Dossey, a founder who had pitched her on LinkedIn, she received a hostile response. After explaining to the founder that her fund doesn't invest in "insects," or insect proteins, the founder replied with several expletives and personal insults.
Dossey declined to comment for this story.
After the exchange, she talked about it with her husband, who also invests in food tech startups as an angel investor. The two realized that he had just rejected the same founder – but he wasn't harassed.
"I was in disbelief. We have a pretty uncommon last name and it should be pretty clear to put together that we're married," she said.
Stojkovic posted about the incident to LinkedIn, with screenshots of the two responses. Hundreds of users reacted to the post within just a few hours. The founder continued to insult Stojkovic in the post's comments, and he appeared to delete his LinkedIn profile on Monday. She also received several hundred direct message from friends and connections, saying that they were subjected to this kind of treatment as women in tech, too.
"I would assume probably about 20% of the interactions I get are probably hostile or passive-aggressive in some sort of way, typically from male founders," she said. "It's much more common than you think."
She shared with Insider a screenshot of an expletive-filled email she received from an unidentified email account calling her a "feminist d——-t" as an example. Other incidents Stojkovic said she's faced include a male founder telling her in a recent pitch meeting that she was a "waste of time" and had no idea what she was talking about when she told him his company was not a fit for her fund.
She's also faced bias when speaking with potential investors in her fund, she said.
"When I'm fundraising and asking for people to invest in my fund, I'm treated differently from my male partners," Stojkovic said. "It really is strange that even when you're in a position of authority, where you've actually raised a fund and proven yourself in the industry, that you're still being subjected to this."
It's no secret that the world of venture capital and startups remains male-dominated. In the United States, women make up only 8.6% of all venture capitalists, 8% of firm partners, and 7% of board seats at venture capital firms, according to a 2022 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
For Stojkovic, these numbers point to both a lack of representation of women in venture investing, as well as limited opportunities for women to break into ventures. "Women VCs need to be very vocal and forward and call out the type of bad behavior that's happening, but we also need to be sure that we're represented in the media," she said.
Changing the culture of venture capital and startups will only happen when more women feel like becoming a founder or an investor is a viable career path for them, Stojkovic said. "A big focus of mine is talking to young women —particularly female student groups — about how to get into this industry."
I had always dreamed of having a freelance career and creating my own schedule, but I was initially nervous about leaving the corporate world. I mistakenly believed that freelancing required extensive experience, but in reality, I gained valuable skills and knowledge while working as a content and brand manager and a copywriter for a small B2B tech company.
In April 2019, I took the leap and set up a profile on Fiverr, a popular freelancer platform. I started by offering services related to brand messaging, copyediting, and copywriting, such as crafting pitches or brand statements for $15 and editing 3,000 words for the same price. I dedicated around four to five hours per day to freelancing, working before my day job, during lunch breaks, and after work.
My goal was to match my corporate salary, and within just two months, I achieved that milestone. In May 2019, I made the decision to quit my job and began freelancing remotely while traveling the world with my boyfriend.
As I responded to client demand, I expanded my portfolio of services. Clients who were satisfied with my work started asking for additional tasks like website copywriting, content creation, logo design, and branding. Although I lacked experience in website design, I recognized the importance of meeting clients' needs in order to grow my business. To overcome this challenge, I hired freelancers I knew, including a graphic designer and a web developer, to assist me with projects. By the end of 2020, I had built a team of four or five people, paying them between $20 and $70 per hour for their contributions.
Within four months of starting my freelance journey, I began working with authors, providing editing services for books such as novels and memoirs. Over the course of 2 ½ years, I helped a best-selling author edit five books while also offering assistance in brand strategy, cover design, formatting, publishing, and social media strategy.
In November, when ChatGPT was launched, I noticed a new trend among clients. They started asking if I could edit AI-generated content. Instead of resisting this change, I embraced the opportunity and recognized a potential market among busy small-business owners who relied on AI-generated content but were concerned about their websites and blogs sounding robotic or being penalized by search engines.
When working with clients' AI-generated content, I discovered that editing AI work often required more involvement compared to human-written text and sometimes necessitated full rewrites. Additionally, as plagiarism-detection tools like Originality.ai gained popularity, clients began asking me to demonstrate the difference in their copy before and after my edits using these tools. For example, I would show them how their blog went from being ranked 100% AI-generated to only 15% or 10% after my editing.
As editing AI-generated content proved to be more time-consuming and challenging, I adjusted my pricing accordingly. I now charge $100 to edit up to 3,500 words of regular writing, while for AI-generated content, my fees start at $100 for 2,000 words. The higher pricing reflects the extra effort and time required to transform AI-generated text into more human-like, engaging content.
While AI-generated content can be well-written and organized, it often exhibits elementary sentence structures and repetitive use of client-specified keywords without variation. The sentences and paragraphs tend to be of uniform length, which is uncommon in human writing. Sometimes, when clients attempt to inject personality through prompts, the resulting copy can sound overly enthusiastic.
Although I use AI for various tasks, including generating ideas for blog topics, I prefer to write content myself, ensuring a human touch. However, I haven't yet decided on how to package AI-assisted content generation services and provide them on an as-needed basis.
One of the greatest joys of freelancing is the flexibility it offers. I currently spend approximately five months each year in Thailand, a place where the cost of living is lower. Despite having my own content and copyediting business, Incubix, I still primarily operate through Fiverr. To date, I have earned $244,000 in revenue on the platform since 2019. In 2020, my earnings amounted to $69,600, and this year I have already made $33,200.
What I appreciate most about my job is the freedom it affords me. If I don't feel like working on a random Tuesday, I simply take the day off. For instance, during the summer, while spending time with my family, I only worked two hours per day.
Freelancing has truly transformed my life. Previously, I mistakenly believed that in order to combine work and travel, I would need to pursue careers like National Geographic photographer or travel documentary filmmaker. Today, I am building a house in Thailand and can enjoy the benefits of freelancing while spending a significant portion of the year there.