I make 6 figures as a freelancer in Los Angeles. Here are a few skills that have a huge market in nearly any city.

Graphic Design

“But I’m not an Artist!” Stop it. You don’t need to be an artist, whatever that actually means. You can learn the skill.

Find a couple of small businesses near you, and see what their needs are. Many small businesses desperately need social content, and you could fill that need.

Go as deep as you like, but you need to learn a few basic principles of design to build a foundation. I used, and love, this video. It’s clear, concise, and very visual.

TikTok Advertising

I’m in LA, the entertainment capital of the world. The vast majority of TikTok experts even in this city have no idea what they’re doing, or even how to give a proper weekly report.

Get on TikTok, educate yourself in the NOW, and start thinking of 3, 5, 7 friends with small businesses. How can you apply current trends, or consistent posting, to help grow their brand?

You might’ve expected Instagram or Facebook Advertising, but in my opinion those are now far too overpriced. When iOS 15 rolled out, Facebook lost a mountain of data on its users that made it much harder to target new customers.

On TikTok, just a few things matter. First, people need to watch it all the way through. Make it very engaging, interesting, suspenseful, or satisfying to keep people around. Replays, the same person watching the video more than once, gives you extra points in the algorithm. Tagging friends in the comments, or sharing posts also helps the algorithm immensely.

For these reasons, TikTok is probably the best place to start posting interesting content of any production value. If you genuinely try to make things people will enjoy, it will do well.

Make Your Own Content

Here on Medium, I just write about what I know about. At times it’s marketing, other times it’s philosophy I’m pondering.

On TikTok, I make high production value videos giving quick quotes, tips on life, dating, and freelancing.

On YouTube, I show my work and show off my skills.

Each of these channels for me is very small. Medium and YouTube are under 500 followers/subs. My TikTok is larger, at almost 12,000.

But the idea is to start giving back a lot to the communities that built me up. I want to cross disciplines and bring new things to each. In turn, maybe it can become another income source.

You can bet on yourself in that way too. What do you love, and know really well? Give back to that community, on whatever platform you like best.