What are the best skills to learn to freelance? I imagine it’s something like editing wordpress templates? What other skills are great for freelance?
Being able to find the right clients.
This is a very subjective answer but I think its the single most important one because if you can’t find clients and get the right kind of work, then it doesn’t matter how skilled you are with the technical side of things.
“Right” is also subjective in the sense you could be searching for clients that fit your skills, but find you aren’t getting paid enough for the work they are asking for to live, or at least make it worth your time.
Finally, even if you do find the right client, are able to do the work, and meet the deadlines and requirements, you will need to start the process over with a new client which may or may not be right for you.
Focusing on the technical side of things as a freelancer is important, as without the technical skills, it becomes harder to execute. However, without the ability to find the right clients you could easily end up wasting your time and or becoming stressed out with the wrong clients.
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I think the top skills are not technical ones.
- Finding clients
- Making the Sale
- Delivering value
- Communicating
Not necessarily in that order.
Learn the skills of selling and the soft skills. So many times we see the freelancer have no idea of a sales process, handling objections, trials closes and closing a client to get their true value. NOT underselling themselves to make more money. And as said before… working with better clients AND making more money to live a comfortable lifestyle.
These are very obvious. I am looking for the technical skills that are most marketable as a freelancer. What kinds of people you most likely to work with and what is the most efficient way to meet their needs.
thanks for you r replies so far 
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- people, who have a high sense of trust, because you are the expert
- rich people, because they don’t nitpick about money, because they have enough
- rich people, because they don’t waste my time by micromanaging, because they have more valuable tasks on their own schedules
- don’t waste their time (“which brand logo do you like more?” etc.)
- extremely clear communication (e.g. asking clear questions instead of relativizing the question with “this is obvious” after 3 people replied to your initial question)
- high price
You’re missing the point slightly. What everyone has posted is the answer to this:
What are you good at? And what do people you know need (with respect to programming/software development)?
If you work freelancing, you would be running a business.
Do you know a lot of people who need WordPress templates editing? Do you think this will be a good business to go into?
And the skills involved aren’t really “editing WP templates”, which is an implementation detail, they are knowing enough about
- PHP
- WordPress’ architecture
- HTML
- CSS
- JavaScript
- normally Apache
- putting the above together so that a client can see the result
To be able to quickly take some spec and turn it into something a client wants.
I know what you’re getting at, but there isn’t a magic technology stack that you learn to be a freelancer. You are literally selling your expertise in something.
If that something is a nebulous “making websites”, then a client is asking for a product, it’s up to you how you make it. If it’s something more specific, then it’s going to be based on some specific skill you have.
It doesn’t necessarily have to involve any code, the client often doesn’t care – if you made them something that was just from a template built in a GUI, how would they know the difference? That’s not a rhetorical question – of you can answer it, then maybe you have found something that might work as a business (maybe not, but it’s likely some area that’s worth investigating).
So the advice everyone is giving is spot on.
There are loads of threads on this on the forum, so do search.