Top 12 Highest Paying Freelance Jobs in USA : Astonishing

Freelancing has become the latest trend in the professional world. After all, who wouldn’t love to set their convenient work hours and deadlines while enjoying an excellent work-life balance! Freelancers don’t work for a particular company or organization; instead, they work for multiple clients simultaneously. Essentially, freelancers are their bosses. They can work remotely from anywhere across the globe and earn money on a job-by-job basis, charging hourly or daily rates for their services. 

Freelancing job opportunities have many benefits over full-time jobs, such as:

•  Flexible working hours
• Better work-life balance
• Work from home convenience
• There’s a high pay potential in some industries such as IT, software development, digital marketing, etc. 

If you’re curious about freelancing jobs, we have come up with a list of the highest-paying freelancing jobs in the USA. Here we’ll explore some of the highest paying freelance posts for seekers to consider. Who knows, one of these jobs may be your ultimate calling!

What are the career fields in which freelancers can choose to work?

Freelancers work in many different sectors across various industries. Some of the popular fields for freelancers include education, IT, accounting & finance, law, real estate, digital marketing, advertising, customer service, communications, sales & marketing, and therapy. Freelancers in these industries can bag positions like teachers/education counsellors, IT developers/graphic designers, financial consultants, legal advisors, writers/editors, marketing/sales executives, social media strategists, and communications executives, to name a few. 

Thanks to rapid digitization and globalization, freelancers can take up job opportunities globally. As a result, freelancing opportunities are booming, creating numerous job opportunities for professionals not looking to be bound within the 9-5 routine. 

The highest paying freelancing jobs in the USA

We have curated a detailed list of all the current highest-paying jobs in the USA. If you wish to work as an independent employee, enjoy the benefits of remote working, and maintain a work-life balance, here are some of the most popular options for you:

1. Website designer and developer

Prevailing salary(average): $45,000 per annum.

Website designers prepare the overall design of websites. They cater to varying design and development needs, ranging from website updation, creating backup files, creating and editing website content, etc.

Main responsibilities: 

• Planning and designing the website layout 
• Creating and writing codes for planned websites
• Preparing web pages and their display text, graphics, images, video, sound, etc. 

2. Computer programmer

Prevailing salary(average): $47,700 per annum

Computer or software programmers mainly freelance on a contractual basis and work with many clients, just like writers and designers. Computer programmers write and test codes to power up various computer programs and applications. They also translate designs developed by software engineers and developers into functional code. Additionally, they expand or update existing code and test them for possible errors/bugs and fix them accordingly.

Main responsibilities: 

• They develop software for computers and web-based applications.
• Design and test computer systems, operating systems, and database structures. 
• They also provide consultations to offer the best IT solutions to cater to clients’ requirements. 

3. Graphic designers

Prevailing salary(average): $49,000 per annum

People working as graphic designers work with different customers to foster visual ideas utilizing actual drawings or software program development. Graphic designers use these visual ideas to make general plans and formats of various business applications, including notices, graphical reports, and magazines.

Main Responsibilities:

• Create interactive visuals for mobile and web applications. 
• Use design software or hand-drawing images and layouts.
• Test graphic designs across various media.

4. Tutor

Prevailing salary(average): $55,550 per annum

Teachers work with pupils of different ages from diverse cultural and economic backgrounds. Freelance faculty members help students learn fundamental concepts and achieve academic success. They use various teaching methodologies to explain different subjects, theories, and concepts best to learners. 

Main Responsibilities: 

• Plan exercises and practice activities.
• Evaluate students by taking regular mock tests.
• Provide feedback to the students.

5. Marketing/Sales specialist

Prevailing salary(average): $58,362 per annum

Marketing and sales experts assist businesses with meeting their client’s demands effectively. To do this, they evaluate the market information that gives understanding into what clients buy, where they want to spend, the business’s sales objective, what kinds of goods sell most often, and how much customers ordinarily spend on a specific product. This information helps showcases what the customers need and what business contributions would be most appropriate for clients.

Main Responsibilities:

• Conduct market research to identify target users and define the different buyer personas.
• Understand the client’s demands and create unique strategies to cater to them.
• Market and promote the product targeted towards the right audience.

6. Accountants

Prevailing salary(average): $55,697 per annum

Accountants interpret and engage in record keeping of a business’s financial transactions, processes, and documents company or firm. Accountants who choose to work as freelancers on a contractual basis must work with multiple clients, such as individuals, small startups, or companies. This helps prevent them from the hassle of being bound by non-compete clauses of full-time employment contracts and having multiple earning options.

Main Responsibilities:

• Monitoring and tracking financial processes.
• Auditing and analyzing financial performance
• Offering actionable advice on boosting returns and reducing costs.

7. Virtual assistants

Prevailing salary(average): $57,860 per annum

A virtual assistant offers administrative services to all their clients remotely from their home office. They typically schedule appointments, take phone calls, make travel itineraries, and manage emails and other online activities for their clients. This job opportunity has picked up a lot of popularity in light of the pandemic and has become one of the best-paying freelancing jobs.

Main Responsibilities:

• Remotely assisting people and solving their issues.
• Schedule appointments and organize meetings.
• Manage contact lists and calendars.

8. Editors

Prevailing salary(average): $58,000 per annum

Editors edit and correct written content and manuscripts prepared for publication. Freelance editors work on magazines, journals, newspapers, and even books. Contractual editors work in different content genres, including copy editing, script editing, or story editing. This is a very diverse and creative profile apart from having lucrative pay.

Main Responsibilities:

• Proofread and align the content to meet and exceed client expectations.
• Check the basic nitty-gritty of a content piece.
• Adhere to established publication standards to churn out top-notch content.

9. Writers

Prevailing salary(average): $62,068 per annum

A freelance writer works with both individual and multiple clients on a contractual basis. They also work with various corporate giants and businesses to generate quality content for their applications or websites. Freelance writers write content for websites, social media, books, news articles, journals, product catalogues, magazines, or periodicals.

Main Responsibilities:

• Creating quality and error-free content
• Writing, editing, and proofreading content
• Copywriting 

10. Social media Managers

Prevailing salary(average): $65,259 per annum

The role of social media managers has become very popular in this digital world. They create and publish engaging content for their customers on their social media platforms such as Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc., for building the brand’s online presence and generating the brand’s following. A social media manager engages customers, monitors and measures different social media metrics, and oversees the different creative factors of keeping the social page updated.

Main Responsibilities:

• Creating innovative content for social media platforms. 
• Juggling multiple social media accounts simultaneously.
• Building brand awareness to boost customer engagement.

11. Business consultant

Prevailing salary(average): $73,215 per annum

A business consultant works on a contractual basis for providing management consulting to organizations. Their main job is to offer suggestions and foolproof techniques to improve the overall productivity, performance, and efficiency. A business consultant also analyses a company’s processes to identify possible solutions to take the brand closer to reaching its goals and vision.

Main Responsibilities:

• Plan, arrange and manage different business projects.
• Design detailed business strategies to enhance overall business performance.
• Track and monitor KPIs to measure progress. 

12. Human resources consultants

Prevailing salary(average): $76,576 per annum

A human resource advisor collaborates with the human resource team of companies and aid in providing solutions to help improve an employee’s professional relations. They help human resource directors or senior HR managers develop and oversee complaint resolution procedures, facilitate positive dispute resolution mechanisms, create effective and ethical recruiting practices, and integrate various employee benefits in company policies.

Main Responsibilities:

• Advise senior management on improving recruiting strategies.
• Negotiate the terms and conditions of employment with potential employees.
• Train hiring managers on proper interview and evaluation techniques.

Upskill with upGrad

If you want to become the most eligible job seeker in the USA, opt for the Business Analytics Certification Program on upGrad. By pursuing this course, you can incorporate the development process and product design by innovating ideas for creating prototypes for market launch. This course is well developed to help you achieve an analytical mindset and gain expertise in problem-solving in a highly data-driven way. 

This curriculum is designed in a way that you will develop the best and innovative methodologies to build a solid project portfolio. Plus, you enjoy the perks of networking with upGrad’s vast network of learners and professionals worldwide!

Conclusion

n a pandemic-ridden world where many faced arbitrary layoffs and sudden loss of jobs, freelancing opportunities came to their rescue to help them get back on track professionally. Also, with the growing popularity of remote working habits, freelance jobs work best for people who love to operate independently, commanding a high degree of flexibility from their profession. 

We hope this article gives you enough lead on the most promising freelancing opportunities in the US!