Which Skills Are Best for Freelancing in 2025?

Most people go into freelancing with the wrong mindset. They ask the wrong question. That question is:

How can I find a client that will pay me more than my boss did, for doing the same work?

The question implies that you’re a finished product, ready to be swept up by the highest bidder in the open market. But it doesn’t work that way. Not in the first year or two, anyway.

When you switch from full-time employment to freelancing (or, indeed, from joblessness to freelancing) you are a beginner and should act as such until you build your reputation.

The right question to ask instead is:

How do I convert my knowledge into a marketable product?

In the freelancing world, that’s the equivalent of a product-market-founder fit. So, what are the best skills to learn for freelancing?

Forget the trends

Trends only matter in the sense that you need to check whether a market is large enough and stable enough. You don’t need the market to grow exponentially every month.

In fact, be suspicious of such growth because it often ends a year later with the entire market disappearing. Then your shiny, trendy skill set becomes next to worthless. The top skills for freelancing are not found in the “trending topics” section of your favorite social media platform.

Freelancing is different

Remember your goal. You want to become a successful freelancer (an unstoppable freelancer, even). Freelancing isn’t the same as traditional employment. Therefore, the skills that allow you to excel as a freelancer aren’t the same skills that will help you excel in a corporate environment.

Let me explain with a very concrete example.

A lot of career advice out there will tell you to specialize - apparently, the highest-paying jobs are given to narrow specialists. But, as a freelancer, you are not looking for one full-time job. You need skills that will allow you to consistently find high-paying projects.

For this, you need to become broadly resourceful. In the web development world, this means mastering several compatible technologies, as well as various “soft” skills (more on this below).

If tech influencers and their followers dismissively call you a jack of all trades, ignore them. Let them dive deeper into their obscure JavaScript framework that will be outdated in 6 months. Instead, learn the fundamentals that will allow you to thrive in any tech stack.

With that said, we must know the difference between fundamental and obsolete.

So, what skills should you learn to succeed at freelancing in 2025?

Start with the fundamentals

Trends change. The fundamentals don’t.

Every quantum physicist started with a deep understanding of classical physics.

Every freestyle skier started by mastering a regular slope on a pair of regular skis.

Every brain surgeon started with a ton of general knowledge about the human body.

It is only in tech that people have the hubris to think they can be experts at advanced frameworks without understanding the technology underlying them.

Yes, you can use something without understanding how it works. You can drive a car without knowing how an engine operates. The difference is, when the car breaks, you can just call for assistance. In tech, you are supposed to be the assistance. And, trust me, that car will break. Daily.

Don’t learn React before you master JavaScript.

Don’t learn Laravel before you master PHP.

Don’t even think about learning AWS before you have good control of a regular Linux server.

Don’t underestimate people skills

Look at any list of high income skills and I guarantee you will not find things like humility and conscientiousness on there. Yet they are the foundation of many careers.

Our permanently online generation has been conditioned away from people skills and into an illusion of self-sufficiency.

Software developers are, perhaps, the most affected by this. When you have the ability to talk to machines and have them do your bidding, you tend to lose touch with the subtleties of human-to-human communication.

How much can this cost you as a freelancer? It’s incalculable, really. How many projects have you missed out on because the prospect thought you were a bit cold or a bit distant or a bit much? How many referrals have you lost? How many great reviews?

Luckily, it doesn’t have to be this way. Soft skills are hard to quantify, but all skills can be learned and practiced. Here are some great books that will help you improve your soft skills in a business setting:

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Principles by Ray Dalio
Sources of Power by Gary Klein

These aren’t your generic self-help books that you read on vacation, by the way. These books require effort (like every other worthwhile thing in life).

What about AI?

Prompt engineering is all the rage these days.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but prompt engineering is a side skill at best. At worst, it’s just common sense.

No job requirement says “knows how to Google things”. There is no “senior Googler” position in any company. Likewise, don’t expect future requirements to say “knows how to ask AI questions”. There will be no freelance jobs (at least not high-paying ones) labeled “AI chatter”.

There are many uses for AI prompts, but replacing a real skill set is not one of them (at least not in the long term). AI can augment skills, not replace them. Not the same thing.

Remember: if you can ask AI for a solution and AI can actually provide it, you are one step away from being replaced by an API.

Writing will always be a valuable skill

Whether you’re a web developer, designer, or marketing specialist, you must also be a writer. There are no ifs and buts about that anymore - every step on the path to freelance success involves writing:

Copywriting for your profile or website.
Writing proposals or Two Cold Email Examples That Workedcold emails to prospective clients.
Negotiating with the client about project expectations, budgeting, and timelines.
Writing documentation for the project.
Communicating with the client during the project.
Leveraging the successful project for referrals, reviews, improved reputation, and ultimately more projects.

You can use AI to help - but great clients appreciate great writing that exudes trustworthiness, personability, and confidence. Writing like a robot isn’t it.

Final upskilling tips

If there’s one takeaway you get from this article, let it be this: choose skills that work in the long term.

The same applies when you decide to improve your current skill set. Should you specialize or broaden your horizons? That depends on your situation. The important thing is: don’t learn skills in 2025 that will disappear by 2026.

The opportunity cost of taking a wrong turn is just too big to leave it to chance - imagine losing out on two annual salaries of a senior software engineer because you chose the wrong tech stack. You can set yourself back by hundreds of thousands of dollars by following the wrong trends.

That’s as much as I can tell you without knowing the specifics of your situation. If you came here looking for more specific advice, book a consulting call with me and we can leverage 13 years of my experience to help you move in the right direction.