5 Skills You Can Learn During Recession That Will Help You Earn Money
The worldwide lockdown owing to the COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected businesses and hence, people. With a prolonged period of the lockdown and no surety as to when it will be lifted, the fear of a second and bigger recession is looming. While some countries are trying to avoid this situation by partially relaxing the lockdown, given that today’s economy is a global one, one country that is affected by the recession may bring the world economy down.
As such, there is no saying as to what percentage of businesses will get shut and how many people will lose their jobs across the world. In fact, the cracks are already appearing in different countries with small businesses shutting down. Case in point, the lockdown in India for close to two months has already forced several small businesses to shut while a significant percentage of the local immigrant population is heading back to their home towns.
In such a situation, wouldn’t it be nice to learn a few skills that may help you earn some money in the worst-case scenario? Recession or not, these skills can definitely help you put a little extra money in your pocket.
Here are five skills that are simple to learn and can be easily put to use.
Photography
Professional Photography
With the emergence of various social media platforms, quality content is becoming increasingly important for organisations to reach out to their target audience and keeping them engaged. This has created a huge demand for professional photos and photographers who can capture photos that make products and services look attractive enough to a potential customer to make a quick purchase decision.
Services of professional photographers are also taken by traditional businesses and service providers. For example, photos can be taken of restaurant interiors or of a jewellery house for creating their commercial advertisements. This has created a surge in demand for professionals with good photography skills. With this growing demand, there are more opportunities for earning and gaining recognition.
Now, it may sound a little challenging to go outdoors and start taking photos during a lockdown, but you can start small and use your creativity and then, expand from there.
Digital marketing
Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is one of the most sought after skills by both small and large businesses today. While there is a huge requirement for digital marketing professionals, companies often complain about the difficulty of finding someone who is highly skilled in the field. Most often, the projects are outsourced to agencies, which charge big bucks for their services.
Hence, good knowledge and skills in digital marketing can provide you with that edge whether you are looking at clinching a freelance project or finding a job opportunity in today’s highly competitive market. Some of the skills needed for you to become a digital marketing professional include search engine optimisation (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, and analytics.
To learn digital marketing, you can check out various free and paid sources as well as courses online. Some of the popular sources for digital marketing are Moz, SEMrush, Ahrefs and Google’s digital marketing course.
Writing
Writing
Writing is a skill almost anyone can learn with relative ease. All you need is to have a little bit of creativity and a mindset to share your knowledge. A good knowledge or command over English could be an added advantage but not a necessity. In fact, the blog you are reading right now is written by a person who doesn’t have any special skills. And if you feel that this is a decent article, then you too can make it as a writer.
And what’s more? You can try your hand in different forms of writing. If you feel that you don’t have much creativity but you have knowledge of a particular field, you can start blogging. If you believe that you are good storyteller, you can choose to write a novel, poetry or nonfiction. Else, if you feel that you are quick-witted and have a knack for attracting people with words, you can try your hand at copywriting. Moreover, the earning opportunities are endless for a writer. As you improve your skills, your earnings too can increase.
You just need to have a willingness to ink your thoughts on a computer or paper. The rest of the skills you need can be easily learned through various free sources available online.
Creative designing
Graphic Designing
According to a recent report by World Economic Forum (WEF), creativity will be one of the most important skills hiring managers will look for in 2020. Graphic designing and creative designing are the most creative ways of conveying a brand story to an organisation’s audience. As such, these professions can be expected to witness an increase in demand.
Creative designers are usually sought after by organisations in their marketing efforts by producing materials such as posters, brochures, ads and infographics among others. What makes a creative design or graphic design professional more valuable is their ability to work with different types of design software such as Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator to produce creative work for their clients.
If you would like to explore graphic and creative designing, there are several free and paid courses available. There is also a range of tools available, from free software such as Canva to licensed tools such as Adobe Photoshop. Depending on the affordability, you can utilize these tools and courses to start learning graphic designing.
Coding
Programming
Programming is a vast field with different types of computer languages available for different purposes, from creating a simple and static website to programming an advanced robot. The trick is to identify what you would like to do in the field of programming and the language that is in demand which can help you achieve that goal. For example, if you want to create a scalable web application, some of the most sought after languages and frameworks today include AngularJS and ReactJS. On the other hand, R is one of the most commonly used languages for Data Analysis and Machine Learning.
The best way to learn to code is to identify a simple language and create a simple application. Once you improve your programming skills, you can start exploring more advanced features and eventually start learning more complex programming languages. Most of the common programming languages have free tutorials and developer forums available, which can help you learn the language with relative ease.
What do you believe are some of the skills you can easily learn that can create an additional income stream for yourself? Let me know in the comments box below.
Comments
Umesh Chandra Bhatt from Kharghar, Navi Mumbai, India on October 18, 2020:
Nice article. Informative and useful.
Karthik Kashyap (author) from India on May 24, 2020:
Thank you for the feedback, Niks and Ashwini.
Niks from India on May 22, 2020:
An excellent topic which is very helpful in these days of lockdown where the world is going through a big recession. I m already learning the writing skills these days. Thanks for putting the light on these skills. I will definitely look to learn other things like photography and marketing.
Ashwini Kini from Dakshin Kannad on May 22, 2020:
happy to read this
