Must Read! Best Skills To Learn in 2019

So, 2019 is here and you seem not to have a clear vision of what you need to do this year- in terms of skills that could fetch you some money maybe as a side or main job. I know the feeling trust me. In this 21^st century, skills are the things that one need- digital skills because we are in a digital age where technology rules.

In this article, we will be looking at a list of best digital skills that you need to learn this 2019 if you want to make money or remain relevant in the IT world. These skills are not only for the year 2019 but for a lifetime.

Many people have built houses and established companies through these skills and they do so by offering their services on different freelancing websites scattered all over the internet. Some of these websites include fiverr.com, upwork.com, freelancer.com, peopleperhour.com, seoclerk.com, etc.

You can check these freelancing websites to have a clearer picture of what we are talking about. The truth is that anybody can learn any digital skill and all it takes is just to be determined, focused and dedicated to the struggle and you will get there.

This list is of no particular order i.e. no skill is better than the other as people make lots of money even from the skill you think is of less importance. A visit to the aforementioned freelancing websites will make you see reasons.

crafting great contents for websites, sales pages, blogs, and indeed for all digital platforms is a very great skill you should acquire in this 2019.

You can watch free tutorials on writing depending on the niche you want to specialize in on YouTube, EDX, or other free tutorial websites, read blogs that cover tutorials on how to write, or you can buy premium courses on Lynda, Udemy, etc. Writing is a skill worth spending money to acquire.

This is the era of eBooks and you could make lots of money researching on a problem, providing a solution for it in writing, sell it and make cool money from it. I wrote an article on how to get started HERE.

You can start a blog just like this one, write great contents that will drive traffic to your blog, and then monetize it using the different ways of monetization. You can use Google AdSense, Media.net ads, affiliate marketing, CPA, or even sell your products on your blog.

You can offer your writing services on several freelancing websites and make cool money. Some earn as much as $5000 to $10,000 dollars monthly on these freelancing websites as a side hustle, while doing their daily jobs.

This is another skill that seems to stand the test of time. In this 21^st century, many people earn a living from making great video tutorials and monetizing them on YouTube, Udemy, Lynda.com and other video hosting sites. You can also make your video, advertise it yourself as a course and sell it to your customers for a fee.

Also, podcasts are made on certain topics, webinars, other forms of recording are made, marketed and sold to people who paid for them.

You can also utilize this skill by being an MC on occasions, get a job in media houses and the likes. On freelancing websites, you can sell your services by doing voiceovers, jingles, and drops, create advert videos and all that for clients and get paid.

You might be asking this question “Where can I learn the art of public speaking?” There are tutorials out there as well – free and paid tutorials on the internet from where you can learn these things. A simple Google search will show you a list of tutorials you can listen or read about on it. You can also learn this art by listing to podcasts and tutorials and noting their styles and then, improve on yourself.

Yes! Website development is a great skill you should consider as this year 2019 is starting. Almost all meaningful businesses are on the internet and more are seeking ways of getting on the internet.

Web development is a very vast field and there are several technologies. This makes it good for us to tell you that you can just choose an aspect and become a master in that area.

People have also made life easy by developing content management software (CMS) that makes it easy for people to design stunning websites without knowing how to code. Some of these CMS systems include WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Drupal, October, SilverStripe, MediaWiki, Kentico CMS, etc.

These CMS systems are designed for different uses but the most popular one used for designing websites for businesses is WordPress. It has almost everything you want and has beautiful themes, plugins, and supports that will make you build amazing websites without having any programming knowledge.

Apart from using CMS systems, you might want to learn how to write and build websites from scratch or almost from scratch. If this is the option you want, then you can start by learning web programming languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, node.js, Angular, etc. Or some frameworks that were built on these languages like Laravel, Cake PHP, Symphony and others.

You can find great tutorials on any website development language, CMS and everything that you want for free on YouTube. But if you want to get premium courses, then you can check out great tutorials on Udemy, Lynda, and other online schools. For a start, go for YouTube videos and grasp the fundamentals of web development and how they work.

You can get paid for your services also on these online marketplaces or you get your clients offline too. You can meet businesses around your area, show them samples of websites you have/can build and talk to them about the importance of owning a website. You can find information on the importance of owning a website HERE. 

There is also this misconception that not everyone can code which is NOT TRUE. All you need is to be determined to learn how to code and the sky will only be your starting point. There are medical doctors, barristers, school dropouts that code and so, you too can code.

Apart from website development, you can also learn how to build standalone applications for different operating systems. When I mean standalone applications, I mean applications that can be installed on operating systems and can work on their own without depending on others.

You can learn how to build Android applications, windows application, iOS applications, etc. They are not rocket science although they can be challenging.

You can learn Java, Kotlin, C++, C#, Python, etc. as regards the operating system you want to develop applications for. You might have to make some more research and know the best ways of developing applications for the operating system of your choice, all it takes and the development environments you have to set up on your machine to be able to do the job.

Just like the aforementioned skills, you can monetize these applications as well. There are ways of monetizing applications which could be by making some features premium, going for AdMob by Google, etc. You can also open an agency and develop applications for businesses to solve their day to day problems.

Tutorials on how to get started are scattered all over the internet and most of them are free as well. Just start today and you will be glad you did.

Digital marketing includes all forms of electronic efforts that are made towards marketing a product or service.

This also is a broad area and includes a lot of things ranging from SEO for business websites or blogs, social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, video marketing, web analytics (which one of them is discussed below), local listings, carrying out surveys, domain research for website URLs, development of strategies for marketing for companies, search and display marketing, web traffic generation and optimization, mobile advertising for businesses, influencer marketing, music and video promotion, etc.

The aim of every business is to make sales and profit in the long run. This makes this skill one that is well sort for. You can specialize in one of them, create adverts for your service and make lots of money from it. You can also write eBooks and start training people on it and make lots of money.

On Fiverr.com for example, many people make thousands of dollars just from this skill alone and you too can join them. The good thing about this service is that it can be ordered by anyone irrespective of the background or race of the seller once the seller knows what he does.

For other digital skills to make more sense, there must be graphics to throw more light on them. This is why the graphics designing skill is a very good skill you might have to learn this new year 2019. There are so many jobs to do once you have this skill and the good thing about it is that you can learn it for free on the internet.

There are also applications that are used for this – some of which are free while the others require some kind of payments.

Under this category, you can become an expert in presentation designing, logo design, flyers and brochures design, packaging design for products, illustrations, business cards and stationery design, web and mobile application mockup designs, book and album cover design, cartoons and comics design, portraits and caricature designs, T-Shirts and other merchandise design, 3D product modelling, photoshop editing, architectural designs, social media banner designs, banner ads design, vector tracing services, design of invitation cards, billboard designs, etc.

Some of these do not require so many skills or expertise to make money as there are platforms that already have templates or mockups for the different members of this category. All you need to do is to get registered on these platforms (like canva.com) and edit the templates that they already have with the requirements from your client and within 30 minutes, you are done with it and you get paid.

There are other platforms similar to canva.com and you just need to search on them and make cool money even without deep knowledge of graphic designing applications.

Google analytics is a product developed by Google Inc. that helps business and website owners get a report of their website traffic which can be used for different purposes like marketing and getting clients to advertise. 

This tool is absolutely free and Google has an academy where they train people on becoming Analytics experts for free. You can check out the academy here and learn how to make use of Google’s measurement tools to grow businesses through intelligent data collection and analysis.

Having discussed the different skills to learn in 2019, it is left for you to decide on which one(s) to learn. The best thing to do with your year is to learn something new and make extra cash from it or even end up making it your main source of income.

Another thing that is worth noting is that “it is not enough to just learn the skill”. You will have to advertise yourself on social media, run adverts or even print posters and banners for your skill. You could imagine Google of all sites (going by their popularity and wide acceptance) still running adverts on Facebook and other social media platforms.

Start now and you will not regret it. Do you have any question regarding how to get started in learning any of the skills we mentioned? Do well to let us know about it through the comment box below or you can send us an email to [email protected] and we will reply you immediately and clarify you if need be.

Do you want to let us know of any other skill that should be included to the list? Also, let us know and we will update the article immediately.