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Top 12 High Income Skills That Will Help You Earn More

To earn a high income requires learning a high-income skill. Here are ResumeHelp’s top 12 high-income skills to teach yourself this year to earn more money.

Donna Wright Profile
By Donna Wright 3 minute read

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High-income skills

In today’s highly competitive job market, diversified skills can be extremely valuable for professionals and set them apart from other job seekers. To get ahead, you need to constantly improve your existing skill sets while striving to learn new abilities that are in high demand whenever you can.

Whether freshly starting on their career path or already seasoned career professionals, you should learn at least one high-income skill to boost your career and income. Finding employers and clients to pay you for your newly acquired skills can be a real game-changer for most professionals, regardless of industry. Learning a high-income skill can set you on a whole new career path or can even drive you to launch your own business or online business where you can work from home.

It all starts with choosing the right skill that best suits you and your existing strengths and experience. For example, doctors and lawyers are a couple of professions that require high-income skills, but they require formal education of at least four years at colleges and universities. These professionals are in high demand and receive high incomes because they have specialized skills only attainable through training and further specialization.

But, we’re not talking about changing career paths to become a lawyer or doctor when we talk about learning a high-income skill. Doing this would be highly impractical for most professionals already on their professional journey, let alone highly expensive and time-consuming.

It may come as a surprise to some, but you can learn specific high income skills without formal education to generate a six figures salary or more. You can teach yourself high income skills at home – usually for free – to earn more money and be valued more in the marketplace.

In this article, we’ll walk you through what high income skills are and go over their benefits to professionals. There are soft and hard high income skills when it comes to high income skills. We’ll take an in-depth look at the top high income soft skills and hard skills in high demand.

Regardless of your level of experience or profession, learning a new set of high-income skills can not only improve your professional life but also your personal life. With the extra income acquired through your newly acquired high-income skills, a whole new world of unimaginable opportunities and luxuries becomes a reality.

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What is a high-income skill?

High-income skills are specific skill sets that can earn you upwards of $10,000 and more each month. To put these numbers into real-world context, the median household income in 2020 in the United States was $67,521, and the average salary in the United States has hovered around the $50,000 range in recent years. That means most families in the United States earn half of what they could be making with high income skills.

For the purpose of this article, a high-income skill is a skill that you can learn without formal education and then leverage to get paid more. It can be a soft skill such as effective communication or a hard skill such as learning to write code.

Regardless of whether your newly learned high income skill is a soft skill or a hard skill, both types of skills can advance your professional journey and have the potential to earn you a high income.

Top 6 high-income soft skills

While most people may associate high-income skills with specific hard skills, commonly referred to as technical skills, this isn’t necessarily the case. High-income soft skills can be equally as essential and financially rewarding.

Regardless of your job title, industry, or full-time or part-time employment status, learning the following six high-income soft skills can put you in position to earn a lot of money:

1. Strategic planning

None of us are fortune tellers able to predict the future precisely, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t plan for it. Strategic planning is a crucial part of every successful outcome, professional or not. To be a good strategic planner means being able to take on every possible situation, issue, or challenge into account, and have the ability to plan and lay out practical solutions to overcome them.

2. Reliability

Always being reliable is one of the most valuable and attractive skills for any income level or profession. Being reliable is crucial for building trust and meaningful connections with coworkers and everyone. By showcasing your reliability in every aspect of your professional life, people are more open to growing and facilitating their professional relationships with you.

3. Effective communication

High-income earners and employers across the board constantly reference effective communication as one of the most game-changing and influential skills in the short and long run. By effectively communicating, professionals can clearly convey their message, ideas, intentions, and goals to others in a way that reaches the best results. Effective communication involves excellent verbal communication, written communication, and non-verbal communication such as body language.

4. Self-motivation

You motivate yourself to confidently take meaningful actions to reach your goals and achieve a high income by staying self-driven. The enthusiasm and drive to excel and never stay complacent is a crucial skill to possess in order to overcome all obstacles in your path and maintain your career momentum.

5. Consistency

Because of the ever-changing nature of today’s markets, economy, and technology, consistency is one of the most crucial high income skills to have. To move ahead in your career requires consistent dedication and work.

6. Knowing how to leverage existing resources

Making the most of what you have is an invaluable high-income skill. Unfortunately, many never reach their maximum potential because they think they don’t have what it takes to make it happen. The skills, experiences, and resources you already have are invaluable tools to increase your income, if you know how to take advantage of them.

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What are the top 6 high-income hard skills?

The right hard skills, or technical skills, can give you a leg up in attaining a higher income. Here are the top six in-demand skills you can learn to set you on the path:

1. Software Engineering

Software development involves developing programs that companies use in their business operations and beyond. Though many software engineers go through formal computer science education, it isn’t necessarily required. Many successful and prominent software engineers received no formal education. Indeed, they learned programming languages from the comforts of their own home by utilizing free online resources and tutorials on YouTube channels.

2. SEO

SEO, or search engine optimization, is a valuable, high-demand, high-income technical skill you can learn from home. Search engine optimization is the process of improving a company’s website so that it appears as high as possible in Internet search results. This increases the company’s visibility, which translates to more website visitors and increased business. Search engine optimization is a multifaceted and valuable skill that involves content creation and user experience improvement.

3. Copywriting

Copywriting is one of the most critical aspects of all forms of marketing and advertising. It involves providing specialized written content for web pages, articles, promotional content, and more. Copywriters are effectively salespeople with the know-how needed to write content that sells.

4. Digital Marketing

Digital marketing refers to online advertising delivered through digital channels such as search engines, mobile apps, social media, affiliate marketing, and email marketing. As traditional media marketing becomes less prevalent, digital marketing skills have never been more critical and in-demand than today. Digital marketing is a smart choice when choosing a high income skill to learn as it has many niches, such as content marketing and social media marketing.

5. Web Design

As e-commerce continues to grow exponentially, the need for professional web development grows. Web developers create beautiful and superbly functional websites needed by virtually all businesses.

6. Video Production

Video content is the king of all types of content in today’s age. With the explosive growth of apps like YouTube and TikTok, businesses are employing the skills of video production professionals now more than ever to improve their marketing efforts.

FAQ: High-Income Skills

Have questions? We’re here to help.

You can develop high-income skills by taking formal training programs, online courses, or by following free guides and resources you find online or tutorials on YouTube. Most high-income skills don’t require going to college and can be learned for free from the comforts of your own home.

The most in-demand high income skills now and in the future are:

  • Coding
  • Programming
  • Web Development
  • Blockchain
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Cloud Computing

Most high-income skills can earn you $10,000 or more a month, or a six-figure salary per year.

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Donna Wright Profile
WRITTEN BY Donna Wright

Donna is a career expert with extensive experience in the fields of Marketing, Publishing, Direct Mail and Communications. She’s witnessed firsthand the importance of a powerful resume and cover letter to a job search, so she takes great pride in helping change the lives of job seekers by sharing expert career advice and tips to help land the perfect job.

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