Today I am going to talk about the most important thing in your freelance career which is your skill set. Okay? A lot of people who try to start your their freelance career, they make this very mistake again and again. So I'm going to discuss how you are going to build your skill set that that sets you apart from other freelancers or designers or coders, or whatever you are competing with. Okay, so let's get started. Now, why do we need a skill set?

Most of the clients when they come to you, they say, I need our website. Now, what does that mean? They actually need logo, the web design mock ups wireframes and actual coded website live on FTP server, okay. So this is basically what they want. They also need domain and hosting and everything okay. So nobody wants half the solution they need a full solution.

For that to work you have you need to have some designing skills. Along with some coding skills, okay? Now the problem is that if you can't code, then you need to pair up with an awesome coder. You can pair up with a back end coder, or you can create a team of your own. In other cities if like I have made I have a team of coders in another city, okay remote in my country, and I call them on phone and give them tasks. And they use GitHub and other coding techniques, latest coding modern coding techniques to let me know or update me about projects, okay, we leave when we use Trello and Basecamp project management tools to do our remote projects like that.

Okay, this is how you're going to expand you need to expand within your skill set. Okay, so if you have a more jobs have a website, then you need a logo designer, maybe a logo designer or a coder and if you design the website yourself, then you need to more people Okay, so this is how it works. So if you can design logo and you can also design a website that then you just need one more coder. Okay? Now here are few skill set combinations for designers. If you are already a branding designer, then you can add an app icon design, if you know that I already have a course on that app icon design.

So if you already know illustrator, or you can design logos and business cards, then you can learn app icon design live because most of the time when a client comes to design his logo, he will also ask that I want an app icon for my logo also. Okay, second option could be logo design, web design plus HTML. Okay, third option could be web design, plus WordPress theme. This is a whole solution. This also means that you know, PHP and basics of theming. Then you can add app icon design plus mobile app design, okay, so if someone comes to you that I need my mobile app designs.

Can you also design the app icon logo? I haven't had time to, you know, design that app icon. So most of the clients when they will come for app icon design, you might ask them that, do you need mobile app design? Do you want me to design the screens of your mobile app? Or do you want me to wireframe them. So this is how you combine your skill sets.

Okay? Don't go too broad. Okay, keep your focus within one skill set, don't go too broad. Same. In the case if you are a 3d designer, then you can go with After Effects to add some effects and create a video of your 3d design. Now, the key takeaways are that you are going to add skills that are related to your primary or major skill that you are master at Okay, so if you are mastered branding, you need to go around that Okay, so don't expand too much.

If you can't code. Don't try to learn it. Try to team up with someone else. Okay. Don't try to be jacked up. portraits, expand your skills wisely.

Now there are a few skill sets for developers. If you don't know any term, don't worry, you can search online Google it, Google about it. If you are already HTML designer, or you can code your web websites or web designer HTML plus CSS, you already know that you can combine JavaScript and jQuery. Okay. So this can really help you to create some animations or something like that. Okay.

Then you can go ahead more, you can use HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP. Okay, so this is also a combination. This is this is basically combining front end and back end development. Then you can also be a just a front end with some expert technologies like ember.js or angular.js. Okay. You can also be a front end developer.

Or you can combine WordPress with HTML and CSS. So these are all the combinations I have. You can just be a back end developer too. So you can Just learn PHP and MySQL, and maybe some frameworks or some new technologies or methodologies that work just with PHP, okay? So you can move around your base skill, like if you have a PHP command, you can move around the PHP language. If you have a command on WordPress, then you move around WordPress, you can start developing its plugins or something like that.

Okay, so this is how I always give advice to new freelancers that how to build build their skill sets. Now the key takeaways are that decide between front end and back end development. You can't be master of both technologies. Okay, the front end is getting more complex day by day. Okay, so you can't be expert at HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, MySQL, c++, so don't try to learn everything. Try to expand while remaining inside the scope of your Major skill or field of skills, okay, so don't go too broad.

Keep your focus in some area. This can make you an expert. There are few more career paths that are really getting noticed these days, which are full stack designers and post actors and developers. Okay. So first I'm going to talk about full stack designers, what are they basically, full stack means that they design everything. They are going to design your user experience, okay?

So user investigation, user research wireframing Okay. So everything we are going to do it themselves, then they are also going to design convert that user experience or wireframes into more copper actual designs, then they are also going to convert that design into HTML and CSS code. Know why they are in demand these days because a lot of new startups they require less force, okay, so they basically need less employees with a lot of experience and a lot of people They can cover okay. So if they need one guy that can design everything, and one coder that can code everything, then they are in luck. Okay. So the early startups, they are going to really give you good jobs if you are a full stack designer.

Okay, like I also expand to like full stack designers, I am learning still learning user experience, but I am good at UI and HTML and CSS. So you can see I am a full stack designers but my major skill is user user interface design, or visual design. Okay, now how you can become a full stack designers you need to start with one skill and then try to expand it. Okay. So if you have mastered already UI design, then you can move to UX. And if you already have mastered HTML, CSS, you can learn try to learn UI, so don't try to expand too much.

Okay? So try to keep your focus if you can't, you know, become everything. If you can code or not like According then you can limit yourself to user experience design and UI design. Okay? So don't try to force yourself to learn something if you don't like it, okay? Second thing is that you can read books and blogs on on those topics you are learning allocate time to learn that new skill, okay?

Even if you are in an organization and you see that there is an opportunity that if I learn user experience, then I can go a bit above in my pay scale or my rank or something like that, then you can also try to learn new things and grab that job. Okay. Now, what are full stack developers, they are basically front end plus back end developers no front end means that they only do HTML and CSS, maybe JavaScript. And back end developers are that the languages they know our PHP, database, besties and everything in between, like AngularJS or whatever technologies they use these days. Okay, a full stack developer will be our developer. In a full package, he can go from HTML to the end product.

Okay. So this is what full stack developers are. And they are mostly needed in startups the as I already told about full stack designers. Now again, I'm going to give you the same advice again, that start with one skill. Don't try to learn multiple skills at at one at one time. Try to read blogs and books about the skill or maybe watch video video courses about that and allocate time to practice code.

Okay, so this is really important. Now, I'm going to give you final word of advice about your carrier or building skill sets. Which is that at the end, the expert in one field is really going to win over a full stack designer or a developer, okay? Experts are rare, they are like diamonds and they are really going to get ahead of everyone. So if you are going to learn like something like that, then Maximum two fields in your carrier like if you are a UX designer, you can add user interface design. And if you are a front end coder or a user interface designer, then you can go along with front end coding, okay?

So don't try to make a very long bridge, try to make a short bridge between two closer fields and to closer areas of study. Okay, so this is how you are going to get a good freelance carrier. So let's move on to the next lesson.