Can you realistically make money freelancing with Excel?
Our take
Hi guys.
I am a basic Excel user that would like to dedicate my time to learning all the skills that are required to be considered an Excel expert. I am a highly motivated person and a fast learner. Before hitting the market I would do some projects to build a portfolio and gain some experience.
Now, please stop laughing at me because I don’t expect that after all that I will start landing jobs non-stop. And that is the reason I am making this post.
Checking Upwork, there are many Excel jobs offered every day. On the other hand there are many thousands of Excel freelancers with different skills, but having checked some profiles most of them seem to get some action. That alone is not a sufficient metric but it is still saying something. My impression overall is that there is a market for Excel. Yes the competition is brutal but why would there be so many freelancers in the first place without demand?
Checking Reddit, the opinions are mostly negative. People mention that Excel is just a tool, which argument I understand, but I also know that there are successful freelancers that focus only on Excel.
Some mention that clients already can do Excel stuff and will hire only for super hard/complex projects, but there are others who say that they are getting asked to do simple projects all the time. Reading the jobs you can see many being relatively easy to complete. My impression here is that there are many small businesses that need some easy projects to be done and they simply prefer to hire and get the job done.
Everything I wrote above is just my impressions. After doing some small research here and there. I know that I am probably wrong and I wish someone would point out exactly where my logic breaks.
Right now I am lost. I don’t want to dedicate months to learning a skill only to find out that I can’t land a single job. I understand that landing the first jobs is the hardest step and I have the patience and persistence for it. I just need to know what will probably follow next.
If you have any suggestions either about Excel or something similar like Power BI I will appreciate it. I have time and motivation to learn a new skill as long as it can bring me some cash in the future.
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