I made $100/hr in my 1st freelancing month
6 years later, I make 10X as an agency owner. Here’s how I did it.
I started my career as a writer. I was 17, pursuing a degree I did not like. I was desperate to find ways to earn income online. I knew I was good with words; being a convent girl I could flex my writing skills.
A little hunting and I got my first job off LinkedIn.
I was ecstatic at the thought of being paid for writing. 2500 words/day, payout INR 0.13 paise (don’t bother converting it to dollars).
I did the math; I was scoring an easy INR $120/month with 4 hours of work post-college; which was huge as an Indian student. As I started writing online, I realized the purpose of my work and was shaken at how awfully underpaid I was.
Every blog I wrote got in 100,000 visitors with a 1% conversion rate.
The product in the picture was priced at $8000.
IT BLEW MY MIND!!!!
I couldn’t believe how one piece of blog that I wrote with my earphones on could be of so much help.
That’s when I took a step back.
The best part was I was never scared to speak for myself.
I had been writing for 10 days till this point which meant I had a good 10–12 blogs in my portfolio.
This was a good time to demand my worth.
The company in the picture refused and I couldn’t feel worse.
It felt like the end of the world; I swear.
That’s when I started texting people on LinkedIn with my portfolio and tried to get meetings with one of them.
I texted 20 people and one of them responded positively.
Ransom: $100/hr!!!!!!
From making $120/month to $100/hr; this seemed like a dream come true.
But it also made me realize how insane and big the market it.
Over the years I have grown a lot as a marketer, changed my niche, even stopped writing for a few years, and put my business on auto-pilot.
Here’s how I achieved it:
1. Plan every step of your work:
Make yearly plans; break them into monthly and weekly plans. This will help you focus on your goal rather than a scary number with multiple zeroes.
2. Focus on retainer clients:
Getting one-time clients is probably easier, it’s the retainer model that will help you hit that target!
Writing one blog for $100 or doing 1 blog/month for $100 each will make a huge difference.
3. Build processes:
It’s important to build processes. It takes constant experimentation, but in the long run it eases out the journey for you.
A good example of this is Figma’s acquisition by Adobe. You might wonder, for $20Bn, couldn’t they have built a software themselves?
Read that again.
4. Make sustainable models:
You might hit your target in year 1, and fail miserably the next year.
Don’t drain yourself out. Set a model that you can work on year by year before you get to a hospital bed. Trust me, I have.
5. Learn to delegate:
Stop with the menial tasks. You WON’T scale if you don’t start delegating the work. It’s hard; you might want to see everything going on under your team.
But that model won’t help you get those extra zeroes in your bank balance.
Hi, I am Harshanki, I run multiple marketing agencies and low-cost business models yielding me 6-figure months. I can help you achieve the same. Follow me to grow as a marketer while putting your businesses on autopilot.
PS: I did this without a personal brand.
