This essay was originally written for a lecture given to first year BBA students at Sant Hirdaram Institute of Management, Bhopal on 7th August, 2025. Link to the recording of the lecture is given at the end of the essay.
Intro
This essay will teach you how to establish yourself as a freelancer and earn good money. This will perhaps not make you a millionaire but it will get you started. You will have enough clients that you wouldn’t have to worry about your next paycheck. And the best part is, this can be done in parallel to your day job.
Step -1: Pick a niche. It could be anything, sports, cooking, agriculture, mathematics, coding etc. Wherever you have technical expertise. Make sure not to pick marketing, there is cut-throat competition there. And you will be competing agencies and teams there. (If you really think you are a good marketer, maybe build a business first, then talk about marketing.)
The aim here is to find the minimum viable audience. MVA is your 1000 true fans, that you can sell your products and services to. You should delight these people with your marketing communications.
Step-2: Create a lead magnet. A lead magnet is an info product, usually an e-book but can be a video or audio, excel sheet or some other form of content that is exchanged with a person in return for their emails.
These should be easy to create if you already have domain expertise in your niche. But, for the love of God, do NOT simply copy & paste from Chat GPT. Everyone can do that, create something that’s not on Chat GPT.
I have created 2 lead magnets so far –
- one is for my avocado business, which has over 9000 downloads. I did not use any performance marketing to get those leads.
- second one was for my family business which has around 250 downloads within a span of 15-20 days.
I created these using Microsoft word and saved them as pdf, created cover art on Canva and hosted it on Mailchimp.
More examples of a lead magnet –
The next two examples I am going to share are by people I actually follow. Ludwig’s work is worth reading and I have also bought his investing course that he has created together with Mikael Syding, but haven’t gotten around to actually building my portfolio, yet. And if you are an aging athlete who wants to take it to the next level in your fitness journey despite being in your 30s or 40s, but are too scared of taking steroids, peptides might be the answer for you. And there is no one better than Jay Campbell to learn from, about anti-aging peptides and hormone optimization therapy.
Step – 3: Build a landing page. Once you have the lead magnet, publish it on Gumroad or make a Mailchimp landing page. It should include a bit about your background, an email sign up form and obviously your lead magnet. The example I have shared above is also a person I follow. Shreya is great at making you famous on Linkedin. It appears, that she is living the life, remotely working from a laptop, earning in dollars and living in Dubai. Who doesn’t want that.
Step – 4: Publish content on social media. This is where it gets interesting. Most retards people start publishing on Instagram with no aim or clear goal in mind. They hope that one viral video will make them famous and then they will get picked or head hunted by someone and only after that, their life will be sorted. WRONG.
Your goal with your social media is awareness. However, that hardly gets any sales. Sales come from engagement. Your aim should be to convert your aware followers into paying subscribers. I will cover that in the next step.
How to create awareness on social media?
- Document your journey, publish content daily. Give your followers a a Window to your world through your earned media channels.
- Pick 2 platforms to start with, Instagram is surely one of them, for now.
- Master the written word, audio or video,
- It helps if you are jacked and handsome (of course, I am talking about myself) or
- It also helps if you are a pretty woman (if you are a woman reading this, don’t put soft porn out on Instagram, show the world that you are an elegant beauty with brains).
- Learn story telling, it will come with practice.
Step – 5: Send emails. You publish content on social media for awareness. You write emails for engagement. Your true fans will read them. You only have to sell to them. You have to share things that truly adds value to their lives.
Your Gen – Z marketing buddy will tell you, like the little retard that he is, that email is dead.
Platforms come and go (remember facebook? or orkut? or myspace?), email is forever, and guess what, you can create look-alike audiences on meta from that email list.
You own the audience on email, unlike Instagram where the meta overlords decide your reach. That book recommendation is there for a reason. Read it.
Step – 6: Sell digital products or courses. Put some content behind a pay-wall and teach what you know. In scientific terms, convert tacit knowledge to procedural knowledge and charge money for it.
Step – 7: Collaborate. The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. Collaborate with others and share the profits reasonably equally. This won’t be your first course or content behind a pay wall.
And the best part is, bringing in experts from other fields will fill the gaps in your research.
Bonus tip
We all start somewhere. Cringe is okay. Inconsistent effort is not.
And remember,
Perceptions change easily,
Attitudes, not so much,
but Values never change.
Good luck.
Harshit Godha
