This topic sounds interesting right? Well, if you want to make money in the media industry then the earlier you start the more advantage you can get. In this article, let me share my journey so far, what I have done and what you should do to get started in this new field of freelancing.
To get started, first of all you need to know some basic work practices. At first, people might not even pay you for your service or work, because you have little to no market reputation. In order to make good money, you need to work on your portfolio at first.
How to build a good portfolio? Well, that’s what you will know through this article. Let me start by sharing my experience so far in 19 years of my life.
I started this back when I was 17 years old. I know you might feel at first that it will affect your studies, but let’s be honest here. I personally never played games on mobile or pc which most of my friends did. Nor, do I stay awake in late night.
I tend to follow a strict schedule everyday till date. I managed my freelancing and studies by giving them equal proportion of effort and attention. Mostly, I started it out of curiosity just to check out how much money can I make at the age of 17 when my friends were playing games on their mobile, effectively killing their precious time.
How I started at First
At first, I got myself a laptop by asking my dad so bad everyday trying hard to explain to him that I need it for something. He kept resisting my offer as I think somewhere, he might have felt I was asking it for playing games. But finally my first laptop arrived after 4 months of repeated efforts from my side. It was a very basic laptop to be honest, I still have that one today as a secondary machine. It had 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 500GB Hard Disk, and Intel Pentium N3700 processor.
For the first 1 year till I turned 18, I tried learning literally everything that one could imagine in the media industry as a kid. I watched youtube videos of people like ranveer allahbadia (aka Beerbiceps), Vivek Bindra sir, Technical Guruji on YouTube. Tried to learn how they edited their videos, how they made thumbnails, how they started their journey and how this game of social media worked.
I started by learning Photoshop, Graphic Designing, Web Development, Premiere pro etc although they kept crashing on my face each time I used them heavily on my laptop.
This learning process kept going where I started a youtube channel at the same time. It’s private now don’t ask for the link please. I experimented video making, editing, photoshop in that channel and kept improving each day. I think I made somewhat 200 videos on that channel which was basically a kid sitting each day in front of the camera each day and trying out his skills. It had some 70 subscribers and all were my friends 🙁
When I turned 18, I though now I should approach to local businesses with my skillset and work for free just to build a local recognition in the area. The best possible way I could find to do it was Facebook. I made a page and started posting ads which I had prepared from my own photoshop skills. They were very much colourful and when I look at them now, it looks kind of clingy to me. I started sharing those posts in big groups and channels of my town. Made the admins of those groups my friends and they kept approving my posts each time I made a new one.
After a week of struggle and constant posting 3-4 times a day. One person called me and said he wanted to design a logo for his business. It was my first public work and I felt really happy back then. I said I won’t charge anything but the person got happy with my photoshop skills may be and gave me 100Rs. It was basically my first experience of freelancing.
As time kept rolling, I started building websites, designed ads, edited videos and till date I do all this in my free time. In 2020, I bought my first laptop in July by spending a whooping Rs 90,900 on it. It was the MacBook air 2020 which I got myself.
In Cryptocurrency and Blockchain
From the age of 17 till date, I had a fascination about cryptocurrency and digital payments as well. In the year 2020, I crossed 2000+ subscribers on my YouTube channel and it was when I was reached out by another great guy from WazirX Team. I won’t say his name here but you can say this partnership is going fantastic till date. After this I made this website, started focusing on twitter and other platforms. Now what is going to happen in future over next 5 years, I don’t know.
All I can say is that I am making actually enough financially in Freelancing to survive on myself in India. Most of my income I give to my mom and dad for savings as I don’t have that many expenses. I like to live like a minimalist and focus on the work more than anything.
About my studies, I got 92% in Class X from ICSE board and 88% in Class XII in ISC board. I think it’s good enough for me considering all other things which I am engaged in.
That was my journey in the shortest possible format. It might be or may not be relevant for you but I really hope it helped you guys ?.
