Hi, I’d like to share my story with others for it may help some and inspire some.

I am 26. And have been working for 4 years now. This is my journey from 100$/mo to 15,000$/mo

I started working as a university student. I was a home tutor for 1-2 hours a day, 22 days a month and was paid 100$/mo to teach 2 kids.

At that point I had no idea that a lot of money exists in the world and my mental math was: If I can make 100$ by teaching 2 kids. If I take 4 such gigs, I’ll work 8 hours a day and make 400$ which is quite reasonable in Pakistan.

I have ADHD and am quite introverted. One of the things that bothered me most was when my mother or sister would ask me to bring something from the market. So I thought I’ll make an app that people would use to ask riders to bring random goods from market etc. (This is pre food panda era, before everyone started delivering in pk)

That is lesson 1. A lot of people simply pick a hammer, learn how to use it and think “how do I make money from this”. I think backwards, I looked at a table, and thought about how it was built, and learnt each tool necessary so that I could make sexy tables. (Tables represent apps)

Then, as I also had my profile up on fiverr. I got a request from someone to build their app. It was 2-3 months of effort, I quoted 180$. They asked me if I was sure. I was simply converting rates and thinking how much money I was about to make. I had no idea of the effort involved or how I was going to do it. I simply doubled the value and thought I am going to be rich. (Who tf knew apps can be built for 10s of thousands of dollars).

This guy paid me approximately 1$/hr for 4 months of effort. I learnt everything along the way. Worked 14 hours a day.

Whatever he would ask, I would google how to and then go from there.

Then I started receiving more requests. Long story short, I was exploited a lot as I thought I was making a lot of money but my clients knew how cheap I was. As they were mostly from the US. My max was 3.5k for 2 months of effort. I even worked on my brother’s wedding day.

At this point, I get suspended from Fiverr with 54 – 5 star reviews because I shared my email with a client in chat. Next 5-6 months I work with existing clients.

And then I get approached by a contractor from the US who wanted me to become a sub contractor for them for the value of approximately 40% share of whatever we close on fiver and he is actually a fiverr pro and he introduces me to a world of business where buyers are not always looking for the cheapest option. That took me from 1k/project gigs to 2.5-3k/mo. Since then, it’s been 2 years

And I’ve reached a point where I can confidently charge close to 6k/mo from clients and they are willing to pay for it.

I have 13 people who regularly work with me on different projects.

I have only 1 advice which you can focus on and it’ll serve you well.

There are buyers who want 100$ website, There are buyers who want the same for 1000$, There are buyers who want the same for 10k.

Educate yourself continuously to be able to sell the same thing expensive.

The easiest way to grow is to work with a richer group. Even if all your effort is spent finding them. It’s a much more blissful and reqarding experience.

Also cheap pussies don’t refer out of fear that you’ll get famous and stop working for shit rates.