This post is to motivate those of you who might have acquired digital skills but yet to make money from it.

I want to show you how I made the first dollar ($450) exchanging my skills for money as a freelancer.

Perhaps, you can pick up ideas on how to make yours.

I will try my best to make this post as succinct and instructive as I can but I hope to make it comprehensive enough for others to pick up ideas they can implement to make money from their existing skills.

Specifically, in 2019 I decided to add earnings in dollars to my business pursuits.

Before then, I have been trying my hands on learning a lot of digital skills I think could assist my business pursuits and make me an all-round entrepreneur.

I had learned Blogging, Copywriting, Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Content Marketing.

This hastened my mission to exchange my skills for dollars.

Here's what I did, I looked at all my existing skills and thought deeply on which one could serve as my low-hanging fruit.

SEO topped the list, but SEO is very wide, that means I needed to niche down as well.

During this thinking process, I reached out to one of my beloved brothers. I asked him to send me learning resources on practical SEO.

He sent me a full course of Charles Floate on SEO (Learn SEO: The Right Way & SEO as Side Hustle)

This gave me clarity on how to make money with my SEO skills and made it easy for me to niche down as well.

After reading those materials and watching some video courses on cold email, I decided to start pitching my SEO skills with special focus on Local SEO, On-Page SEO & YouTube SEO.

From the cold email videos (those videos were released to me by the same brother, may God reward him abundantly) and Br Daud Sulaimon Abiola video course on Getting Clients from LinkedIn & Instagram (I can't remember the actual name of this course again).

I started pitching for a freelance job on the following platforms; Instagram, Twitter & LinkedIn.

I tried my best on Fivver but it seems that platform doesn't align with my destiny.

Of course, I made the first $100 from Upwork that same year offering SEO content writing and YouTube script writing.

It's not easy I scraped thousands of emails from Instagram, Facebook & Twitter, I set a target to send a thousand cold emails.

I got a job before I reached 500 emails within 30 days of consistent pitching on LinkedIn.

I actually pitched the client on offering her free local SEO to get her Google My Business ranked on first page, beat her competitors and have her website on the first page of SERP with 5 keywords related to her business.

Within 3 weeks of working for her, her business got to the first page with 5 solid keywords.

She was happy and I was happy. Not only that I helped her to fix her Google Ad.

She offered to pay me $450, I was happy to receive the first dollars exchanging my skills for money.

Then, the exchange rate was like #650 - $1, I was highly delighted to earn such an amount of money from my side hustle (before opportunists choose to come to my inbox to "tax" me, let me tell you this I had blown up the money since the day I earned it)

Of course, I encountered some obstacles along the line. How to get the money became a big headache before she later helped me sorted it out herself.

Here's what you need to make money online;

I want to assume you have armed yourself with highly sought after skills and niche down as much as you can.

Then you will need the following;

Platforms to sell your skills - this could be Fivver, Upwork, LinkedIn or Social Media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn

You will also need work samples or social proof and series of messages to convince the clients to employ you. (Always remember that the money is in the follow up)

My advice on work samples, find someone or any small business you can offer free services at the beginning and do that work to the best of your ability because the work will serve as your credentials or social proofs.

This is what I did with my SEO knowledge before I started making money from the skill.

I used the knowledge to promote my personal business, website, Facebook page and YouTube channel.

So that whenever clients asked me for proof, I can just send them the best of the previous works I did for my business.

Also, you need to find means of receiving money from abroad. I use platforms like Grey. co, Payoneer, I opened PayPal but got struck along the line. So far Grey. co has been very helpful.

Of course, you need a lot of patience, dedication and commitment.

It isn't easy but it makes a lot of economic sense that you have skills you can exchange for money on the side and know how to convert the skills to money.

So that when the economy becomes "balabulu" you can depend on your side hustle to bounce back.

Let's motivate others, how do you make your first money online?

Pic; I made sure I received the hard currency in hard copies to feel it.

akinsmail51:
This post is to motivate those of you who might have acquired digital skills but yet to make money from it.

I want to show you how I made the first dollar ($450) exchanging my skills for money as a freelancer.

Here's what you need to make money online;

I want to assume you have armed yourself with highly sought after skills and niche down as much as you can.

Then you will need the following;

Platforms to sell your skills - this could be Fivver, Upwork, LinkedIn or Social Media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn

You will also need work samples or social proof and series of messages to convince the clients to employ you. (Always remember that the money is in the follow up)


Let's motivate others, how do you make your first money online?

Pic; I made sure I received the hard currency in hard copies to feel it.

This is good

This is encouraging. I also earn from teaching kids online using zoom. All my clients are Nigerians living abroad in different countries. They pay me in naira easily to my Nigeria bank account.

My plan now is to get clients that will pay me in dollars and I've gotten an idea of how to receive money directly from you.