Pushkar: Rising above and beyond

Worked with 18+ companies and has 3+ years of experience, Pushkar is a content writer who is  passionate about writing since the beginning of his college years. Wanting to be his own boss one day, he is happy with choosing the freelancing work-style. He says that the only drawback to freelancing is the lack of external support and to managing everything on your own. For him pricing is about getting paid for the value that is being offered to the client. He believes that as a writer, switching the niches, doing any activity or just taking a break is a great way to deal with writer’s block. He aims to have more regular clients, continue delivering satisfactory outputs and to work with many more companies in future. We wish him success in his venture to help new and existing freelancers. 

Read his success story: 

Introduce yourself to us? Where are you from? About your family, parents? How was your childhood?

I am Pushkar Mehta, and I was born in Ludhiana, Punjab. My father is in Police, my mother is a house-wife, and my brother is completing his school studies. If we talk about my childhood, then it was like a punctual kind of childhood in which everything used to have a time-table. 

If I elaborate, then it would be like, I had a sleeping time of before 8 pm, waking up at 5 in the morning and other such things. By the way, I had no plan of being a content writer until I started college. 

Why did you choose the field of content writing? Speak to us about your passion for writing? 

Let me tell you the truth, I had this passion for writing, learning more about Google SEO, fetching higher traffic to my free WordPress blog during my college’s 1st semester days. 

But I never thought of working as a content writer during that time, I just started blogging during my college holidays to earn some money through Google Adsense. I learned several things about blogging, SEO and Google Ads and got my first ever blog on Blogspot.com approved for AdSense in just one go. 

Now it has been 3+ years I am working with clients and companies throughout the world. Moreover, as my father is in the Police, they don’t understand my work, and they didn’t want me to do this work at all. But then I showed them the results (of course the monthly revenue), and now they are extremely happy by seeing my work. 

Why did you choose to freelance? When did you begin to freelance? Were you planning it, or how did it happen?

I chose to be a freelancer because I wanted to work remotely. I started working as a freelancer for my first client from Gujarat, and that was in 2017-18. 

Actually, I was not planning to be a full-time freelancer; instead, I was trying to build my blogging website from which I can generate a good amount of Google Adsense revenue. But then I shared my blogs with friends and family members who loved them, not only that, my viewers who used to read my blogs (organic traffic) started commenting on my blogs, stating that they loved my work. 

That was the time when I started thinking to work as a content writer for clients. 

How did you approach the first few clients? Give key suggestions to the new freelancers. 

I heard about Freelancer.com in 2017 and got my first client from there only. But for new freelancers I would like to suggest a few things from my learnings: 

• Create a linkedIn profile; new freelancers can get a lot of leads from there easily. 
• Invest in your skills, keep on trying to enhance them. 
• Go for advance payments, at least 50% advance (during my initial days I got in touch with 4 clients through freelancer.com who never paid me for my services). 
• Use Facebook groups for freelancers to generate leads. 
• You can find good clients from Twitter as well. 

As a freelancer, how are your services priced? What are the key strategies for you?

I started my content writing services at 10 paise per word. I know that is extremely low, but at that time, I was not having proper knowledge about how all this works and how to handle clients. 

But with change in time, I learned about the services pricing tactics. 

My key strategies for services pricing is to keep on uplifting your skills and based on that upliftment keep increasing your prices. As at the end of the day we are paid for the value that we offer. 

How do you deal with writer’s block? What are the steps that you take to overcome it?

I deal with several clients from various working sectors, so whenever I face writer’s block at that time, I try to switch the niche I am working on. I don’t think this works with every writer, but it works for me every time. 

Other than that, here are a few steps that I take to overcome it:

• Listen to my favourite music.  
• Do my workout (it freshens your mind). 

In the end, if any of the above methods is not working, then I do one thing, manage all the deadlines by interacting with the clients and take a nap. 

How do you use social media to your strength to build an effective network and generate sales leads?

Social media is the lead generating factory for me, I can say I get 40-50% of my leads from platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Also, I use this simple tactic to strengthen my network on social media platforms, and that is, by either getting in touch with the people whom I think will need me in the future or I will need them in the future. 

I have noticed several people out there just accepting or sharing connection requests on LinkedIn to increase their number of connections. That’s completely worthless, try to connect only with the person whom you think could be beneficial for your business. 

As a writer, how do you stay aware of the happenings around the world? Any specific tools/websites/apps that you use or follow?

There are several tools I use for that purpose; some of them are: 

• Google trends (it helps me in doing the keyword research too).
• I have joined a few groups on my Whatsapp that shared daily updates regarding happenings around the world. 
• Twitter helps me alot in such a case. 

What is the one major pro and/or con of freelancing, according to you?

Before starting freelancing, I had this strong thought in my mind that I wanted to be my own boss. Hence, I can say this is one major pro of freelancing; you can be your own boss. 

The major con of freelancing is that you would have to manage everything on your own. There would be no external support for anything.

What is the one thing about clients that you dislike? What can they do to improve your work life?

Most of the clients do not pay freelancers well, and they even think freelancers are work machines. 

I filter them out of my circle, no matter if they are paying me more, I will still not work with them. Money is essential, but if there is no mutual respect, then I will never work with that client. 

What mission and vision do you have? How do you want history to look at you?

My mission is to keep on working with clients and providing them with work as per their expectations. Along with that, I wanted to help new freelancers who wanted to work and deliver value to clients.

My vision is to work with the most number of companies possible, right now I have worked with 18+ companies, and while working for every company, I levelled up and learned several things. 

Along with that, I am working on a platform specially designed for helping freelancers, where they can get rid of their queries regarding freelancing. 

Do you feel content with yourself as you look back or do you think you have missed something?

The only time I look back is to see how far I have come, and I can say I have come far from my expectations. When I started with this year, I had plans, but they were limited upto certain extent. Now, if I compare the plans I made in the initial days of 2020 I can say I have generated 3x results. 

Pushkar can be reached out on Refrens, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

If you are thinking of shifting to full-time freelancing after reading Pushkar’s story, read our blog on Financial management for Freelancers to ace your financial planning using effective techniques.