The average lying, cheating, scamming freelancer claims to be working just a few hours a day, for some of the fastest growing SaaS startups (we'll come back to this later), making 6 figure INR monthly incomes. Or was it USD?
Let that sink in.
A 6 figure INR income means at least 1 lakh per month through freelancing.
No wait, let me be more specific.
Not just any freelancing, but 'content marketing' freelancing.
Here's the freelancer scam playbook
1. Be in your 20s. Look good, wear fashionable clothes like an influencer, use filters to make yourself look brighter and shinier.
2. Rent an Airbnb for a day and take enough photos and videos to last a year.
3. Never mention any of your clients' names - blame it on the NDA (not the govt, here it stands for a Non Disclosure Agreement)
4. Don't have a portfolio anywhere, not even on your website.
5. Don't respond to potential clients who reach out (because the business model is to scam people through pretense, not actual freelancing work)
6. Make videos and posts about your personal life, experiences, struggles - basically everything except what you do for a living.
7. Keep narrating emotional stories that will motivate the hell out of the readers.
8. Launch a content marketing course. Keep the price low. Claim to be a saint who's not doing this for money.
9. Provide a low quality, low effort pre-recorded video to your students.
10. Tell them to pay 50x more for a more comprehensive course.
This playbook has worked for everyone who's ever wanted to scam people. The Indian youth is notoriously gullible that way.
And why are the so called clients of these freelancers always B2B SaaS startups? Because everyone knows they're making a lot of money but nobody can list more than 3-4 of them. The obscurity conceals the fraud.
Perhaps the only fraudsters that are worse than these 6-figure income types, are the 7-figure income types.
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