You must have come across many ads and promotions that tell how one can simply work from home and earn in thousands and lakhs. While most of us disregard them thinking they would be fake or at best a multilevel marketing scheme, but there are a few lucky people for whom this comes as an opportunity of a lifetime.
Milind Gupta, who hails from an average middle-class Delhi family, is just 26 years old, and he’s already on his way to becoming a millionaire. And all this has been possible because of his sharpness to leverage viral marketing for these work-from-home jobs.
This skill set probably existed him in his nascent years, even as a 10-year-old, he could trade some puzzles and comics to a friend for Rs13. As he grew up, the skill set only got refined.
The Early Days
As per Milind, during the days of Orkut, a post directed him to the website Fiverr, where anyone can offer almost any kind of service for cash. He offered people customized pictures of their names in the sand at the beach with the waves lapping at it. Although he didn’t really ever go to the beach and write people’s name and click pictures, he instead passed on the job to a photoshopper who edited the images as needed.
“It wasn’t ethical,” he says. “I know but hey, I was trying, testing and like every other human, I had to be sure this stuff is legit and ka-ching! Orders started flowing in.”
First Master Stroke
Then he came across a website that offered Cost Per Action opportunities to earn money and Milind felt he could do that. Those were usually surveys or filling of forms and watching ads kind of a job wherein the user get paid a small commission. Milind was so good at his job that he earned approx 36 lakhs in just two months. His boss, then-CEO of CPALead Peter Tarr, promoted him almost immediately as the business development head.
The Next Stop
However, he soon grew bored with the position and, after two years, he and Tarr left the company, eventually starting their own endeavor.
After CPALead, Gupta took six months to continue learning the intricacies of viral marketing and paid advertising. And then he moved into drop-shipping. Here you’re the middleman in an online sales deal. All you have to do is market a company’s products for a marked-up priced and when a customer places an order, you send their order and shipment details straight to the manufacturer. That way you get to take a commission off the top.
For Milind this too was a shot at success. He sold antique decorated tin plates on Shopify for $23, which were priced at just $6 on Aliexpress. Selling over a thousand units, he managed to make a cool profit of about $10,000, even after payment gateway charges.
The Present Story
Now, Gupta and Tarr are partners in their own drop-shipping business venture, with warehouses in both the US and China. All of this while he continues to largely work out of Delhi, with nothing more than a B-Com degree.
When asked about his success story, he says, “There is no get rich soon guide,” he says. “You have to be patient, honestly very patient and keep learning every minute, every second. I have learned things from people as young as 12 years old.”
“Invest in yourself, find a mentor who can shape you from the very beginning, try and hang around with the people who’re smarter than you. As they say, you’re the average of the 5 people you hang around with, it’s all about the mindset you have.”
“For me, it has always been about learning and gaining skills in this forever evolving world. One of the key strategies to stay at the top of your game is to be adaptable. Otherwise, you will become obsolete in a matter of hours.”
