Nishanth Shetty, is my cousin from the city of Bengaluru, India. He is interested in starting his own business. He is at a position where most of us are when we start on our own
No capital (money) to invest.
No Business expereince.
No concrete Business idea/plan
This is most common start everyone has, they think about what they DON’T have. Rather than thinking about what they do have. Let’s look at what Nishanth has
He is an amauter photograher (Camera worth 20K + OnePlus 7 phone)
He has to research if the KTM dealership has an Instagram account
If it has he has to ride his KTM bike to the dealership.
He as to ask who takes care of thier instagram account.
He explains them that he will take 14 pictures per week. Thus increasing the engagement level on social media.
If they seems interested than at last tell them that he will take 700 rupees for 14 pictures
Tell them they have pay after each assignment.
Some metric target to aim for?
He should atleast go to all dealers that sell KTM bikes
He should keep trying for a month before quiting
If he finishes before a month he should write down what he learn an pivoit
Some objection he will face
No one will show interest and ask him to get out (Sales Rejection)
They will be interested but won’t pay him money.
They will bargain and ask for reduced price.
How to negotiate the objection (rookie way)?
He should mention that he will research and shoot to make the photo better each time.
The objective her to make the photo more likable and enaging.
The end objective is to increase the follower count and popularity. But currently I am not guaranteeing it but if I could guarantee I would have charged 3 times.
He should explain that he also has to make profit form this work.
He should tell that he has to pay petrol price to reach the place.
How to work with discounts?
Firslty don’t answer any one right on spot, get the phone number and tell them you will get back to them in few days.
He has to set a monthly target first. Say for example he wants 20,000 per month.
So if 7 are ready to pay and 3 ask for discount. Say no to the one who are asking for discount.
If 3 are ready to pay and 3 are asking for discount. They he can take the discount.
If there is only 1 or 2 asking for discount. Offer free work for 1st week.
If no one is ready to pay at all. Work for free for 2 weeks i.e. 2 visits and 28 photos. To build your portfolio of work
So Nishanth wish you all the best. See if this simple business plan works for you. Let me remind you its simple but it may not be easy. You may face a completely diffrent challange on the ground. Keep your focus on your learning business.
Poll taken – Fee estimation to a digital collborator per collaboration
We had this Q&A with college students on 19th Decemeber 2019 in Mumbai, India. There were 9 students in the room. The early adopters who wanted to try and understand this new job role. This post has few of the important questions asked by those students from this session.
What is the first thing I need to do?
You have to pick the business niche and the digital creator theme (photography, graphic design, illustration, blog writing, video etc ). Because the student where from Information Technology or Computer Science. I suggested them to pick the business as Software SaaS business. Pick the business with team size between 10-25 people. You can look them in LinkedIn or Twitter. Re-Read this article again and go to section “What do you have to do and how can you make your side money?”
How to connect with digital creator?
You can put a comment on the Digital Creator’s Instagram post, asking if they would like to collabrate. “I liked the image you have created.” OR “I love the use of colour” OR “I like the way you have use the shadow effect” and add it with “Would you be open for Free collabration with small business to gain more awarenesss for your work?”
Here is an example that I did with one of the Digitial Creator
Once you pick you business niche, search for the business on LinkedIn and/or Twitter. Once of the offline mode of doing this is by visiting Business Centers or Commercial Complex in and around your area. Once you reach the office ask for a person who is incharge of social media marketing?. For the students in the room I mentioned following Business Centers in mumbai western suburbs.
One of the side effect of this activity both online and offline is you (as a student) will be able to learn more about local software business and could open up an opportunity for intership or first job
What if Digital Collabrator do not agree to do free collabration?
You move on another person
How to convince the Digital Collabrator to do a free collabration?
You don’t because this is not for everyone, Its for people who are willing to do the free work for getting more work. Only thing I can think about is share this article “Blueprint for More Work in 2020” with them.
What should I do if business don’t pay me?
You do the work for free, till the time you can. Make sure you do atleast 100 collabration to get an expereince and learn some craft of negotiations.
Should we share the name of digital Creator on the post?
Yes, because the creator is not getting paid and the only way you are giving value to them is giving them awareness on thier work and the image or video they create will have the instagram or other social media handle at the bottom or top of the content.
What if I want to become a digital creator, am I not creating competition by sharing thier name on post and business?
Even if you aspire to become a digital creator, currently you are not so you can be a student and learn the craft by helping who are ahead in the journey. It will create an oppurtuntity to network with professionals and also find a mentor for you to grow. I think you should not worry about competition but learn more about the craft.
What is the price I can get for each collaboration?
Pricing is a very tricky part of the whole process. However it validates the idea because it gives a value to the work that Digital collabrator does. We ran a small exercise around this and asked every one to put a ballot poll on the price range. You can see the image on top of this article for per collabration (1-3 images per company).
Rs 30-60
Rs 100-150
Rs 100-500
Rs 200-700
Rs 800
Rs 1500-2500
Rs 4000-6000
Rs 9000-15000
Rs 10000-15000
The pricing was all over the place of the amount of work between 1 hour to 4 hour per transaction.
I hope this was a useful post for you. I have a question for you.
This is not a blog post but a job description for the role of an content creator that I am looking for my LinkedIn Profile. To begin with let me explain you my school of thought behind the content. There are 4 forms of content namely written, images, video and audio. Now the most I use on my LinkedIn profile is written and images. This role will be mostly about writing. I could have asked for only content writing but I want you to put on your marketing/sales cap too.
I don’t want a keyboard junkie, who is expert in writing 1000 words per minute and slam me 20 blog post under 20 minutes.
That brings me to the first requirement of this role to you. You will have to write 20 blog posts per month. The idea here that It would be intresting to post 1 per day and we can experiment which 5 days we pick for the week. Don’t worry you won’t have like daily deadlines. We will plan a week in advance so you will be alway writing for the following week. How do I know about planing ahead of time. I wrote 63 articles for my LinkedIn.
If you wonder where will you get the content to write the blog post, that’s a good question. Here are few guidelines to find them:
You can go through my LinkedIn Profile for recent posts and articles.
Now that brings me to your first Test.
Interview TestNo 1 You will have to send me the topic on which you will write the first blog post. You will have to write a short description of 3-5 lines about what you are going to write.
Interview TestNo 2 If I think it looks like a good blog post idea and I haven’t written anything like that before. I will ask you to write a summary with 1300 character or less roughly around 200 words. It has to be around 1300 characters including space because LinkedIn post has that limit. I will post it on LinkedIn. We won’t see at the vanity metrics.
Side note: If you get this job. The next step would be to write a blog post based on the vanity metrics. Which means if there is any comments or likes. Write a 1000 words blog post. So the initial 3-5 lines becomes a tweet. 200 words becomes a LinkedIn post and 1000 words becomes a LinkedIn article.
Now this will be your pillar content, you will create images using the text of your content. Few examples are shown below
1) Quotes created by the comments on one of the LinkedIn post
The outcome of your job should be, that your content makes atleast 20 people per month reach out to me and ask what I do. I understand that it will be practically difficult to measure this. However this is the experiment which I want to test and recently some one reached out to me and I normally ask them how did they came to know about me. He said it was because of a piece of content I posted.
I know I am making it sound all mechanical but this is an hard problem and I welcome you to solve this together. So if you are still reading this post then welcome to this experiment of remote content creation with a sales cap on your head. I will be waiting for your email to confiablesolutions@gmail.com
Thank you! If you agree with this idea but not intrested in this job. Please feel free to share this idea with your friends and family.
My last post got an overwhemling response and I got many questions. One of the student reached out to me showing intrest in doing the role. I thought it would be great if we run an experiment along with the help of the student and see the practical implementation, challenges and learning.
I will document the whole experiment and the outcome of the exercise in the post. You can use this as a refrence guide and also ask question in the comments below. I would be happy to reply them.
Let’s begin, If you have not read my previous article, I would suggest read it to have a better understanding of what we are trying to do here. (click here to read my previous post) You will play the role of Digital Collaborator for this article.
Let’s go step by step for the question “What do you have to do and how can you make your side money? ” from the previous post.
Pick a niche – Software is the business niche I picked for “The Digital Collaborator” (you can email me at vikramshetty.cancer@gmail.com and I will guide you with next steps) for this experiement.
Select 1 skill – Illustration (I picked it for you)
Format of content – Cartoon Strips for educating customer (I picked it for you)
Content with business – Since in this case the business is mine www.73bit.com.
Contact wih Digital Creator – This is the part where you will be working
Find the right fit – Now based on the previous points the right fit will be illustrator doing cartoon strips will be right fit. (In actual end to end work the digital collabrator has to figure this out on thier own)
Once post is live – We will wait for this in future to update with the work of “The Digital Collaborator”
The Task
To create a comic strip explaning a concept from my older posts. Here is an 2 examples. The output will be 1 single image that will be posted in LinkedIn. It will should have the link text http://www.73bit.com in the image. Like in the example below there is @garyvee. (DONOT COPY the theme from this example, it’s only for inspiration and idea, use your creativity on this brief). The message has to be positive or growth.
Let me explain you how to work with any one topic from above list. There is a story in each post and it conveys a message. Let’s take the 1st example from it. Name and Shame vs Name and Fame.
For the cartoon strip image. There will be 2 colleagues talking to each other. First person tells to second person “Name and Shame is a great driver of change” the second person replies “Is that ethical?” (this could be the top part or the left part). The First person asks “Do you have a better solution?” and the second person replied “How about Name and Fame?” (this could be the botton part or the right part)
I could suggest 3 types of theme to create your comic strip image
Problem vs Solution
Do you know vs Ahh! moment
Pure humor
You can pick your creativity that sends in positive and progressive message to the audience.
How will you connect with the Digital Creator (Comic Strip Illustrator)?
Step 2 – Search the hashtag with following for this experiment #comicstrip #CartoonStrip #CartoonistOfinstagram #comicpanel #comicartists
Step 3 – Pick the images which you think are close to the requirement we have above as 2 examples.
Step 4 – Put a comment in it, first genuinely appreciate the work and ask “Would you be intrested in collabration?” or “Would you like to collabrate with a software business?” or “How about a collabration for more awareness to your work?”
Step 5 – Once they agree to collabrate, DM this article to them and ask them to go through The Task section. Answer any question they may have. If you don’t know the answer ask me on the email and reply back to them.
Step 6 – Once the Digital Creator understands the task. Ask them to send across a short write up on what it would look like in case I have any feedback.
You can use the above steps for your own niche, 1 skills, format and connect the correct business. Configure the steps according to your needs.
What did “The Digital Collaborator” do and what was the outcome and timelines of this experiment?
Now it’s upto “The Digital Collaborator” to carry out this activity. I would like him to record the time spend and the dates on which you sent a message and got replies. You can use pen and paper to record it.
Let’s start with the first one image from the list“The Digital Collaborator”
Statistics to record for him for each digital creator
How much time it took for searching the creator? (time in minutes)
When was the first message sent? (date)
How much time it took to explain the task? (time in minutes in case you did back and forth to answer any questions)
When was the writeup sent to you on the final work? (date)
When did the final post sent to me? (date)
Disclaimer: I am not sharing how much I am paying“The Digital Collaborator” to do this job because I think it will block your creative mind when it comes to pricing. I will ask him to write in the comments if you are happy with payment.
I will update this post after we are done with the experiment. If you want to become “The Digital Collaborator” email me at vikramshetty.cancer@gmail.com
Annexure
Other ideas that came during the conversation. Including them below as side notes of this experiment
This is one of the collabration I personally did using the above method along with Artist Mehna – It was viewed and reached more than 1500 in all platforms(LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter). In LinkedIn alone it was 700+
This is another collabration I did using the above method along with Artist Vranda. She created 2 images. The collective viewed and reached more than 1300 in all platforms(LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter)
Digital Collaborator is a person who facilities collaboration between graphic designers, illustrators, photographers, videographers, copywriters (digital creator) with small businesses or consultants
– It’s my definition about this role
I am really not sure if there is something that exists, but when you are in the business where you keep looking for new ways fill in the gap and create business development opportunities. You can come up with these ideas.
When you see something working and more people can use the framework why not share this with rest of the world.
I got inspired by youtubers, technical nomads, Instagram influencers, remote work and growth of internet. I never knew these roles and work will start popping up here and there.
Problem statement 1: Small businesses and consultants have to constantly create content which is time-consuming, expensive and most importantly creative.
Problem statement 2: Digital creators have to keep getting more awareness on thier work and keep finding new paid gigs.
There has been a surge of a concept called free collaboration that many think could get you some big paid work.
This is how it could work for you the digital creator
You connect with small business or consultants who are most likely your future customers (Your tribe)
You offer them your service for free, it should take you around 1-2 hours to do
Asking in return to tag you or put your handle/email/phone in your digital work
You do a dozen of such free collaboration per month
If your work is really good people will contact you
The cumulative reach of your work in your space will be more than you can do individually
How do you know if as a digital creator this is a good 12-24 hours of your time spent?
The short answer is you don’t. The long answer is if you have Instagram/Facebook/LinkedIn account and your view per post is around 100 to 300. It’s better to collaborate with your future client and start building a relationship. You learn about thier pain points what is a good stats for them in terms of awareness, likes and share. You also connect with the people who take care about the business social media marketing. You add up some body of work in your portfolio which is used by businesses.
Yes, I know there are few people who hate doing free work. This is not for everyone. This is the for those who have big ambitions and are ready to sacrifice today for the brighter tomorrow. If you have paid work that you are happy with this is not for you. But, if you want to go to next level or big league this free work can be a leap. You can experiment with work that no one is doing in your industry.
What’s in it for the business?
You are in the year 2020. I don’t need to explain you the importance of social media in the todays business world. If you are NOT in the online world even if you are in offline business. It’s difficult to get new leads which means less new business. Content Marketing is the one which could help you in long term. If you are the one who is vocal and have ideas why customers should buy from you. The digital transformation of your idea could be very useful in telling your story.
When the only costs you pay little money to the digital collaborator to post a graphic, photo, text or video on your social media page. It’s worth the experiment. The reason it’s worth is because you don’t have to spend hours finding digital creator for free collaboration. Yes, you can also ask someone from your team but I am sure you hired them for some specific business work. A seasoned digital collaborator could have good contacts that bring you up to the speed.
Hello Digital Collaborator, if you are still reading. Congratulations!!!
Why should you be a Digital Collaborator?
You will make good connection with digital creators in the area of your interest (networking skills)
You will learn more about content marketing in practice without learning any digital skills. (You can choose to learn it later)
You will get a chance to connect with small business owners and consultants. It could give you some break. (a bit of Sales skills)
You can create your own content after sometime documenting your experiences. (personal branding skills)
You will improve in problem solving, answering difficult questions, getting comfortable with rejections and handling objections (interpersonal skills)
You can turn this into a full fledged scalable business model. Email me at vikramshetty.cancer@gmail.com for learning how to do that.
Who according to me is a good candidate for becoming a digital collaborator?
College Students with free couple of hours per day
Someone starting thier career and exploring options
Home makers
Retired people
Anyone looking for some extra money
What do you have to do and how can you make your side money?
Pick a niche in your career. Pick something you love either on the digital creator side or business side. This is very important for the long term gain
Select 1 skills of digital creator that you believe will work for the business. Is it photography, graphic design, illustration, blog writing, video etc
Search for as many examples in the format of the skill that do well so you can write an article like this to explain your Framework of the digital content.
Content with 100 businesses (preferrably on LinkedIn, use the LinkedIn Opportunity section an change it according to your strategy) and send them this article to explain what you have reached out for. Once connected Send your personal article explaining why you have chosen that business and what kind of content they could do. Once they agree decide on how much they will pay for 10 free digitl content.
Reach out to 250 digital creator via Instagram (using this method) or blog post and pick the post that you think is relatable with the free collaboration. To begin with they should have less than 500 followers and 100 to 300 likes or views. Put a comment explaining in detail what you liked about that content. Ask a question Would you like to collaborate?
Find the right fit and communicate the requirements between the digital creators and businesses over the email.
Once the post is live send your invoice to the business. Calculate the time you spend to connect with 100 businesses + 250 digital creators along with the total money earned.
If you are happy with the work and money continue it.
What do you need to be a Digital Collaborator?
Mobile Phone
Internet connection
1-3 hours per day
Social media user
Not afraid of hearing No (embracing rejections)
How much time do you need for one collabration (Rough Estimate)?
Connecting with creators- 1 to 5 minute
Connecting with businesses – 1 to 5 minutes
Understanding & documenting business requirement – Around 15-30 minutes
Explaining it to creators by sending the email – 1 to 2 minutes
Total time – 18 to 42 minutes
Guesstimate the time for this experiment
Total time for connecting with 250 creators – 4 to 21 hours
Total time for connecting with 100 businesses – 1.5 to 8 hours
Assuming 10% conversion from businesses so requirement time – 2.5 to 5 hours
Total time – 8 hours to 34 hours
Average of 2 hours per day will end up into 4 days to 17 days
I hope you find this post useful. I hope this narrows the gap and create some business opportunities to Digital creators, small businesses and digital collaborators. If you have any further questions do not hesitate to ask me at vikramshetty.cancer@gmail.com
If you think that this job role is legit, leave a comment or like this post.
It would mean a world to me if you can share this article with one person who needs to make some side money and has in them to what it takes to be a Digital Collaborator. They will thank you for sharing it with them.
This article is mashup of multiple ideas for an artist, freelancer, or solopreneur. This is a suggestion given to a dancer (you can make this relavent to your work). There are couple of platform which are taken as example in this article, because I heard a lot about them.
Disclaimer: This is a one person thoughts, I am not a social media expert or a sales person.
The Happy Path
Create more content
Get more collaboration
Create network and connections
Get some work (Free)
Get paid
The Salesman Path
Decide what you want to do? (Corporate events or Being a teacher in studio or paided shoot)
Target the customer list very niche accurately. (Like Corporate HR or Event management or dance studio)
Connect (DM) with them via prop channel like Instagram, Facebook, I think LinkedIn and Twitter could be powerful too.
Pitch a personalized message and not a generic one. Like I see your event company have recently done this kind of work. I am so and so and i have done similar work in past with examples
Measure your sales number. Total messages per week -> Total reply per week -> Total positive reply -> Total jobs/work (Keep biweekly follow up with all positive reply with the ongoing work you do)
Content is the Centerpiece
You will have to publish content on social media. It’s the fact of your line of work in 2020 is content.
You will have to figure out to create 100 content per week.
Some ideas for creating 100 content per week:
Selfie style video answering questions students don’t ask but should ask (same for corporate)
Any thing you did unique that day in practice (learning video selfie style)
Your daily struggle for finding work, again a selfie style video talking about the challenges (being vulnerable)
Photos on random neighborhood.
Practice video
Photoshoot collaboration (find people near your residence where you can walk to some place, use Instagram feature of location search. Female photographer in case you are uncomfortable) Guide to do that by Gary https://youtu.be/vcEvDpYhM3U
Create text quotes and message using Canva (download the free app and use the free templates)
I think you should come up with 200/250 types, strategy for content
Volume Startegy by Gary Vaynerchuk
Here are few ideas in different context you can pick what you can do for your work. Convert writing into video or pictures with caption writing
This could turn out to be more profitable and comfortable work you may end up doing.
LinkedIn is currently like Facebook in 2012 every post is working
Target: Company HR and Employee engagement professionals within company for any semi classical/classical Corporate Shows.
Medium #1 Create selfie style video to explain how connecting to artist directly could be more beneficial for them. Not only in terms of cost but also to create innovative shows around Indian art and classical dance.
Medium #2 Search for the relevant designation on LinkedIn –> Send a custom connection request mentioning that you have something free to offer –> Once connected tell them you will be ready to do a show for free only they have to take care of travel and food.
Create a 5-7 choreographed dance to offer them that they can pick from. (Do what you already know and have done)
If you can think of some creative performance then this could be a viral opportunity. More people will come to know.
You send 3000 invitation in LinkedIn so play it out fully nothing to stop you there. However pick the person wisely and target company with size 50 to 100. Bi-product of this work is all the travel and traffic time to your make productive by creating selfie style video about the work you are going to do. You can answer the below questions for each act.
What all ideas you have?
What you manage to implement?
What went wrong?
What did you learned and how will you do it differently?
What questions normally you get asked?
How do you reply?
I hope this has been useful for you. Please share this with 1 person who needs to know about this.
