I started my venture Innovent Solutions last year with content writing that too catering specifically to automobile blogs and websites, as prior to this I was working with CarDekho’s editorial team looking after their content and training their sales and content team the technicalities of automobiles.
I got my first order through a vendor located in South India who gave me an order of 10-15 articles of 500 words each to be delivered on a daily basis at a rate of Rs 100 per article. I connected with my college juniors and batch mates who were unemployed and got that volume getting delivered to the vendor for next 2-3 months. The payment cycle was of 45 days after raising the invoice, which created complexity.I kept trying for new business but wasn’t able to get much work plus faced a lot of delivery issues with freelancers. Work was getting monotonous and directionless.
Later in order to source new business, I used to go to Naukri.com and search for the jobs in field of content writing connect with these companies and tried to convince them to outsource work so tat they have to pay for the words they were getting. In this I was providing them edited and copyscape pass content. Most of the times contact details were used to be of of HR persons and others who never understood the concept and hence never connected to the authorities whom I could have explained the USP’s of the model.
In November last year, through Naukri.com came to know about an upcoming automobile website. I reached them out, and they agreed to outsource complete content work to the company as they were having a bulk demand. They agreed to outsource us monthly content volume worth Rs 90,000 at a rate of Rs.150 per 500 words. Excited with such a big order I along with my partner set up an office at her place and started hunting for full time writers. We first reached through skillpages, linkedin, local community pages in Jaipur, placement agencies and newspaper and were able to hire a team of 3 full time writers and a dedicated editor.
But when we started working, the client reduced the work volume to less than half and we were unable to pay our employees the committed salary.This compelled us to switch to target based salaries rather than the fixed salary,we deduced the salary if they didn’t meet their targets and paid incentives for the extra effort.
Meanwhile, I dropped mail to all the digital agencies in US, UK and Australia for outsourcing their content work but never got any satisfactory volume of work. Some India based blogs in automobile, finance and all gave us a small work on regular basis which kept the business going and put in our small savings. We got all the furniture for office from our homes and didn’t invest any money in infrastructure. Its just that when the summers came we invested in fans, then in a desert cooler for the writers. We didn’t invest even in the computers just got 1-2 computers from our home and hired the writers who have their own laptops so we do’t have to invest at that moment in the work stations.
We connected to some web-development companies in Jaipur in April who gave us some on page article for static websites and brochure writing work at a rate of 60-70 paise per word but again work volumes were low and it wasn’t a regular work.
I connected to Alok in December last year inquiring for the content work, he connected me to Mukul and Rohit. Rohit told me to connect him in month of March as they might have some requirement so in April we got a chance to do1000 questions for some app for C2W. In the same month we got an order from an e-commerce portal who gave us some beauty product description and blog writing work at decent rates.
I then figured out the usability of Linkedin for generating business and started using the professional account of same. Using Inmail feature of Likedin, I dropped mail to CEO’s of some top internet companies and told them about our services, few of them really gave me a positive reply and outsourced us some work. Again the rates were too low but we agreed to work just to get some big name in our clienteles which might give us some leverage in future.
I realized that the web-development companies outsource the tedious writing work job to us at a very low rates and then sell those websites at a very higher rate and we are operating on a wrong model of B2B rather than B2C.
One of our web-development companies connected me directly to a client who was setting up a fashion jewellery store in Jaipur and wanted a 5 pager content to be done for their static website. I pitched that client for an e-commerce portal and a blog which will be beneficial for him in the longer run. He got convinced by my idea and decided to go for a e-commerce portal and we did the complete photo-shoot of the products as being a freelance motoring journalist I am having my photography team in Mumbai, Delhi and Jaipur who cover the automobile launches for our client sites.
So we did photography, UI design, product descriptions, blog and he also gave us his social media account management and turned out to be a profitable deal for us. In meantime my classmate from school also joined us on a profit sharing mode who has worked as Search Engine Marketing specialist in a digital agency in U.S. for two years.
We realized that if we really want to make profit than instead of content work we should go for complete digital marketing work. So we liasioned with some freelance Web-developers and SEO agents in Jaipur and started pitching to companies in Jaipur who have got the good offline presence but have no digital presence and we successfully was able to convert few of them.
We started our own auto blog called allonauto.com a month back and got 50 percent stake in an another site called carzy.co.in. We are also planning to come up with some big auto-portal with some differentiators and are targetting for a daily traffic of around 20,000 in next 4 months. By this we will have our own network of automobile sites and which will give us a leverage over our competitors as then we would be able to sell leads of 4-5 websites to auto OEM’s and give them a bigger spectrum to advertise.
We also liasoned with a digital agency based out in Mumbai and they gave us 1 Social media account as of now and wanted to increase the business once they are satisfied with our work.
Still, we were facing issues that in all these projects profitability is very less plus for our own auto blog and the website in which we got 50 percent stake we are putting money from our profits as they will start monetizing in next 3-6 months. I and my partner are not taking any salary since past 1 year as we have no liability and just cater to our phone bills, fuel bills and all. Last month only we spent close to Rs 35,000 in office furniture as the work was expanding. Currently we are facing following issues:
- Clients don’t pay us up-fronts and asks for multiple editing and we get paid on word per paise basis, so editing adds on to our costs which they don’t pay.
- Low rates, for bulk work we are paid close to 30-35 paise per word and we have to pay our writer only 20-25 paise for good quality work.
- No fixed volumes and regular work, out of a sudden we will get a lot of work, but then we can’t go and hire very next day it becomes difficult to meet the deadlines and then again we have to go on freelancer mode. As writer has his maximum efficiency of writing 2000-300 words daily we can’t push them to do more.
- Hiring, we tried Naukri.com, Monster jobs, news papers everything, experienced writers ask us a high salaries whereas our clienst are not ready to pay more for bulk work.
- How to get work from off-shore clients as they hesitate in outsourcing to us and if they outsource us we have to take the risk that in the end they will pay or not as they also don’t pay us up-front.
- Is our decision of venturing into Digital Marketing is good, as this are already has more than n number of players.
- I and my partner is not taking any salary since past 1 year, which demotivates us sometimes and also we are not able to calculate actual profitability as out time also has got some monetary value. So shall we fix some basic salary of Rs 10k-15k monthly and include it in liabilities.
Currently, I have a team of 10 full-time writers, 2 graphic designers, 1 web developer, 2 Social Media Executives which sums up to liability of nearly Rs 2 Lakhs every month.
I am the elder son in family and my father expired 10 years back, mother is a government teacher so in a longer run I need to give some amount back at home, right now she doesn’t pushes me much as I cater my all expenses and pay my education loan EMI of my mechanical engineering. Digital companies and automobile publications offer me to join them and ready to pay 50-60k in month but I really don’t wanna turn back and go back to job as I started out of my passion and I am optimistic that digital has got a future but just wanted to identify mistakes in business model.
I request fellow Rodinhooders to please guide me how to work out on these issues, as being a first generation entrepreneur, TRHS is only source of guidance and motivation.
You can check my company’s facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/InnoventSolutions
Our website will be live next week as we recently hired a web-developer.
Best Regards,
Sankalp Sharma
autocontentjpr@gmail.com
+91-9887177657
asha chaudhry
sankalp,
i want you to hang in there.
some suggestions:
– try elance
– list yourselves on afaqs, exchange4media and every digital agency
– for those of your team who want to stick to the auto niche – make a list of all car related ventures and write to them.
have you tried approaching car companies? am sure they need specialised content from time to time for their websites/blog section.
– try not to limit yourself to only one field. check this out – https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/looking-for-a-co-founder-stri…
– go through our JOBS & ASK SECTION
– make a crisp post in our JOBS section after a couple of weeks. (let this post get some response first) – a lot of rodinhooders need content creation.
will share this link with rodinhooders i know who might be looking for your services…
all the best!!
Kartik R
I need a lot of content done along with social media for ManagementParadise.com and a lot of subsidiary companies including b-school.com 🙂 . Please get in touch with me on ceo@managementparadise.com
asha chaudhry
sankalp… i share this article written by alok to every rodinhooder who says they haven’t been able to pay themselves a salary…
https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/the-mystery-of-entrepreneur-salaries
The Mystery of Entrepreneur Salaries
If Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes were commissioned to solve the ‘Mystery of Entrepreneur Salaries’, my guess is that they would prefer to get married, go on a honeymoon, have kids and settle down.
Neither of them would hazard a chance to solve the world’s most complex mystery.
But who needs Agatha or Sherlock, when you have Rodinhood?!
These are my findings:
– Entrepreneurs feel guilty in taking salaries
I have met more entrepreneurs than the number of times you’ve shook hands with people; and not even once have I come across an entrepreneur who has boldly spoken about her salary.
The discussion around salaries is ‘hush hush’, and muted. Entrepreneurs tell me how much they draw in a very guilty, often self-incriminating way. I always wonder ‘why’?
Being an entrepreneur myself (I did not draw salary for 15 months in my first venture), I believe that the anxiety to save every drop of cash in the startup instills this strong belief that cash taken out for ‘self’ salaries is doing injustice to the business.
Well, the fact is that it does impact cash flow, but an entrepreneur must survive. Love and fresh air does not impress anyone anymore. It makes the other person pity you… even offer to buy you lunch!
So, there is no running away or feeling guilty about being priced.
– Entrepreneur salaries are important to show the real picture.
My Marwari accountant brain clearly segments ‘expense booked’ from ‘expense paid’. In other words, even if a legitimate expense is not ‘paid’ (to preserve cash), it still needs to be ‘booked’ or accounted for as a payable, so that the real picture of the business is revealed.
Hence, if goods are bought on credit or advertisement delivered (but not paid), these have to be shown in the P&L of the business so that it reflects the true position of the business (as in is there a profit or loss) and also who are creditors that need to be paid.
In the same vein, entrepreneurs need to at least ‘book’ their true salaries, even though they may withdraw it later, at their own pace. The reason is simple. If the business cannot afford to pay them, then it’s a business not worth having.
And if the business can easily afford to pay them, then it means that real and genuine ‘value’ has been created in the enterprise! Hey, it even signals that a professional CEO could be employed!
Even better is a situation when startups with ‘salaries outstanding’ get funded, the entrepreneur can even take some money back home and also negotiate a better salary post funding.
If the VC doesn’t allow taking money home, at least the amount of payable salaries shows as capital contribution by the founders towards building the business!
– How much is too much? How little is too little?
There is no science or ‘pay commission’ that determines how much should entrepreneurs be paid in their own Companies. We all read of greedy CEOs who pay themselves millions of dollars and of noble souls who pay themselves a dollar each year as compensation. So how much is too much and how little is too little is anyone’s guess.
My benchmarks are:
– The entrepreneur must have her basics provided for.
So depending on the lifecycle of the entrepreneur, the usual costs of living, supporting family and the occasional holiday must be built-in, into the payable salary.
– If the entrepreneur is a ‘career professional’ migrating to an entrepreneurial career, then the salary must at least take care of what I call ‘lifestyle maintenance’.
This means that if the professional has a certain lifestyle that she could afford via the salaries of her previous job, then that lifestyle must be maintained in the new entrepreneurial role. Sure, they can be no more room for savings, but the last thing you want is the kids of the newborn entrepreneur to wonder, “What the heck did mom do wrong to punish us like this?”
– Salaries vs. Equity
There is a big misnomer in the community that if you are the entrepreneur promoter with the largest chunk in equity, then there is no need for any significant salary. At best this applies to serial entrepreneurs who have already become rich.
But in startups, there is no guarantee that the equity may even convert into pots of gold. However, the days and years spent in building the business can never be recovered. If you are a first time entrepreneur, struggling with a startup, do not be fooled into believing that you should be slogging all day long, building a golden castle but eating cabbage soup in the community soup kitchen.
– Venture capital influence
A few VCs bully entrepreneurs into not drawing reasonable salaries. They reward these entrepreneurs by funding their company but punish them into not letting them take some monthly money home.
This is perversion of a miserly level. I ask why these VCs should indeed draw obscene salaries themselves, when the money they have raised from their own financiers has still not borne return?
I believe that entrepreneurs need firmness and dignity while negotiating salaries before they close their investors and investments and not leave this topic open, to be treated like vagabonds in hope of VC kindness at dinner time.
All in all:
– If you are an entrepreneur, price yourself correctly and reflect that in the business.
– Take some cash home and keep some payable. Maintain a healthy balance.
– As an owner of the company, be reasonable in your salary demand but don’t feel ashamed of being paid!
– If VCs ask you to work for charity, tell them to go and invest in Mother Teresa’s business instead.
Kunal Shah
Hey Sankalp,
Really glad to see a fellow entrepreneur in the same field as me! Helps in networking and collaborating on projects!
First of all hang in there buddy, there is a lot of potential in the market and we just need to harness it in the right way! I have been through the exact same thing as you and know how it is.
Lets connect on kunal.shah@brinkpointcreative.com or +919892195915 anytime and discuss possible opportunities together!
Cheers!
Kunal Shah
BrinkPoint Creative Solutions
Ashwin Kandoi
@Sankalp please write to me at kandoi at gmail and i would like to connect with you as we are looking for a good company reliable who can manage and crate content for us
Sankalp Sharma
@Asha, thanks for your suggestions and motivating words.
– Haven’t really tried much with Elance but will surely give it a try now.
– Will list ourselves on all digital agencies.
– All the auto portals in India know about our services and we are working with most of them.
– Haven’t approached auto companies yet, I am just doubtful on one part hat which department in the auto companies shall we approach is it the marketing, branding or corporate communication.
– I went through the post, many of our clients also offer us partnership but the problem is that monetizing takes time but we have to pay salaries to writers and other team members, so how shall we shell out money for these kinds of offers.
Sankalp Sharma
@ Asha thanks for sharing wonderful post, finally after a year I will get my salary.
Sankalp Sharma
@Kunal, I understand that we both are in same boats, will call you tomorrow morning and lets work out how we can associate and take things forward.
Sankalp Sharma
@Ashwin would love to work for you. Will just drop a mail on your id.
Natwar Maheshwari
Hey Sankalp,
I am also looking for some good content writers, please connect with me at natwar86 at gmail dot com.
Keep Rocking.
Natwar
Nishant Agrawal
Hopping around from one field to another is a bad strategy. You need to build up a core competence in one sector, and stick to it. You should look at freelancer.com, oDesk, MicroLancer, and other such sites for work.
Without a core competence, you cannot move up the value chain.
Darshan Bhambiru
Sankalp,
Keeping the Work regular and also adding more each day is every Entrepreneurs Dream and also what they are made up of as well. Good to see you Living your dream already.
Now that you have ASKed for suggestions and help, you would not only get the same plus the Bonus of being true as well 🙂
Check out the below that would be an Immediate requirement to cover up, and add me here as well as on FB so we can Interact and I am into the ITES sector as well, so have a few clients (Domestic and International) which can provide some work related to your field of interest, would like to talk to you on this at length, so share your Contact co ordinates. (Always , when posting anywhere so people can reach you)
Cheers!!!
Sudhakar Sahoo : Need a content writer for online Odisha Saree Store (Urgent)
Gohirakhala – Dhenkanal, India 759015.
Phone 077 35 397477
Email care@odishasareestore.com
Website https://www.odishasareestore.com/
You can also connect with Nitish Mehta he is also looking out for a Good Content Writer himself a RodinHooder too.
Sankalp Sharma
@ Nishant, I understand that hopping around won’t yield results but I be honest that taking new challenges and trying out new things only led me to switch from regular job towards entrepreneurship and most of our clients only told us that why don’t you guys only mange our websites and social media accounts so we don’t have to go to different places and that’s why after being 1 year in pure content industry we are trying our hands in digital marketing.
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Content (writing) is very tough to survive as a “business”.
Most web and mobile offerings are becoming ‘minimalistic’ as far as content goes.
For instance, in games, I constantly ask my teams to NOT have have words in Tutorials. It should be graphical. PS – I dont even want a tutorial.
Something is missing in this offering – you have to have a side plot…
Write to the top PR firms in India and suggest that you will WRITE AND PROMOTE their clients on the web – they have no clue of digital PR…
That will leverage your writing + web knowledge?
Sanjay Shenoy
Hello Sankalp,
Fellow Digital marketer here. I would like to express some of my views to you regarding content since I work closely with content and I have content writers myself. Excuse me if I am a little harsh, I haven’t slept well from the past one week.
1. Stop underselling yourself : Rs. 150/ 500 words ? Are you serious? The moment some one quotes me that price that’s the end of it. I won’t even think of hiring you because I believe that content is something that is very important and takes a lot of time and effort to write . If you are charging Rs.150/ 500 words then obviously you are not putting that much effort into it and I don’t want content which is like that. All the people who you contacted will be thinking the same. Robert . B . Cialdini in his amazing book called ‘Influence’ (Rodinhooders read this book!) has explained how people associate things with price. The perception is that cheaper the price lower the quality. Like the chinese famously say it good things no cheap , cheap things no good. The going rate for a 500 word article in the market is close to Rs.300 and that’s the cheapest and you are selling your article at 50% cheaper than the cheapest guy out there. Think about it.
Also one more thing you are doing ( unintentionally of course ) is bringing down the value of this service for the entire industry . Tomorrow if I approach a client for some kind of content he is going to tell me that the other guy is giving me Rs 150 why should I pay you more. They don’t understand the value of it and you are making it harder for them to understand. Please stop doing that.
2. Stop that “500 words” thing : One things I always have hated is this 500 word cliche that flies around in the digital marketing world. Who in this world put that benchmark?? Why are you limiting yourself to 500 words? Do you actually think you can say whatever you have to say in 500 words? I seriously doubt that. Charge them per 100 words or per word ( I would prefer 100 words ) and then write as much as you can. I have been blogging for sometime now and my average word count is 3000-4000. Check out all the blog post out there in the blogosphere and all the content out there. Do they limit themselves to 500 words? Hell no! And there is no reason why you should. Of course there are certain things that you can finish in 500 words but with that 500 word mentality you are leashing yourself. Get over it and get over it fast. This applies especially with your own websites. The more content you have the search engines will love you.
3. Understand the psychology of content writing : There is the conscience and then there is the sub conscience. When you are reading something your sub conscience is doing a lot of work without you yourself knowing it. You have to understand it , dissect it and analyze it an as to why it is working. Once you understand this, you sir , would have become a content pro. For example : Bullet points work better than wall of texts. Why? Simple, I can skim through it and STILL get most of the content. There are so many things like this, do your research. There are a boat load of articles on this alone.
4. Titles matter : I could write an entire post only on this. Titles are the most important thing in content. It is the headline through which a visitor decides whether he/she wants to read the content or not. Thankfully for us someone has already done the hard work and created a formula ( well, almost ) which you can use to generate titles that people actually click.You can check out this headline generator that I use : https://www.portent.com/tools/title-maker/ or you can use this headline template : https://www.copyblogger.com/proven-headline-formulas/
What I usually do is when I go shopping to a super market I go to the magazine stand and check out all the magazines there and pick some of them too. Sometimes I pick up Cosmopolitan also because those guys have absolutely nailed the art of writing headlines. But the content is crap, that’s the downside but still people pick it up . Why? Titles! ( the title generator explains each section of the headline well, try to understand it, soon you will not need it )
5. Stop writing a text book : Nobody likes reading a text book. ( Do you? ) The reason is it’s boooring! Use a conversation style when you are writing content. When I read your content I should feel that I am talking to you not reading the text book. For example : this reply 🙂 . This is how your content should be because that way people will relate to your content and not go zzzzzzz when they read it. This is the internet and we are in the world of multi screens , so if you don’t give them enough reasons to continue reading they will find something else.
6. Stop writing for the machines : From your 500 word cliche I am assuming you are focusing on SEO content. Let me tell you something , there is no such thing. Write content for humans because humans are the ones who have credit cards and currency and that’s what matters to businesses not how the search engines enjoyed your content. If your content is good enough you won’t even need SEO people will do it for you. When you write content for humans they should feel like they should share it ,they should feel that it going to make them look “cool” when they share it on their walls. Be awesome!
7. I know this might sound a little too out of the box, but if I were you I would close the office and work from home and ask everyone else to work from home. As a matter of fact I have done it. I am currently writing this from my bedroom/office in my boxers. What about the employees you ask ? I don’t know about yours but my employees love it because first of all they are saving a lot of money on traveling eating and all the other costs associated with traveling to the office and very importantly for me, I would rather spend one hour working rather than getting stuck in the traffic looking at bumpers for an hour- twice a day! Again, this is left to you. you can use tools like Google docs, Basecamp to help yourself with project management and co ordinate with your employees. Did I mention that you have flexible hours when you work from home and your carbon footprint is much lower?
8. Check that pitch : I spot a bad content writer when he/she pitches to me. If you can’t convince me you can’t convince 100s of readers to read your posts. Be absolutely sure that your pitch is perfect with proper grammar and everything. If you are not confident ask some one who is proficient in English to converse with them. Also, we as Indians have a very huge mother tongue influence and it is very evident from your post that you have it too ( constructive criticism ) . Lose it fast or people will spot you that you are a non native english speaker and would think twice.
9. Pro blogger : If you want international clients this is it. Pro blogger has a job board (https://jobs.problogger.net/) where companies request articles to be written for them and do they pay well or what. A single post can fetch you anywhere between $50- $200. Don’t get carried away, when they are willing to pay that much they want amazing content also . Content that sticks.
If I were you I would post a job there ( costs $50 ) and see the pitches I get and then take the good parts from all the pitches and make a good pitch out of it and then start pitching to people. You might have a better chance of winning a deal and once you get a deal make sure you deliver ad they will come back to you.
Sorry if I was a little harsh but this is the hard reality and the sooner you realize it you will grow bigger.
Also, drop me a mail at sanjay@clickmeister.com with some samples. There is no such thing is too many content writers 🙂
Keep at it and do not give up!
Hope this helped. 🙂
asha chaudhry
sanjay,
you just sealed the goodie deal! keep your eyes open for the next rodinhood goodies post 🙂
Sanjay Shenoy
Awesome! Thanks a ton Asha ! Glad to be of help 🙂
Sankalp Sharma
@Darshan, It was really nice talking to you yesterday and thanks for your motivating words and suggestions.
Sankalp Sharma
Hi Alok,
Thanks for replying. Yes, even I have realized that it’s very difficult to solely depend on content writing as business that’s why we are gradually moving towards 360 degree digital marketing solutions.
And even I agree that no one loves to reads the long articles online they appreciate short, simple and to the point content with graphics.
Would definitely try connecting with PR firms and proposing them idea of digital PR
Sankalp Sharma
Hi Sanjay,
Really thanks a lot for your suggestions, it really gave me a lot of points to ponder on. Will be connecting to you over mail for seeking further suggestions.
Krishna Verma
Hi Sankalp,
I am also planning to do something similar. I want to ask that have you registered your company.
Jitendra Gursingh
Hi, I am planning to get into ‘content marketing’. Do you think specializing in short, crisp content with attention grabbing headlines can be a business differentiator?
asha chaudhry
hey sankalp,
how are things in auto-content-land…? any better??