How I Got My First Freelancing Gigs in Marketing, Content & Web Development

Since I was in school like 11th-12th, I had this thing of building something of my own somewhere from which I could earn money.

I didn’t really know what that “something” would be.

At that point there was a trend of dropshipping, but it needed some investment and I had nothing. The other thing I found out was affiliate marketing, so I started learning about it and tried Amazon Affiliates.

I did the whole keyword and CPC research and all through Ubersuggest and landed up writing an SEO-friendly blog about Best Speakers, with my affiliate links. I used Wix to build the website.

Though never made anything out of it.

But that was probably one of my first experiences of trying to understand how you could actually create something on the internet and make money from it.

And that mindset stayed.

I Needed Money for My Gym

When I was in college, I needed money so that I could afford my gym on my own.

I didn't want to keep asking my parents for money, so I started looking for ways to earn.

That's how I landed my first internship through Internshala.

It was as a Marketing Executive at a startup named Yolofarms, which was also my first real exposure to marketing.

I worked there for the first month for free, and then got paid ₹5,000 for the next two months.

At that point, I didn't really know anything about marketing or freelancing. I was just looking for a way to earn, while also doing something I was genuinely interested in.

That internship gave me my first real exposure to marketing, and over time, I realised that this was something I actually enjoyed.

I was also in college clubs where we used to organize events and everything, that part of on-field marketing always used to excite me and still does.

My First Web Development Projects

After this, when I was in college final year, the house in which we used to live on rent, the son of the owners was building his agency in marketing and web dev.

So he asked us that can we build websites.

And before that, we — me and 2 more friends of mine, my roommates — never ever built a website.

But we said yes that we can do full frontend and backend, designing, deploying, everything with no experience on how to do.

We had absolutely no idea how we were going to do it.

But yes, we learned while doing and did almost 3-4 projects back then, and all of the websites were doing well in real life implementation.

That experience taught me something that I still carry today:

You don't always need to know everything before you start.

You just need to be willing to figure it out.

Then I Tried Freelancing

As soon as I graduated, I had this thing of doing something on my own.

But I had no skills from which I could build something. But I was always inclined towards marketing, so I thought, why not try freelancing it?

Since I had no portfolio to showcase, I built a mock website of my own agency named "Melons Media", and started talking to everyone I met and knew about what I am doing, what "we" do. Though I was alone there were no more folks.

I had an influencer friend, so started using her account to showcase that we manage and do content for her.

From word of mouth, got a client: a cloth rental shop.

My First Marketing Client

I had to act full professional.

Went in person to meet with documentations, pitches of plans that we provide, and ended up onboarding him for content marketing & Google Business management. But I again didn't have much idea on that as me myself had never made content before.

So again I learned while doing. About content, learned a lot from IG reels.

I delegated my work, had a person just for shooting and editing professionally, I handled the ops and other things and Google Business management.

So ya that's how more inbounds started to come in as I started posting on LinkedIn about my learnings and observations too. And made some money through this after graduating.

Then Came “KOZEO”

There was this idea of my friend on how students need to build profiles to get hired in good orgs but there's nothing they can do, as good orgs need a proof of work and knowledge which most important.

Also as the job market was at its lowest in 2025, and in that state you needed to have a really good portfolio land a job at a good place. But students had no exp, no projects to showcase in portfolios. All projects they ever did were the YouTube ones which they built while watching the video.

So we had a chat with a bunch of students, made our problem statement, built the MVP and then in a few months launched our product KOZEO.

KOZEO was basically a platform-building platform for students. All a student does is sign up, complete sprints and speedruns by organizations, and on the basis of that get real-world projects from organizations and get paid for them in real time. They also get ratings by the project hosters on their work on a few metrics.

It's basically a mix of Unstop and Fiverr.

We got 2 university partnership proposals and an incubation talk/guidance going on. Though we never registered the startup and scaled it or earned a penny through it, because of a few reasons we had to drop it in between for now, which we would surely continue back in future.

But this was the best experience till date when you are building, figuring things out on how to make revenue, how to strengthen core product, the ideations and brainstorming sessions literally everything was super great.

Three friends sitting in a room full of their heads with ideas which may be right, may be wrong, 3 laptops and a whiteboard. That experience was something completely different from just doing an internship or working on someone else's project. It was our thing.

And even though we didn't make money out of KOZEO, I think I learned a lot from trying to build something from scratch.

Looking Back

When I look back at the whole thing, it wasn't really one big plan.

It was just a series of things I tried.

I tried dropshipping and realised I couldn't afford the investment.

I tried affiliate marketing and built a whole website around Best Speakers, but never made anything out of it.

I said yes to building websites even though none of us had ever built one before.

I got my first internship because I wanted to earn enough money to afford my own gym.

And then after graduating, I wanted to try freelancing but had no portfolio, so I built one.

I created a fake agency called Melons Media even though I was the only person there. I started telling everyone what I was doing, with my team though there was no team.

I used an influencer friend's account to show the kind of content work I could do. And eventually, someone trusted me enough to become my first client. Even then, I didn't really know everything I was selling. So I learned. I gave results to the client to trust me.

I delegated the things I couldn't or shouldn't do myself. I kept experimenting.

I started posting what I was learning on LinkedIn. And slowly, more people started reaching out.

Some things worked, some didn't.

But every single thing taught me something.

And I think that's probably the biggest lesson I've taken from all of this.

You don't always have to have everything figured out before you start. Sometimes you just need to start with whatever you have, be honest about what you know, and then learn the rest while doing.

My first freelancing gig wasn't some huge project. It was a small opportunity that came because I told people what I was trying to do.

And honestly, that's how most of these things started for me.

I tried something.

I told people.

Someone gave me a chance.

And then I figured it out. And if I can try all this, so I'm damn sure anyone can.