This 26-Year-Old Did 'Work From Home' Online Jugaad To Earn Rs 36 Lakh In Just 2 Months

Have you ever seen this ad before? The one that tells you how you can make lakhs sitting at home? Well, most of the time it's some sort of scam, or a multi-level marketing scheme.

But for one Indian entrepreneur, it was the opportunity of a lifetime.

Milind Gupta, who hails from your average middle-class Delhi family, is just 26 years old, yet he's already on the way to becoming a millionaire. And it's all thanks to his expertise leveraging viral marketing for these work-from-home digital jobs.

The beginning of a jugaad

Gupta was ten years old when he made his first sale, trading a selection of puzzles and comics to a school friend for Rs 13. That kind of jugaad came to define the rest of his still nascent career.

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During the days of Orkut, Gupta says a post directed him to the website Fiverr, where anyone can offer almost any kind of service for cash. He offered people customised pictures of their names in the sand at the beach with the waves lapping at it.

In true jugaad fashion though, he didn't ever go to the beach. Instead, he just outsourced to a skilled photoshopper to edit 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."

Eventually, he came across an online website that offered CPA (cost per action) earning opportunities he felt he could handle. Those ads we talked about? They're usually things like getting a user to fill out a form or survey. And for each of these "actions", which an advertiser can use for their own gain, you get paid a small commission.

ALSO READ: This 26-Year-Old Gamer Made Rs 70 Crore In 2018 Just Broadcasting His Games Online. No Kidding.

Gupta was so successful at his job, leveraging his friends and contact networks, he earned a whopping $50,800.03 in two months, approximately Rs 36 lakh. He was almost immediately promoted by his boss, then-CEO of CPALead Peter Tarr, to business development head.

However, Gupta soon grew bored with the position and, after two years, he and Tarr left the company, eventually even starting their own endeavour.

Setting up shop

After CPALead, Gupta took six months to continue learning the intricacies of viral marketing and paid advertising. Eventually 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 Gupta, this was once more a resounding 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.

Gupta soon realised a desk job wasn't for him - Reuters (representative image)

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.

The path to success

So, how does one emulate Milind Gupta's success? Well he has a fairly straightforward answer. "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 learnt things from people as young as 12 years old."

Pixabay

"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 the matter of hours."