How I Increased My Income by 20% By Working Only 2.5 Hours a Day

Since I became self-employed at 25, I used to brag about living the 4-hour workdays. But last year, I worked significantly less because I got married which was a huge change.

My husband has a job where he’s always travelling, so I had to balance my time with him when he’s at home once in a few days and then my productivity at work.

My routine was all over the place!

And we spent 10 weeks travelling which I’m grateful for.

Let me lead you through how this upgrade in my life and work happened. I increased my income by 20% by cutting my working hours by 37.5%.

First, Here’s What I Do For a Living

Since I quit my job in mid-2021, here’s how I make a living:

• cohort-based course four times a year (I’m reducing the frequency this year though)
• ebooks about growing on Medium and LinkedIn
• writing on Medium

Last year, I started these additional sources:

• LinkedIn course
• Webinars
• Brand sponsorships

Brand sponsorships pay pretty well for the time you put in. Let’s say about $1000 on average for an hour of work at the most. I had the pleasure of working with these brands:

I’ve earned $6,211 from brand sponsorships. The newsletter ones aren’t mentioned here, but it costs $$$ for just 3 lines.

My rates are also public so that helps.

I’ll tell you very soon about how I got them.

Deep Diving Into New Sources of Income

The new sources of income helped me and if I can be honest, blew my mind away. Here’s what I started.

1/ LinkedIn course

After getting plenty of downloads of my LinkedIn playbook, I sensed a demand for the course. This was via emails where students requested in-depth information and as I grew on LinkedIn, I couldn’t have everything in an ebook.

The course has 140+ students.

I don’t think it's my best course because, looking back, I could’ve done a few things differently. But it’s doing alright for itself.

2/ Free Webinar

I’ve only done this once so far and will do one again soon.

I conducted a free webinar about writing on Medium via Topmate. I also opened ‘pay what you want’ there, and most people did not pay obviously.

Still, I made $414.30 with this.

At the end of the webinar, I plugged in my Medium Guide at a discount.

That led to $993 in sales.

So that's $1407.58 with a ‘free’ webinar.

The second time, I conducted my first-ever paid webinar.

My mistake was that it was when India played in the semi-finals during the World Cup. Still, I saw a positive that it’s good to have fewer people for a ‘first’ something.

You know, I don’t want to create a big blunder in front of too many people.

This led to $1000 in participation fees and $246 of LinkedIn playbook sales where the special offer was on for only 24 hours.

Later on, I upsold my LinkedIn course at a discount and made $717.

Making $3,370 by conducting two hour-long webinars shows you the power of the internet.

It’s not the amount that massive, it’s the opportunity.

I’m now more confident about doing this.

3/ Brand Sponsorships

I opened a public page with my rates and plugged that link into my newsletters.

I got brand sponsorships in two ways:

1. Getting approached by digital marketing agencies who bridge the gap between brands and creators.
2. Getting approached directly via my sponsorship page.

It’s yummy.

Pays high for less effort. Shows that you get paid for impact not as much for effort.

Of course, this is a consequence of putting a lot of effort into increasing my audience across platforms.

4/ Tier-Pricing for my course

For 18 months, my cohort-based-course Summit 21 had one price for all. So now, I have introduced more offers:

Plenty of people hopped into the ‘Creator’ program and four in the ‘Chief’ program. Four in the entire year is below what I expected because I see immense value in 24 sessions of coaching a year. Perhaps I need to market it better.

How To Get Here

Every year since I became self-employed, I’m appalled at how life has changed. So much that I wouldn’t have imagined this a year ago. Here’s something I recommend so that you can earn more without putting in long hours of work:

1. Value: Even when I freelanced as a side hustle during my corporate job, I worked with 1–2 high-paying clients instead of plenty of low ones. It helped that I had a portfolio of work on this platform that can vouch for my skills. My courses and products have a high price point too and that’s because they offer a lot of value. If spending $50 for your client or customer can help them make $500 or even $100, it’s an investment.
2. Consistency: Do it for long enough. Sounds like common sense, but most people don’t do this. I’ve been writing online seriously for over three years and that’s when I’m attracting cool things like brand sponsorships. Also, this is how you build + retain an audience.
3. Try out new things: be open to releasing that freebie or a digital product, or conducting a webinar. I never imagined a free webinar to make this much money. The worst thing is that you fail, which isn’t so bad honestly.

Do this for long enough and the fruit will come to you. It can come right away when you focus on the first one.

For example, if you’re a freelance writer, work with two people who pay you $300 per article instead of ten of them paying you $30. This is just a random number, of course.

All the best!

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