It was a rainy day and I was really getting bored by watching random videos on YouTube. Accidentally, I found a video about online earning and when I searched for a few ways to earn money online, I landed on AllBlogThings.com where I saw many guides about blogging and digital marketing. With a curious mind, I searched for the author and found that Umer Idrisi is the gem behind it. I contacted him and asked for an interview. To my surprise, he agreed and here I am to share with you all about how he started his blogging career and started a digital marketing agency out of that blogging money. This interview will help you learn from his mistakes and start making money online on your own. Here's the interview:
"Umer, tell me something about yourself"
I am a blogger and a certified digital marketing expert with 10 years of experience in the digital marketing industry. I have started a few successful blogs and a digital marketing agency as well. I help entrepreneurs to run their own businesses and create awesome products.
"What's unique in your digital marketing agency?"
Since the start of my blogging journey, I was dreaming about starting something unique and found that everybody is providing the same services under the digital marketing name.
So, with these thoughts, I started Kayi.Digital to help my clients think beyond logos and WordPress themes. I am providing different services to different clients with a goal to make their brands be unique and stand out. I offer partnerships to most of my clients and I like to work on a percentage rather than a monthly or per task fee. That's unique I think.
"Do you own a team?"
Speaking with my heart, all the freelancers are in my team as long as they are available on freelancing platforms or have an active social media profile.
I am not handling a team of writers, designers, and coding experts. I hire them on a per-task basis and I know how to hire a freelancer on his/her expertise. So, I don't need a team and still, I have a large team that is always online and hungry for new work.
"Is COVID-19 impacting your business?"
Absolutely not. COVID-19 is not impacting my business as I am not providing any physical services or products; I am focusing only on digital marketing and branding of new business.
In a sense, COVID-19 is helping me get more clients, as more and more offline businesses are turning to the internet and opening eCommerce stores. They need us to help them learn the basics and build their businesses online. This is probably the best time for every digital marketing expert to sell his services on high tickets.
"What do you think about startups?"
The best and the most exciting thing in this tech-era "Startups''. I see startups for every aspect of life and news about new products for almost every field of business and entertainment.
One of the most exciting industries for startups (at least for now) is AI and Robotics. I can see that every startup is talking about how they are revolutionizing an industry or market or even a single product/task by implementing AI or using Machine Learning with Robots. To me, the startups today are only about automation and reducing human involvement.
"How do you relate blogging to digital marketing?"
Well, blogging and digital marketing are just two names of one thing. Yes, this is how I think blogging and digital marketing relates.
With blogging, the end goal is to market our content (articles, podcasts, ebooks, videos, or photos) and digital marketing is about getting leads for a business. That's the same, blogging gives long-term and low-cost leads, while traditional digital marketing such as running ads and sending emails provides us with costly leads. So, I think blogging is better for digital marketing best practices.
"Where do you see yourself in the next few years?"
I started my first blog (AllBlogThings) with an aim to become a top blogger in my country and I chased that dream. Now with my digital marketing agency and a few startup ideas in the pipeline, I am seeing myself on the list of top founders. Let's see how things work for me.
Getting answers to my last questions, I said a warm "bye" to Mr. Umer Idrisi and I believe he is really a wonderful guy who wrote his heart for my interview. What do you guys think?