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Getting A Massive Payout For the Simple Skills

The problem with the traditional mentality is that we feel that in order to make a big buck, we need to know rocket science. Many people believe that their compensation is directly proportional to how much more qualified they are about a certain skill.

This could be true in certain cases especially in competitive or saturated lines of work and most specifically for those seeking fixed compensation in the form of salaries. However, it doesn’t always have to be the case.

The money is in the application of skills and not in the skills itself. If you know javascript and can write 20 lines of codes in JS for your employer or your client, of course your compensation will be minimal. But if you use 20 lines of JS in a specific use-case yourself, your compensation could be 10s of thousands of dollars. Let me give you a few examples below.

If you’re a graphic designer and your main gig is to create thumbnails for YouTube or Facebook videos, may be you can charge $10-$30 for something like this. But if you have the ability to create thumbnails that will have a very high click-through rate on YouTube, then your skill is worth a lot more. You could use your small skill for a massive payout. May be you could even hire or partner with someone who makes videos, while you only focus on those high click-through rate thumbnails and eventually get rewarded long-term by YouTube algorithm.

I have also used small skills for massive payouts by applying them in areas where the reward could be very high. And here’s an example of what I did in 2011.

This was a black hat technique. Most people do not talk about black hat techniques publicly but since I was very young, on an exploration, learning the true power of internet, and also learning my true self, I do not mind talking about it today. It helped me learn a lot and unlocked the true potential of my mind. I discourage black hat as a long-term business model but sharing this is important because I want everyone to know what you can do with very little knowledge if you look in the right places.

I was still in university pursuing a bachelors degree in Computer Science. I had learnt some programming there. Nothing extraordinary, nothing that I could use to score a high paying job. Just good enough on a student scale. I had learnt some HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL etc but not a lot. A couple of assignments, one or two projects. But I found an area where these skills could be applied.

After seeking help from someone who explained me of this technique, I set up a landing page. A simple page with nothing but a video embed and some ads. I used some CSS to place facebook Like button behind the video embed’s play button. Every time a user would play the video, he would also share it on his Facebook without knowing. This way couple of his Facebook friends would also end up on the landing page and would play the video themselves creating a viral loop. In couple of hours, I had over 20,000 users online on the landing page and of course I made a lot of money.

The only skill I used was some CSS which I barely knew enough to be able to sell something for $5 on Fiverr.

How We Made ISI #1 Intelligence Agency In International Media

In 2010, a blog post was published on one of Socialoholic’s content websites titled top intelligence agencies in the world. The goal of the blog post was to initiate a marketing effort to honor the sacrifices made by the agency by trying to brand them as the #1 intelligence agency in the world. We genuinely believe that the rankings were done professionally with proper journalistic values after collecting & analyzing data, reading the literature & conducting a quantitative research.

Marketing

The content was then pushed on the social news websites by our team such as Digg & StumbleUpon. We performed Guerrilla Marketing tactics to create a unique, thought-provoking buzz. Since this was in the early days of the social networks with Facebook just emerging, and Whatsapp almost non existent, we honestly didn’t expect it spread like wild fire, but we are insanely proud that it did.

Coverage

It was picked up by all local news channels, print media such as The News, Express Tribune, international media (The Atlantic). There were hour-long shows hosted on local entertainment channels, including on Aag by Geo. It was picked up by ex-DG ISI, Lt. Gen Asad Durrani who took the message further, and also published it in a book The Spy Chronicles that he co-authored which was published in 2018.

Impact

On-site, the article was read over 1,234,475 times while the major impact happened off-site which we can not measure accurately. Our estimates suggest that the message was heard by over 85 million people. We have made these estimations by only including data from the known sources where we know it was published/broadcasted and by taking in account their estimated readership and audience at the time it was published or broadcasted. This doesn’t take in account, the discussions done in independent forums which we estimate further add about 10 million readers.

Authenticity

We published the content using a generic “Smashing Lists” website. The content was not published under a pseudonym but by the original name of the writer. The theme, over-all design, domain name didn’t imitate any popular publication. We created a genuine experience and maintained distance with fake-news and InfoWar tactics.

Responsible Journalism

Just 2 days ago, Vice Media unearthed a report of a shadowy Indian company that used 265 fake websites operated in 65 countries that mimicked news outlets by using similar names of popular publications like Times of Los Angeles, New York Morning Telegraph & Times of Pyongyang etc. The goal of these efforts is to confuse the user into thinking that the news that he’s reading is being published by a genuine trusted news agency. As per Vice, the larger goal of the campaign was to influence European lawmakers in favor of Indian interests in Kashmir.

We are proud of our efforts for publishing professionally researched content, using authentic distribution channels, and creating an over-all safe and genuine experience for the readers. This is the least we can do in the times when others resort to fake news to set the narrative for the readers.

Disclaimer: We are not affiliated with any organization or agency. This was an independent marketing effort for which we independently generated advertising revenue. We thank the writer of the post for her efforts.