How I learned to make ~171/hr at 17 ...

In early 2020, pre-pandemic, I was approached by a family friend who needed help with their social media. I was a senior in HS and knew how to use canva, so I decided to take on the gig.

It was simple he told me what posts he wanted for the week, I spent 5-10 mins/post a day and sent them to him. I was paid $10/post and did roughly 7-10 posts a week. I was making about ~100/hour a week. It almost felt passive. When I realized how much I was making, I decided that there should be a version of this I could scale.

I put together a website with 3 plans.
1: 30 social posts/month ($1000/month) ~ 200/hr
2. 60 social posts/month ($1500/month) ~ 150/hr
3: 100 social posts/month ($2500/month) ~ $147/hr

Then I went to Instagram, found businesses with weak followings, contacted hundreds, and within weeks I had 11 recurring clients and I was making roughly $12,000/month.

It felt like I had struck gold. I brought on my co-founder, Aakruti, as soon as we started. 390 posts per month. ~ 100 posts/week. ~ 14 posts/day. ~ 2 hours/work/ day. Avg ~$171/ hour.

We later stopped working on this productized freelance/agency to work on our first startup. We had been moving slowly but had sold that company after a few months.

We then decided to start Puzzl: https://www.puzzlapps.com. Our goal is to make it possible for anyone to start this business in an hour and empower more solopreneurs through the power of productized services.

As I dive deeper into this community, I love find more amazing stories like Brett from designjoy.co and many many more!

If you are interested in using Puzzl, feel free to sign up on the waitlist on the site. If you have a cool freelance story, share it below!