Hello to all my Steemians friends, here I am again with an English post about the entrepreneurship in my natal country Venezuela.
As many people know Venezuela is not in its best moment. In my opinion we are in the worst moment of our history.
I won't explain all about the crisis, I just will say that our offical currency is not value at all, with a monthly wage you just can buy 2 dollars (prox), most of people have different incomes ways.
Here we go!
In the last 20 years, everything in my Venezuela has been getting worst, many people is starving, but many people is earning "a lot of money" either. How is this possible?
Maybe they are friends of the country's administration (governors, mayors or something like that) or... they are just entrepreneurs!
But there is another people!
If you check Facebook pages about Pay to Click, Pay Per Click, Paid Surveys, Paid Per Adds, Pay per Captchas, even facebook rent services, you will find a lot of people from Venezuela asking for info. They need the same, A JOB or better said, THEY NEED MONEY. They know that they wont become rich using those pages, but even earning 3 or 5 dollars per week (or month) they are earning much more as if they find a regular employ.
You will find many Venezuelan citizens "working" for pennies, rupees or cryptocurrencies and sking for referals in order to earn more. even steemit is an option for them and there is a large community of Venezuelan people in Steem.
Is not an easy way out to be the whole day sat by the PC, watching ads, giving clicks for $0.0001, $0,001 or $0,01 (in the best case) but in my opinion this is not the best way to start earning money.
I am telling you this, in order to let you be aware about how difficult is to invest in Venezuela, earning $5 only per month (if they earn well)
How it all began
As I never liked to ask money to my parents, when I was 16 years old, I found two jobs, I think I was so lucky because I worked In a martial arts gym, I mean I was doing something I like, and my second job was as seller in a stationer's shop.
In that moment of my life, I just used to train in the mornings, go to highschool after training, then... go to my second job, and later in the evening go to teach TaekwonDo. Once I got home, making my homework aaand prepare to sleep.
Things weren't that bad in that moment, I earned more than the monthly wage, I did not like to go to parties everyday, and used to buy many books about illustration, Manga, Anime and after my 17-18 years old about political science (one of my passions).
I started in the medicine school
When I was closer to 17 years old, I stopped working in the stationer's shop, so a friend of mine, told me - "Why wont you offer your cartoonist services on internet?" - and he encourage me to take this step and I started to research about "working online or Online Jobs". I was so excited of being learning about a really new world for me. I used to dream about owning a website, so I thought this was the moment!
I found Fiverr, Freelancer, Workana, UpWork and many sites for freelance cartoonist, illustrators, web developers, designers and more. Even weird services like - "I will listen to you for an hour"- for $5. (The example is real, and there are most strange services). I chose Fiverr to start working online, I was to hard to find my first client and that job was so horrible ( I made 45 children book illustrations in a week).
Because of the medicine school, I had to leave my job at the gym, and I had to work with fiverr only. I opened a Martial Art Dojo (7:00pm to 9:00pm) in my University's city but things were getting bad day by day in my country, the crime was increasing and I just had 10 students.
I keep working with fiverr, but the 20% commission fee was braking my nuts, many people offered the same service for 5 DOLLARS and you earn 20% less? ($4). I mean, in Venezuela everything is TOO expensive, spent my nights and my life working for almost $100 per month, having to lost 30% of my incomes in commission and fees, didn't worked for me (my opinion once again)
My Mistake: I didn't invested my money!!
When I started the University I started spending more money in food, the rent, taxis, some parties (I admit it), more books (I consider this as an investment, not all was medicine books), and stuff for cleaning, you know.
I had to stop working for some time, because I had to study from 7:00am till 5:30pm, so I worked from 9:00pm till 2:00am, sleep, then wake up in the 4:00 am, to go to medicine school every day! I was getting so stressed and depressed, I mean I was so tired, I could not study well, I had to pay the rent, food, taxis and buses, day by day everything got more expensive, AND I HAD TO PAY 20% OF MY EARNINGS TO FIVERR! no sir!!
So, Something Change
I decided not to keep paying the 20% of my incomes in commissions and fees!! I wanted to start my own project, I began reading books about marketing, researched on internet about social media marketing strategies, started spending more time on internet and like every Venezuelan guy, I DISCOVER PTC, PPC, Paid Surveys and I tried (but not much, DUDES, I was earning less doing that sh*@$#t!)
I keep working as freelancer, I tried with other sites and, using instagram to promote my drawings, while I was learning and reading about Marketing, SEO, Design, Web Development. I enrolled into a law school close to my home, then leave medicine school , I saved money and took some courses.
By the way, I don't regret about leaving medicine school, I met people from the whole country, I met my best friends, and I learned so much about life, I was studying medicine just because I like biology, and for helping people, my father and my sister are physicians. You know I used to be so confused.
My martial arts master says -"do what you like to do, if you like to train, go training!. If you like to make money, GO AND MAKE MONEY!"- I sat by myself and thought, OMG! I know what I love to do "I like to spend hours and hours reading and working, I like to spend my time as I want". And if I wanted to make those things I couldn't keep being a self-employee, I had to open my own website! Thanks god I was working enough for make this investment and studying about business and web development.
Today I am meeting with other dreamers and entrepreneurs from my country, despite the crisis, my project of being a business owner is not a dream anymore!
Thanks to the internet, to my clients, my books, my family 🐘 and yes of course, FREELANCERS PLATFORMS
Thank you for reading, comment If you are an entrepreneur, what do you do for living? and what is your story
So this is part of my history. I'm Agustín Contreras, www.frentealcomputador.com founder
Main Image made by me, original picture from pexels.com. Fonts used: Bebas Neue and Painter