june 2024. after my first year of college, all i wanted was to make money. not a lot of money, just enough to have a good college life.

i already knew what freelancing was. i had created an upwork account about a year earlier and it still had around 150 connects sitting there.

at that time i knew python and some basic web development (html, css, js, react), and i was trying to understand what backend development actually meant.

i had tried building a few saas ideas, but none of them got past the landing page stage, although i was talking to users on reddit and getting feedback.

one day i opened up upwork, scrolled through python jobs, and started sending proposals.

mostly small python scripts. automation, web scraping, things like that.

very quickly i realized something. this wasn't going to work. i had no reviews and no strong projects.

so i thought about it from the client's perspective. why would someone hire me?

the answer was simple.

if i already completed the task and showed them a working sample that solved their problem, hiring me would become a no-brainer.

so that's what i did.

on my 9th proposal, i got my first contract.

i finished the project in about two hours.

and that's how i made my first dollar.

actually $35 :)