What It's About
A young fashion blogger writes herself into financial independence.
Words of Wisdom
Through her experiences, Harman has learned firsthand how hard it can be to analyze the differences between her and other bloggers and influencers out there. “Believe in yourself and what you are doing. Don't compare yourself to the bigger fishes in the sea when you know you were born yesterday. Keep doing and take out time for learning.”
Fun Fact
Harman loves food. In fact, on her blog it says that the way to her heart is through pasta and chocolate chip ice cream. “Oh, I'm a hardcore foodie. And I don't know if other people experience it or not, but I legit get drunk on good food. My brain stops working, I cannot stand properly, and you'll find me laughing and talking drunkenly, lol. It seems very funny to other people or my friends, and I cannot even control it.”
Notes from Chris
Episode 1956
As a seventeen year old, Harman Awal was amazed with the influencer life she saw on Instagram. These people seemed to have the perfect life—full of food, travel and shopping. It was a happy and luxurious lens, and Harman wanted it for herself! In the middle of her first year of college, she turned to the internet to see what exactly these influencers were doing, how they were doing it, and the ways they were getting paid. I should mention that Harman is from India. If you live in North America or the UK, you might not realize that Instagram is pretty big everywhere—in fact, in parts of Asia it has even more adoption than where we live. What Harman found was that every single one of the influencers she liked had blogs. So, her next question was how to start one of her own. Harman found that many of them were using Wordpress, so she followed suit and began her free website. She didn’t feel pretty enough or perfect enough, she was constantly comparing herself to other influencers, and she didn’t understand why she wasn’t attracting an audience like some of the other accounts she followed. It took her a year to get out of this mindset. Then, she tried again. She started another free website, then eventually spent $100 to buy a hosting service and the domain name YourGirlKnows.com. As a student, she didn’t have a lot of money, so she asked if she could use her mom’s credit card for the expenses. Through her initial research about how to profit from a blog, she could tell that she had a lot more to learn. She didn’t have money to pay for courses. Instead, she picked a successful blogger every day, and read or watched all of their free content about growing her website into something profitable. Harman observed their techniques and took detailed notes. She knew that to make money, she needed traffic. She saw that a lot of people were getting views from building up their presence on Pinterest. In addition, since she planned on having a female-focused audience, she figured that this would be an effective platform to invest her time into. Right now, most of her content centers around fashion, skincare, beauty and lifestyle. Harman writes about topics many young women are interested in, from where to buy fake designer bags to how to smell good all day with minimal effort. Her work is reminiscent of Seventeen Magazine. Harman started this side hustle on April 3rd, 2020. She made her first few cents (yes, cents!) two months after she started with an Amazon affiliate program. With that consistency, marketing, and research, she started making about $900 a month from it by September. Soon after is when she began to use SEO, which skyrocketed her profits to be $400 a day. This roughly translated to $144,000 a year. While she has to reinvest some of the money back into the site, she gets to pocket most of it. As a 20-year-old student living in India, Harman says that this amount of money is “seriously a lot.” In India, many people live with their parents until they are 25 or even longer, so being financially independent makes both her and her parents incredibly happy. YourGirlKnows has made her financially independent, and she is proud to be the youngest earning member of her family.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Learn more about Harman and check out her fashionable website at, YourGirlKnows.com.
- Retail Frustrations Inspire Upcycled Fashion Brand: A fashion designer turns a $20 sewing machine and donated denim into upcycled pieces—without sacrificing style for ethics.
- Fashionista Blogs Her Way to Career Success: A thirty-four-year-old fashionista in New York City finds a way to turn the economic crisis into an opportunity promoting affordable fashion while bringing in a profit to keep her flush in designer looks.
- When Fashion Flops, This Designer Follows a Shiny Object: A Los Angeles designer pivots from making clothes to selling vintage, semi-fine jewelry inspired by her love for the beach.
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Resources
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