Beside dentistry: How I built +2000$ monthly income stream in digital marketing
“You will suffer finding a job in dentistry”.
I heard those words from most people around me during my first year as a dental student at the Jordanian University.
To be honest, they were right, to a certain degree.
They were right because we’re living in an extremely competitive era where people struggle finding a job in most fields.
However, higher competitiveness doesn’t mean necessarily fewer chances, to me, it means that chances are there if you “leveled up” enough.
Luckily, I had this realization deep in my mind early as I was stepping my first steps towards financial success.
It motivated me to start looking around for chances in places other than the dental field, as I knew that It wouldn’t be enough to be just another dentist in the line.
I’ve always been a passionate writer.
In fact, my first blog carried the name “Dr.Babbler”, as I tried to reflect how much I love sharing ideas with people.
Soon enough, I understood that to be a good writer online is not enough, like at all !
To make it online as a writer, there is too much to be good at other than writing.
Back in 2019, I was struggling getting people to visit my humble dental blog to read my articles, which led me to start searching for ways to boost my website visitors.
That’s when I first read about search engine optimization (SEO), which in simple words mean the art of writing content that: answers what people are searching for and is understandable by search engines like Google.
SEO was my only choice as I didn’t have budget for using any paid marketing strategies.
My first crucial milestone to successfully pass an SEO course held by Edraak, a pioneer Jordanian learning platform created by her majesty, Queen Rania Al-Abdullah.
This course made me able to optimize my online writings to the point that I started ranking on top of search results for many keywords in the dental field.
Readers started to visit and read my articles, but guess what, I didn’t make a single buck.
I understood that writing for the sake of writing doesn’t bring the money, that’s when I started searching for ways to monetize my content.
Google AdSense was my only choice back then. I applied twice and got rejected as my blog didn’t qualify.
Finally, I got the approval at the 5th of October 2019.
I thought that getting AdSense approval would move the needle for me.
Well, in fact it did. However, I only earned 30$ over 1 year :)
Once again, I looked around trying to find explanations and alternative ways, I WANT TO EARN MONEY ONLINE BY ANY MEANS.
November, 2021
I was scrolling hopelessly thorough my Facebook feed, just to come across my friends post sharing that he was hired as a medical content writer with Speetar health.
I dropped him a message wishing him good luck and asked about the job role.
He told me that the corporation needed more writers, and I saw it as an opportunity to get my first real job.
I wrote the application email with my heart, it felt like it would be the revival.
Few weeks later, I received the job offer from the corporation, and officially started working as a content writer for 5$ per 800 words article.
During the first month, I wrote 8 articles for 40$.
However, during our weekly meetings, I tried to convince my managers, by giving valuable insights, that I know far beyond the writing skills.
Luckily, at the beginning of January 2022, I was offered to be promoted as a blog coordinator for Speetar.
This promotion meant that I’ll get 250$ a month for leading the content writing team.
I knew it wasn’t the best paying job ever, but it meant the world to me.
At first, it was hard to find a balance between my studies and my job.
I was busy preparing for my final exams during the senior year, however, I managed to get things done as they should.
Luckily enough, I also graduated from the dental school with excellance and a GPA of 3.90.
Levelling up
My passion kept growing, and I was eager to succeed.
I decided to level up, and I completed a free Google course named “The fundamentals of digital marketing”.
This course enabled me to get a promotion to be the marketing lead for Speetar, earning extra 100$ monthly.
Cumulatively during 6 months, I managed to help Speetar get:
- 18.5K organic website visitors.
- +80K app users.
- +5 points increase in domain authority.
- +2.3M posts reach on social media.
- 129 medical blog articles.
Hard work pays off
In June 2022, my manager at Speetar, Tamadur Almahdi, mentioned my name in a meeting with Usman Taquir, the CEO of Convertbunny, a digital marketing agency based in Pakistan.
The agency was looking for an Arabic marketing lead for several Arabic projects, and Tamadur recommended Usman to contact me as a possible candidate for the position.
After weeks of negotiation, I managed to get the job !!!
I started working with Convertbunny, and took the lead on two main projects.
The first project is with Noon Academy, a leading e-learning platform in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, India and Iraq.
I was asked to prepare monthly content calendars for the company and guide the content writers on the best SEO practices available for 720$ a month.
The second project was with Blink, a company that offered an online ordering system for restaurants and supermarkets.
I was responsible for writing blog articles, earning 60$ per 1200 words-long articles.
Luckily, Noon’s project is ongoing smoothly, however, Blink decided to end their contract with Convertbunny 1 months later. I managed to write 5 blog articles for them earning 300$.
Once again , the word of mouth worked in my favor.
Usman sent a recommendation letter for Jalebi, a really promising startup in restaurants sector that offers automated systems for managing restaurants inventory reducing costs.
Jalebi were looking also for an Arabic marketing lead, and after some negotiation, I accepted the role they offered me.
Actually, the offer was too good to be turned down. 1300$ per month this early in my career felt like a dream.
The take-home messages
- Success is not linear, I worked online for many years earning nothing. Building a good portfolio got me jobs with leading companies.
- The snowball effect is real. As you level up, your hard work will pay off.
