Pardeep Goyal shows other entrepreneurs how they can learn from his mistakes
Pardeep Goyal uses his blog, CashOverflow, to give advice on investing, personal finance and taxation, loans, banking, and shopping for electronics.
Pardeep Goyal is not your run-of-the mill startup entrepreneur. He has faced challenges like all entrepreneurs and has also taken a bite of the failure pie. Yet, like any determined entrepreneur, he insists on getting up, dusting himself, and re-entering the race.
“I spent seven years in the IT industry doing boring bug fixing and supporting US clients. Excel sheets sucked the blood out of my life, but I continued doing the job because it was paying well. I, however, got no satisfaction,” he says.
Today, he has a blog – CashOverflow – that gives advice on investing, personal finance and taxation, loans, banking, and even what phone or home theatre system to buy. Now, what’s so unique about a blog, one might ask? With Pardeep’s, it is for he has monetised his blog to earn a steady income.
“We serve clients with high-value content marketing. We charge a minimum $3,000 per month to a client where we help them content marketing that actually brings business to them. We say no to nine out of 10 potential clients where we feel content marketing will not deliver results,” says Pardeep.
He shares that bitten by the startup bug, he had left his job at an IT firm in the US in 2013, invested all his savings, and started . The company had to shut down the following year, but Pardeep did not lose heart. Instead, he shared his learnings and pitfalls with the world, so other entrepreneurs could learn from his mistakes.
Today, he promotes a culture of transparency, and speaks about issues and topics that others would hesitate to. “My main inspiration to do this was to help others by sharing practical insights. Most people do not share numbers and their earnings because they fear to do so. Fear that someone else will take that information and use to their advantage. I have no such fear,” he says.
Pardeep adds that he received a lot of help from his mentors in his entrepreneurial pursuits and wants to pass on the same to others.
“We don’t just share earning numbers on our blog; we also share how we are achieving that income. We received support from our mentors and the whole universe; now it's time for us to give back support to the next generation.”
Pardeep discovered his love for digital marketing while working at another startup. “Digital marketing is incomplete without copywriting, so I started a blog, WiseBaniya. I changed the name to CashOverflow.in to make it more relatable to the audience with the aim of educating them about making passive income through online marketing.”
Pardeep started his blog in May 2015 and earned nothing in the first year. He, however, adds that he learned the basics of affiliate marketing and through a process of trial and error, made Rs 60,000 from his blog in August 2016. There has been no looking back since.
Today, apart from giving guidance and advice on various topics, Pardeep also details his income from the blog, and exactly how much he earns from each stream.
His blog, he says, earns revenue from streams such as affiliate marketing, partnerships with brands, content, paid newsletters, advertisements, and even consulting.
Pardeep adds that he loves dabbling in the stock market, has had a fairly successful run, and now shares his insights on his blog. Here he points out that he is not authorised to give out formal tips and information, and only shares his personal experiences. If a user seeks more information, Pardeep adds, we direct them to trained professionals.
He adds that he does not have a team of writers and hires freelancers as required. He, however, does have a team of two people to provide content services to clients.
What are the pros of the business, we ask. “We are a completely remote team with full freedom to define our working hours. We strictly don’t work on the weekend. We also have the freedom to do work not defined in the role,” Pardeep says. He says there is no competition as such for the work he does, and the pie is large enough for many players.
From someone who had lost everything he had saved in his first entrepreneurial venture to becoming an inspiration for others to never say never, Pardeep has come a long way. The path he has chosen to get there, however, is unique and one that most would not tread.