Hisham Sarwar

Early life and background

Sarwar says he has lived in Islamabad and Rawalpindi all his life. He says his family has a military background. According to Sarwar, his grandfather served in the British Army and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel, and his father is a doctor and a retired Brigadier. He says that at about age 15 he built a copier that loaded games from an external cassette drive into a Commodore 64. [1]

Education

Sarwar says he has an MBA in Marketing and that he completed a B.Com before it. He says he scored 486 marks in matric. He calls Imran Ali Dina, a GFX mentor based in Karachi, his teacher. [1][3]

Career

Sarwar says he once worked full-time with one of the telcos. He says he has been self-employed since 1998, after being laid off from his job. He describes himself as a freelance copywriter who has worked across different industries for two decades, and says he has offered copywriting services to clients around the world for over two decades. [1][8]

Sarwar says he has worked with pharmaceutical companies, sports supplement businesses, hospitals and doctors. He says he knows how to persuade readers to take action and writes copy that persuades and compels a call to action. He says a copywriter's job is to convince and persuade people to make a decision. He offers sales copywriting for websites and email as a gig. He says he cleared an English test in front of a hundred people during a live gig session. [8]

Sarwar says he built a website in Flash. He says he built it himself in Pakistan, using action scripting, and that he still has a copy of it. He says he won the Favorite Website Award, and he believes he is the only Pakistani showcased as a winner on FWA. [1]

Freelancing

Sarwar says he worked on freelance marketplaces, naming Upwork, and that he has a profile on Guru.com. He says he stopped freelancing for a period of about one and a half to one and three-quarter years. He says he burned out from freelancing, which he says required sitting at a desk around the clock. He also says cutthroat competition cut freelance work that once paid $500 down to $5. [3][4][6]

Sarwar says he has taught freelancing in free videos, and he has a playlist of freelancing videos. He says he owns a Facebook group for freelancers with over half a million users and more than 250,000 active members, and that members can ask questions at any time and get answers. He says he now makes very little content about freelancing. [3][6]

Being Guru

Sarwar says he started his blog, Being Guru, in 2016. He says he started it when people told him many blogs already existed. He says Being Guru alone sustained his livelihood, and that blogging opened doors to more ways of earning. He says starting a YouTube channel led him to digital products. [3][4]

Sarwar says that early on he wrote about money, motivation, freelancing, tech gurus and startups. He says he began promoting Being Guru on Facebook with posts and videos. He says his blog gets good traffic and receives many offers. He runs an English-language channel called Being Guru 2. [2][3][4]

Sarwar says Being Guru has six lakh followers on Facebook. He says he has around 20,000 LinkedIn connections and around 30,000 Instagram followers, and that his main YouTube channel is near 250,000. He says he is probably the only Pakistani with over 10,000 email subscribers. [2][4]

Sarwar says he earns money through Amazon affiliate links and is a Hostinger affiliate, and that he is doing well with affiliate sales. He says he charges $100 per sponsored article. He says he is building an e-commerce marketplace site that he expects to be bigger. He says he has invested in mobile apps that have in-app purchases. [2][3][4]

Teaching and courses

Sarwar teaches digital marketing and SEO in his lectures. He presented a digital marketing series called Life Changing Training, whose first class covered digital marketing, and in his SEO class he teaches domain authority and user search intent. He says his teaching is free, and that his material is free for Pakistanis, including education. [2][4][7]

Sarwar announced a new two-week cohort, with one week on freelancing and one on digital products, blogging and YouTube. He says a resource he wrote for cohort 1 became popular. He says his book about freelancing is nearing release and that it will be paid, not free, because it is very long. He says he has explained Facebook ads and Facebook pixels step by step in his videos. [2][4]

Sarwar says he has made more content on digital marketing, SEO, business development and communication skills over a period of about a year and a half. He says people searching for digital marketing, business development and SEO find his profile and offer him projects. He says he grew his LinkedIn presence using relevant hashtags, and that clients come to him because people read his content and believe he knows digital marketing. [6]

Digital marketing work

Sarwar says his team is paid salaries, which he calls expensive. He says his team took on a client worth 50,000 USD for a 90-day campaign. He says he has started to grow through paid advertising. He says digital marketing gigs can include Google ads, Facebook ads, account creation and social media management. [6][8]

Sarwar has said he pays bloggers to write sponsored posts. He has said the average visit duration on his website is six minutes and that a large share of its traffic comes from Pakistan. He has said Gilgit-Baltistan is one of the major contributors to his social media traffic, and that writing a post in Urdu and English brought him traffic. [7]

Views

On freelancing, Sarwar says it is not a difficult job and that communication skill is the most important thing for freelancers. He says there is no shortcut and no overnight success, and he gives beginners a 90-day plan that combines learning and practice. He says freelance marketplaces work like a mandi, with many service providers, and that many freelancers are forced to work at slashed prices in a crowded market. He says freelancers should focus on their value proposition rather than on dollar devaluation, and should not compromise on value and should deliver quality compared with the West. He says Fiverr is a starting point, and that freelancers should scale up through personal branding. [1][3][6]

Sarwar says he recommends only one freelancer marketplace, Guru.com, and suggests freelancers also look at Upwork. He says a portfolio is very important for freelancers, that a personal website is the most important way to get direct paid work, and that the best way to gain clients is to educate people. He says Pakistan's own freelance marketplace is growing fast, and that selling abroad from Pakistan is very hard, though many methods exist. [3][6]

Sarwar says artificial intelligence and Python are the most important technical skills to learn. He says communication skill stands at the forefront of everything. He says a person can be an expert in only one kind of work, and that he often advocates the 80/20 Pareto principle. He says Google's algorithm has become fast enough to catch fully AI-generated copy. [1][6][8]

Sarwar says a website is essential, that he is a strong advocate of personal digital assets such as a website, and that anyone selling a product or service needs a website first. He says his mission is for 100,000 websites to exist. He says spending money on promotion brings money back, and he has said the quickest way of digital promotion is sponsored blog posts or hiring social media influencers. He says blog content should be written for humans, that keeping users engaged and social media sharing are very important for a blog, and that WordPress is the only tool needed for blogging. [2][3][4][7]

Sarwar advises new bloggers to focus on one niche, and advises beginners to target keywords with difficulty under 30 and volume above 500. He says he usually follows a ratio of three internal links to one external link, and that relevance matters a great deal for backlinks. He has said visitor engagement on a website is very important and that Google Trends shows where a search term is searched most. He has said time spent on a website is an encouraging signal for Google, and that keywords in his content begin to rank on Google over time. [4][7]

Sarwar says YouTube content needs empathy and emotion, and he calls YouTube an amazing way of making money online. He says everyone should become a content creator. He has said visual content matters a great deal in the current era, and that understanding a customer's pain point is half of the task in digital marketing. He has said digital marketing is not a difficult job and that voice gadgets are a big avenue for digital marketing. [2][3][7]

Sarwar has described SimilarWeb as a site that shows a website's traffic, keywords, audience demographics and country. He has said Answer the Public helps a great deal with choosing topics, and has called Canva an amazing platform for design. He has said learning Canva is not a difficult task and that he uses a free Canva account, not a paid one. [7]

Sarwar says his philosophy from the start is to provide a nest, nurture people and let them fly, and that his job is to show people the way, with a nest coming after that. He says a teacher who does not improve a student's life does not deserve the title. He says he is not a political leader and has no plan to form a political party. He says his next focus is the digital divide, and that some areas lack decent internet speed. He estimates that about 30% of the success stories are women. [1]

Sarwar says he believes the internet was further ahead in the late 1990s than it is now. He says many young people in Pakistan show a sense of entitlement and that earning 100 dollars is not easy. He says he stands for free education, charges people from outside his industry, and pays his own way to events, taking no fee at one of them. He says new players will come after today's players. [1][2][3]

Personal life

Sarwar says he has played cricket and tennis, and that he was a die-hard fan of Pete Sampras. He says he has always been willing to take risks. [1][8]

Timeline

1998

Sarwar says he became self-employed after being laid off from his job.[1]

2016

Sarwar says he started his blog, Being Guru.[4]

Appearances

Frequently asked questions

References

1. Freelancing is your first step, not your destination . Thought Behind Things , 2021-02-19.
2. How to do Digital Marketing? | Digital Marketing explained in 20 minutes. #digitalmarketing . Hisham Sarwar , 2022-03-18.
3. How to earn money online for beginners | A complete guide for you make money on the internet . Hisham Sarwar , 2024-03-15.
4. How to start a blog in 2021 | Blogging for beginners | Make money blogging . Hisham Sarwar , 2021-03-04.
5. Digital Marketing | 5 best tools you would ever need for effective online promotion in 2021 . Hisham Sarwar , 2020-03-20.
6. How to start freelancing | freelancing for beginners | how to become a freelancer . Hisham Sarwar , 2023-09-06.
7. Life Changing Training | Learn Advanced Digital Marketing Lecture #1 . Hisham Sarwar , 2022-11-15.
8. Life Changing Training | How to create GIG on Fiverr | Fiverr Gig optimization . Hisham Sarwar , 2022-12-10.