A Visually Impaired Online Marketeer

Since I started my company in digital marketing I keep getting some queries, clients etc.. through my online network. One of the most surprising calls I got was from a tweep, who wanted to help me with the work. In passing he mentioned that he was visually impaired.

"What??" I am sorry, I thought I misheard, did he say visually impaired?

The obvious question in my mind was How can he possibly do any online marketing when he cannot see!!

Since I have chatted, emailed him, and he has some interesting tips for social media marketing too!

I thought all you guys would be interested in knowing about him and how he uses the internet... also Why he does that. Here is a small video and his interview about how he got into internet marketing.



"I started surfing the internet during 2004 that’s when I got my first desktop computer. I am a game geek so I use to play a lot of games with my low vision. It was during 2005 my sister showed me how to use google and then I found that windows xp has got an in built magnifier which opened a new world together. Since then I stopped playing games and started off learning a lot of tech stuff, reading and networking with people using mails. But I got my limitations, in spite of using
the windows xp magnifier I need to give rest to my eyes after 1-2 hrs of continuous work on the computer.

You might be wondering how can I play
games when I cannot see any thing on computer with out magnifier, the kind of disease which I got degenerates my vision slowly day by day and during that time I had some good vision which helped me to play games.

Online marketing is a life changing agent and how I entered into this field was due to my interest, hunger to learn and enthusiasm. It was during September 2006 I stepped into online marketing, I went to a friends house and there I saw him making a website with Microsoft front page and when I asked him he told that from these websites we can earn money. It was interesting but my friend told no when I asked him to teach this to me. He said you cannot see properly how can you design websites, don’t strain your eyes…drop the idea. I was stubborn and did not give up the idea of learning web designing. I still remember that every day after coming from college I use to sit before computer for hours together and trying to read lots of tutorials on web design trying and testing new free software’s to crack and make a website. I was not successful but gained a lot of knowledge on web design and learned a lot about the web world as I surfed thousands of pages, read hundreds of newsletters and tested lots of software’s. I don’t like my vision limiting something in life and I always tried to keep up my spirits by cheering my self. When I met the same friend next time I asked him are you earning money, he said I need to get “SEO” done for the website…..when I asked him to teach me SEO the reply was same like before...

I came home and used Google to find out more about SEO and found that it is search engine optimization and I understood what exactly it is. During my campus placements I haven’t got selected. I walk out of the
interview halls because the kind of questions which they asked look silly and use to pull my spirits.

It was then that online marketing took
birth as a profession in my life. I thought to my self I can do some
thing with what I had learned through Google. Then I started a blog and got content on it. Did lots of SEO to it and finally sold it for some where around 200$. Then I really thought I can adopt this as profession then I dived into it totally and started doing lots of research.

During this time I met couple of
other’s through referrals and started taking clients and offered the
services of internet marketing. We did pretty well and I regularly updated my knowledge in the field of online marketing when my friends use to take care of work under my instructions.

I continued it for a long time of 3yrs until I thought to join some company and learn some corporate stuff. I ran 2 online marketing ventures successfully.

I joined a job at IBM and I can say if
online marketing has brought a tremendous change in any ones life I am
a real example. Sometimes it is good your friends might not teach something to you and they may say it is tough and hard, but my message to world is never stop learning by yourself and one day certainly it will
pay you off."

You can contact him on Twitter @raghavasatish He also blogs @ Raghava.in

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