From $3 to $15 an hour, $600 a month from one client, and a team of 10

A Daily Star report tells of a student at a private university in Chattogram. Her father, a retired government employee, could not afford the Tk 15,000 cost of an outsourcing course. So she opened a profile on Upwork with the only skill she could rely on — writing. She persuaded her parents to get an internet connection at home, and asked her mother for two months' time. Within a month of joining, her first bid succeeded; for the next three months she did small jobs for just $3 an hour. With her first earnings of Tk 9,000 she paid off the cost of the internet connection. She started as a content writer for an Asian travel website. Later she earned a regular $600 a month from a single client, which was more than her semester tuition fee. In less than a year and a half she became Top Rated; from three months after that she no longer had to bid, as clients themselves gave her work. Now she charges $15 an hour for work such as content writing, and passes the same work to a team of 10 freelancers from Bangladesh, the United States and India for $10. She says she herself can write a thousand words in 30 minutes. However, she often has to stay up at night for clients in other time zones, and because large remittances were coming into a student account, she has had to give explanations to the bank again and again.