#ask_an_expert

I am pursuing a graduate degree and belong to a lower middle class family. I feel very proud and grateful to my parents that they have always encouraged me to pursue higher education despite of the fact that most of the girls in our caste are married off as early as 16-18 years.

However, I watch my parents sacrificing their own wishes and desires to support my education. I did not actually want to put the burden of my education expenses on them. I offered to do ad hoc jobs but my parents were strictly against it.

 I was upset. I neither could see them working so hard nor could I do anything but study.Yes, I was good at studies and was getting good marks for their satisfaction. For that was the only thing I could do to make them happy.

Two months passed.  One day, I saw my friend doing something on the internet. I asked her what she was doing. She said that she was uploading the photos of her mom’s handmade jewellery on a website. When I asked her further queries, I came to know that her mom has joined a platform named Pink Desk that is only for women where she could sell her jewellery. She could reach the customers from nearby areas through that website. I asked her if we have to pay any charges for joining the platform. When she replied that it is all free; bells started ringing in my mind. I immediately learned and registered on the website.

 Then I met my friend’s mom and asked her if she could give me a chance to sell her jewellery on a commission basis in my area which was far away from her place. Seeing the opportunity of getting customers base she agreed with me.  And then my journey began.  I created my store for my location on ‘Mandi’, a local marketplace on Pink Desk and started uploading photos of the jewellery. I am getting good response and many customers have started visiting me already. I often organize exhibition on Sunday’s where I can meet all the customers at once.

 I can now manage to take care of my personal expenses and have also started saving for my exam fees! While most of the girls of my age spend their time chatting with random boys on Facebook, I spend my time on my store on PinkDesk and replying to customer queries.

My parents are happy too as I don’t have to stay away from home for longer hours and they don’t have to worry about my safety. We are all thankful to my friend’s mom who gave me this opportunity.

Alisa has been running her gift shop for almost two years. One would find fresh bouquets, dolls, cards, wind chimes,variety of showpieces and many more pretty decorative items.I used to purchase my monthly journal from her collection.

Located amongst other grocery, cafes and stationery shops, her store attracted a lot less customers than the worth of her goods. The locality where her shop stood was a small town where people really grasp the concept of investing their money on quality stationeries. They occasionally had eyes for these goods as these were a bit high priced and were rarely used by them. They preferred daily useful necessities over purchases on creative creations. She was making the profit she wanted to bag in.

In this modern age, women want a powerful presence in the business world. They want to be in the same league with the dominant gender. They have been in the small business industry for a while. And unfortunately, many are facing trouble attracting their target audience and actually selling their product. For example, many women owned small businesses such as bakeries, interior decoration store and gift shops are not making the right kind of sales and profits.

Popular choices of business amongst women are confectioneries, yoga training, clothing line, food service, physiotherapy and tutoring. But how many customers are they successfully targeting? The point from the creation to the end consumption is in actuality a complicated process. And women pursuing independence through their small scale business are also entangled on their way to success.

While selling products,

1) Women are sometimes unable to keep up with their own progress along with their role as a homemaker. Scheduling takes a backseat.

2) Unfortunate circumstances occur because of which she doesnt receive the right kind of support. This leads to poor team formation and support system.

3) Many women lack the needed resources to take further steps in their own business. This, later, has a terrible backlash and many quit before embarking on their project.

4) She doesnt strike at the right audience due to lack of proper   marketing.

All these factors lead to an unrecognized stand for her products, not much traffic, poor sale, and is ultimately blinded away from reaching her goal. While providing services,

1) Their services don’t reach authentic seekers.

2) Poor advertisement.

3) Lack proper contact service.

4) Not having full knowledge of the service they want to undertake.

5) Surrounded by superior competitors with more years of experience.

6) Lack of sufficient space to accept more clients.

These are the supposed loopholes that can hamper your business to a great extent. But there a way to overcome these obstacles one after the other. Let's start with marketing. The way through which you can reach customers and clients. With a dominant social media presence, women are taking their business online. This action automatically captures the eyes of many. Whether it be Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp Stories and Groups, or Twitter, when the online presence of your products and services are dialled location based with proper description, it can attract a good number of customers. Social media will not only display your products and services but also circulate it far and wide. But, there are limitations to all these social channels. The major limitation is that “They do not prioritize women owned businesses”. For them, everything is content, be it product, advertisement, joke, message, news and anything else in world that could be penned down! And content keeps getting generated and outdated every single day! In this fast paced social media world, it is indeed a challenge to build a brand which would last a while.

What if there was a platform where your business has more chances of thriving? A platform that will provide your product better visibility, an organized locality based presence, ensure quality transaction, and no charges till your business becomes sustainable enough to get into expansion mode. PinkDesk is a genuine platform that prioritizes on women entrepreneurship. Their aim is to connect and empower women. Every aspect of this platform wants to assist women to gain personal growth. You can mark digital presence of your store on It is very much like having your own website where the marketing and visibility is being taken care of along with generating leads for your business without any costs because well, If you are a woman looking for growth, then you are a priority! A localized presence ensures a better long term financial relationship with local customers as proximity tends to boost reliability and leads to quick conversions of lead into customers. Also, your store content being rightly categorized as per user interest helps you target the audience who will be willing to lighten their wallets for you.

How does the earning process look like on PinkDesk?

You can receive your payment for selling products or services in two ways, regular cash and PD cash (1 PD Cash = Re. 1)or a mix of both. Recording your earnings in PD cash has its own benefits. If you choose your mode of payment as PD cash, there are better chances of getting good sales for your products/services. You however have total freedom on how much PD Cash you want to accept and for which products/services you plan to choose PD Cash. You can even go for full or partial payment by PD Cash. It all depends on your business strategy. Normally, for new products/services which are yet to catch customer’s eye, it is always better to go for PD Cash acceptance. This allows for sales and marketing both. Gosh! I guess there are enough reasons to give this platform a try and it doesn’t cost a thing.

I grew up in a middle-class family where a girl or woman was presumed to live on adjustments, making sacrifices for the family.  I too had imbibed these thoughts in my mind. After marriage, I was a housewife by choice and I was very happy spending quality time with my family. My family was my only world.  I enjoyed doing all the household chores for them thinking that as my duty. But as time passed by, my children grew up and got engaged in their stuff; I began to feel some kind of emptiness in my life and I was unable to cope with the free time.  Consequently, I started feeling low and sad without any reason.  My husband got worried about why this was happening to me all of a sudden. He advised me to join some yoga class.

 I joined Yoga class although I was not very enthusiastic. It occupied me for one or two hours of my day. However, that was not enough to remove my vacuum which was created in my mind.  I started joining my friends on one-day picnics or for shopping or even meditation programs. But I still yearned for something more.  I was feeling lonely in the crowd.  My husband asked me if I would like to do a job. But I was not very confident of doing a job as I thought I won’t be able to balance the work life and home.

 One day, out of the blue, I thought of writing my feelings in a diary. I just went on writing without thinking much and then I felt relieved to a great extent. That was the ‘aha’ moment when it clicked me. I had forgotten that my writing skills were appreciated by everyone in my school and college days. That time I used to write a lot of articles and essays. My teachers and friends also said that I would become a very good writer. But after completing my education, it was somehow left aside. When I shared this with my husband, he suggested me to write blogs on the internet. I was not very much techno-savvy but still, I learned to browse on the internet and then I realized how tremendously it has captured the world!

 Soon I learned how to do blogging and started my own blog. I shared it only with my near and dear ones. My feeling of emptiness now vanished completely.  I had found a way to express myself through writing. However, as I started to receive appreciation from my family, I wanted to spread it to more and more people. After all, the reader’s appreciation is the most important motivation for a writer, right? So I then started to share my blog on Facebook and Whatsapp. But there also it was mostly unnoticed.

 I had never thought of earning any money through blogging until I came across Pink Desk who claimed to be a platform meant for empowering women. I found that they had some kind of performance measurement system for generating scores for your blogs and according to your score, you can even earn money. I was fascinated by this idea. So I started blogging there.  Soon I received good applause that motivated me. Moreover, I also earned the PD Score which in turn gave me PD Cash that I could use to buy any products from the nearby stores that were available on PinkDesk.

 I am now mostly occupied with writing, socializing, learning new things and so on and so welcome this change. At this moment when I look back, I see a complete transformation of myself from a depressed housewife to a successful blogger.