Other Income Ideas Half-true — works only if you do the unspoken work

By the Income Reality Check Editorial Team · Updated 2026-05-23 · 7 min read

Tharun Speaks’ “Pay Your Own Fees” video: do the 24 hustles really pay?

Verdict: Half-true — works only if you do the unspoken work. The skills and rates are real, but the income numbers Tharun cites describe the top of the distribution, not the median Indian student.

Tharun Bangera’s “Pay Your Own Fees - The 2026 Masterclass” opens with a clean hook: Avin, a second-year college student, supposedly hit ₹1,00,000 (~$1,200) in 3 months as a short-form video editor. Tharun then runs through 24 income paths split into three difficulty levels, from social media manager and writer at the bottom to web-app builder and content creator at the top. The video has 94,245 views at the time of this review, and it’s noticeably more grounded than most Indian YouTube money pitches — he openly tells viewers to avoid trading, captioning, surveys and Fiverr microgigs. But the framing still glosses over the single biggest variable that decides whether any of this actually works: conversion rate.

What the video actually claims

Tharun groups his 24 ideas into three tiers. Level one is meant for “complete beginners” — freelance writing (~₹20,000/month, ~$240), digital assistant work, social media management, short-form video editing (~₹30,000/month after a couple of months), UGC content for brands (₹2,000–₹10,000 per video), online tutoring and curriculum design at edtech firms (₹15,000–₹40,000/month). Level two pushes harder: AI-assisted website building (he cites a junior making ₹85,000/month, ~$1,020), AI web apps with tools like Cursor and Claude Code, AI training data work for Mercor and Scale AI, AI-powered drop shipping, AI ad spots for restaurants (₹15,000–₹20,000 per video), and long-form video editing (₹60,000–₹1,00,000/month, with one named cohort member at ₹1.2 lakh). Level three is where, in his words, “the real money is” — content creation, running a social-media marketing agency, or shipping a SaaS product like Vidu.ai, which he says does ₹65 lakh in monthly revenue.

He also admits to making ₹10 lakh personally on Indian and U.S. markets last year, while still telling viewers not to trade with small capital. The video ends with three client-acquisition routes — cold outreach, referrals, inbound — and a blunt closer: people fail mostly because they’re “lazy.”

It’s a calmer pitch than most. But there’s a structural omission: many of the success stories he points to (Avin, Anoj, the long-form editor making ₹1.2 lakh in a month) are members of his own creator school’s cohorts, and several of the “apply” links in the description route to his marketing agency. The headline incomes are real. The implied conversion rate from “untrained student” to “₹1 lakh earner in 3 months” is not stated anywhere.

What the method actually requires

Start with the broader market signal. NITI Aayog’s India’s Booming Gig and Platform Economy projects gig workers will rise from 7.7 million in 2020–21 to roughly 23.5 million by 2029–30, with about 47% in medium-skill roles — the bucket video editors, social media managers and writers fall into. Demand is real and growing. So is supply.

Now the numbers Tharun quotes against what Indeed actually reports from Indian payrolls:

The Indeed figures are not the cap on what’s achievable. They’re the middle of the distribution. Tharun’s quoted incomes sit comfortably above that line — they describe what a focused, well-positioned freelancer with a portfolio earns, not what the average student clears in month three.

What’s the unspoken work that closes the gap? Three things. Portfolio time: every senior freelancer interviewed in the citations above describes 2–4 months of unpaid practice and spec work before the first paying client. Outreach volume: building a roster of three or four monthly retainers as a social media manager typically means dozens of cold pitches and a handful of unpaid trial weeks. Client-acquisition skill: Tharun himself spends the closing minutes of the video on this, and admits his own cold DMs “never actually worked out” for years until his portfolio caught up. None of this is in the headline.

There’s also a tax piece the video doesn’t touch. Freelance professional income in India is taxable from rupee one. The optional Section 44ADA presumptive scheme lets eligible professionals declare 50% of gross receipts as taxable income, but only if gross receipts stay under ₹50 lakh and only for specified professions. Many of the roles Tharun lists — social media manager, UGC creator, drop shipper — sit awkwardly outside that scheme and need normal books, GST registration above the threshold, and advance tax. A first-time earner clearing ₹50,000/month should be filing.

Who actually wins this game?

The students who hit Tharun’s quoted numbers tend to have one of three structural advantages. They’ve already built a portfolio piece that ranks on YouTube, LinkedIn or X — often by spending unpaid months on it. They’ve joined a curated talent pool (an agency cohort, a paid creator school, an internship pipeline) that filters and distributes work to them, which is precisely the model Tharun’s own businesses run. Or they speak and write better English than 80% of their applicant peers, which compresses a six-month learning curve into one.

Look at the named success stories in the video. Avin is a short-form editor whose work flows through Tharun’s agency. Anoj is in “cohort number nine” of the same school. The motion designers Tharun routes through his hiring form are pre-vetted before they appear in a testimonial. These people aren’t lying about their incomes — they’re just at the front of a long queue that the video doesn’t show you.

What you’d realistically earn

If you’re starting from zero — no portfolio, no audience, conversational English — a realistic first six months for short-form editing or social media management looks closer to ₹0–₹8,000 in months one and two (portfolio time, unpaid trials), ₹8,000–₹20,000 in months three and four (one or two small retainers), and ₹15,000–₹40,000 by month six if outreach is consistent. That tracks both the Indeed median for video editors and the broader pattern in NITI Aayog’s gig data, where roughly 40% of platform workers earn under ₹15,000/month.

Tharun’s quoted ₹30,000/month after two months is not impossible. It’s a realistic ceiling for a fast-moving student in a top-quartile cohort.

Treating it as the expected outcome is where the math breaks.

Long-form editing at ₹60,000–₹1,20,000/month is also real — for people with three to six months of motion-graphics work, English fluency, and either a referral network or a strong portfolio site. The cohort member earning ₹1.2 lakh in a single month is at the top end of his own ranking, not the middle.

One more thing on the trading aside. Tharun mentions earning ₹10 lakh from Indian and U.S. markets, then advises against trading with small capital. That’s responsible framing, but it matters in context: SEBI impounded ₹546 crore from finfluencer Avadhut Sathe in December 2025 for promoting trading via “education” with selective profit testimonials. Indian creators showing personal trading returns are now on the regulator’s radar. Tharun didn’t sell a course on it. Many others have.

Who this is (and isn’t) for

This video is genuinely useful if you’re an Indian student with three free hours a day, basic English, a working laptop and the patience to spend the first two months on unpaid portfolio work and outreach. The skill paths he lists are real, the rate data is in the right neighborhood, and his closing advice on inbound and referrals is correct.

It’s not for you if you needed money this month, can’t put unpaid hours into a portfolio first, or expected the “1 lakh in 3 months” line to be the median outcome rather than the headline case. If you’re looking for a wider scan of options, our round-up of online work for students in 2026 and the reality check on hitting ₹10,000 as a student cover the same terrain with different starting points.

What to remember

The 24 paths are honest categories, and the high-end figures are real for the cohort members Tharun showcases. The missing variable is the conversion rate — most students who attempt these roles will land somewhere between ₹0 and ₹20,000/month for the first six months, and a smaller subset will compound from there. Treat the video as a list of viable directions, not a yield forecast.

View counts and any cohort numbers cited from the video may have changed since this article was published.