By Shailja Sharma — Digital Marketing & Website Design Tutor | shailjasharma.com
For over 12 years, I built my career as a freelance digital marketer and website designer. I worked with small businesses, built brands from scratch, and figured out — mostly the hard way — what actually works online and what’s just noise. I never planned to teach. But somewhere along the way, that changed.
The moment I realized I wanted to teach
It didn’t happen overnight. It happened slowly, one message at a time — from people who found my work through my Instagram page @digitalhooks3 or my website, asking the same question in different words:
“How do I actually start? Where do I even begin?”
At first I’d reply with quick tips. Then longer explanations. Then I started walking people through it, step by step, the same way I’d figure out a client project. And I noticed something — I enjoyed that conversation as much as I enjoyed the client work itself. Sometimes more.
That’s the honest answer to why I started teaching digital marketing after 10 years of freelancing: the questions found me before the idea did.
What freelancing taught me that most courses don’t
If you’ve searched things like “self-taught vs tutor digital marketing” or “is digital marketing course worth it,” you already know the internet is full of courses. What’s rarer is someone who’s actually been in the trenches — pricing a project wrong and eating the loss, losing a client because of one weak headline, watching a redesign triple someone’s inquiries overnight.
That’s the gap I kept seeing. A lot of courses teach the theory of digital marketing and website designing. Very few teach what it’s actually like to:
- Land your first client with zero portfolio
- Price your work without underselling yourself
- Handle a client who wants “just one small change” for the fifth time
- Build a website that doesn’t just look good but actually converts
I didn’t want to hand out templates and slide decks. I wanted to teach the way I actually work.
Why I chose one-on-one tutoring over a pre-recorded course
This is a question I get a lot: self-taught vs tutor-led — what actually gets you freelancing faster?
My honest take, after 10 years on both sides of this: a pre-recorded course can teach you what to do. A tutor can catch why it’s not working for you specifically. Every beginner gets stuck in a different place — some struggle with the technical side of website design, some freeze up writing their own portfolio copy, some don’t know how to price their first project. A course can’t see that. A tutor can.
That’s the core idea behind my online classes — real one-on-one digital marketing coaching and website design mentoring, built around where you’re actually stuck, not a fixed syllabus.
No coding background? No marketing degree? That’s fine.
Two questions I hear constantly from people searching for a digital marketing tutor online or a web design mentor for beginners:
- “Do I need to know how to code to learn website design?”
- “Is it too late to start digital marketing in 2026?”
No, and no. Some of the most capable people I’ve taught started with zero technical background. What actually predicts success isn’t a coding background — it’s whether someone is willing to practice on real projects instead of just watching tutorials. That’s exactly how I teach it.
What made me finally turn from freelancer to tutor
If I’m being fully honest, it wasn’t one big decision. It was years of freelancing that quietly built the exact experience beginners were asking me for — and a growing sense that helping someone else get their first client felt just as good as landing my own.
So today, alongside my freelance digital marketing and website design work, I also teach — one-on-one, practical, and built from a decade of real client work, not just theory.
If you’ve been searching for digital marketing classes with practical training, a website designing course with live projects, or simply a mentor who’s actually done this, that’s exactly what I built my classes to be.
You can check out my classes and freelance work at shailjasharma.com.
Shailja Sharma is a freelance digital marketer, website designer, and content writer with 12+ years of experience, now also teaching digital marketing and website designing through personalized online classes.
