I studied in Pesantren Sintesa for about one year and a half. It was really fun and I got a lot of experiences. Learning about digital marketing, memorizing the quran and enjoying time with friends were some activities when I was there. Let me share my story from the beginning till the end. Enjoy!
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Pesantren Sintesa Magetan
“What is Sintesa?” That was my question when I heard for the first time about the word “sintesa”. I searched on the internet what Sintesa really is. And it turned out that Sintesa is a non-formal academy of digital marketing located in Magetan, East Java.
Ibrahim Vatih founded it in Yogyakarta in 2015 with less than ten members at the time. In 2016, Sintesa moved to Magetan, which is Vatih’s hometown. While writing this article, Pesantren Sintesa has approximately more than 300 students in total.
This academy has a unique tagline, “Hijaukan Generasi.” When founding Sintesa, Vatih’s purpose was youth empowerment. He wants to make the younger generation to be better and make a social impact in their neighborhood. Mostly, young people get some problems in their life and one of them is a financial problem.
Mas Vatih (students usually call him) believes that Sintesa can be the solution. Long story short, he made it! Students who have graduated from Sintesa have at least Rp 4.000.000 a month. They get it from various income streams such as Google AdSense, selling stuff, being a partner with a company, etc.
Studying at Sintesa Academy
Before telling you about my story in Sintesa, I want to share how I could join the academy.
I got information about Sintesa from my brother-in-law. He is a digital marketer and he is also a friend of Mas Vatih. I saw him sitting on his chair in front of his computer using shorts and a t-shirt only. Yet, he could earn millions every month. That was cool because I had never heard about that kind of job at the time. I got interested in digital marketing and finally, I decided to join it.
In the first month, everything went well. I met a lot of people from different places; they were nice to me. Something happened in the second month. It was terrible, I got homesick badly, and I could not stand the situation. The worst thing was I almost left Sintesa and went home.
Having great friends was something special for me. They gave me support when I was in bad condition.
After several months, we were taught to build a business. Our tutors gave us many experiences about business. They taught us how to research profitable products, how to make powerful copywriting, how to advertise a product, how to handle a client, etc.
By the end of the sixth month, after trials and errors, I was able to sell a product on the internet. Google ads was the platform for advertising my products. The first product that I sold was solo garlic. That was the product which I got from my friend. I did drop shipping and my supplier was in Jakarta.
I was thrilled to earn money on the internet by selling things to people.
Payment from Google AdSense
It was the seventh month, I got a mail containing a verification code from Google AdSense. Yep, my site (ilhamteguh.com) was finally ready to be the partner of Google.
I became one of the fastest students who were able to monetize my site and I was the person who got high traffic on my site at the time.
The next month, the payment from Google AdSense had finally sent to my bank account, I was delighted. I called my mom and I told her that I got my first income from Google. It was very impressive for me to get paid by the giant company. Not only did I tell my mom but I also told my friends about it.
Having enough money, I decided to buy some articles to fill my site. I started to look for a freelancer who could be the writer of my site. I had spent millions on buying articles and yet all of them failed. The articles did not go well as I expected.
And then, I changed my priority to sell more things and neglected my site.
The amount of money that I got from Google AdSense was not that much but it was enough for paying my expenses. Sometimes I transferred some of it to my mom.
Graduation
Time flew so fast and I had been there for almost a year. All of the lessons had given to us. Here are some materials that we got from that place:
- Site building
- Landing page
- SEO marketing
- Keyword optimization
- Backlink optimization
- Content writing
- Social media marketing
- Google ads
- Etc
Before graduation, we still had two months to practice what we got from Pesantren Sintesa. It’s the time for mastering all the skills that had been taught by the tutors. It was the time when we made trials and errors as much as possible.
In that time, I also earned my first one million a day for 3-4 days in a row by selling a service on Google Ads. That was the first time when I felt that earning money is not as hard as people say. And that was also my first time to have much money on my bank account by only providing service on the internet.
Because the money which I earned was more than enough, I could not save it wisely. I was hedonic and spent my money carelessly.
Money management is crucial, especially for people who have a bunch money in their savings. Actually, we also learned a bit about it in Pesantren Sintesa.
A few weeks before graduation, we held a study tour to another city. The students went to Gofan Bojonegoro to enjoy our last time together before we went home. We were not alone but the tutors also joined the trip, including the founder of Pesantren Sintesa, Ibrahim Vatih.
Finally, in August 2019, we held a graduation ceremony at Sintesa Academy.
