Happy Thursday! Mentioned in today’s newsletter: Meta, Apple, iOS 16, and of course, Twitter and Elon Musk. Plus how making friends with the competition can help you land more clients.
Let’s dive in…
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes and 10 seconds
Making the Rounds
- Meta rumored to be working on new Basic Ads product. The new privacy-focused ad format would reportedly offer little to no targeting options and only limited performance metrics like video views and post engagement. Sounds terrific — where do we sign up?
- Apple launching browser push notifications with iOS 16. Users will be able to opt-in through Safari and other iOS-supported browsers once the updated OS rolls out.
- Elon Musk’s Twitter financing has been put on ice. Given his public griping about the takeover, some of his financiers are starting to feel a bit iffy about funding the acquisition — at least until they have a clearer picture of whether the deal will go through.
Working With Clients
SPOTTED: Client Attempts to Access Your Word Doc Portfolio
If you’re using freelance platforms to find clients and land gigs…
There’s one thing you can do when putting in a proposal that all prospective clients will appreciate, whether they hire you or not.
And that is:
Sharing links to samples or portfolio pieces via Google Drive.
Don’t send over PDFs, Word docs, or Excel spreadsheets they have to download.
Why?
Because a client may take one look at your sample and decide they don’t like it.
Or that you’re not the right person for the job.
And if you (along with 9 other freelancers) have sent them a handful of docs to download, then they’re stuck with a bunch of useless documents on their computer they’ll never look at again.
So do them a favor and send them a Share link instead.
Working For Yourself
When Getting “Friend Zoned” is a Good Thing
Before someone will hire you to do a job, they have to know (or at least believe) that you can actually do the job.
And if you’re running a freelance business…
This gap of awareness is much easier to bridge if you do it in advance.
How?
By building your network and getting to know other people in your industry.
There’s a reason they say your network is your net worth.
Because the more people know who…
1 – Who you are
2 – What you can do
… the more opportunities you’ll get.
Plain and simple.
And if you’re worried about “the competition” or anyone else who provides the same service as you do..
Consider this:
There is SO much more work out there than there are competent people who can do it.
The amount of people who have both skill and the will to pursue the same goals as you do is so small that it doesn’t even matter.
The closer you get to the top, the smaller the world gets.
Become a connector and you’ll have more opportunities than you know what to do with.
Tools We Love
How International Freelancers Can Fight Inflation
If you’re an international freelancer, getting paid in USD is great…
… Until you actually convert it into your own currency.
Traditional solutions like PayPal (or god forbid, your own bank) will make you pay out the nose to convert USD into your local currency.
That’s why we use Wise (formerly TransferWise).
Not only do they give you a much better rate than PayPal on currency conversions, but they also give you a local USD bank account so you can get paid via bank transfer instead of a wire.
Open a free account today and start keeping more of your hard-earned money for yourself.
Quote of the Day
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
— George Bernard Shaw