🩸 First blood

by

Happy Thursday! Heat waves are everywhere right now, so we hope you’re staying cool.

Mentioned in today’s issue: Twitter vs Elon, ad targeting, and Facebook. Plus what makes a great hook, ad, or email angle, a key ingredient for work-life balance, and how international freelancers can save big on currency conversions.

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes and 53 seconds

Making the Rounds

  • Twitter draws first blood in case vs Elon Musk. A judge granted Twitter’s request for an expedited trial on Tuesday. The case will now take place over just 5 days in October.
  • Study finds bad ad targeting annoys consumers. Out of 1,000 consumers polled, 51% said it reduced the quality of their experience. If you’ve been personally annoyed by mistargeted ads, please send your complaints to support [at] apple [dot] com with the subject line “iOS 14 feedback survey.”

  • Facebook starts encrypting links to combat URL stripping. Well that didn’t take long. The platform has begun merging its tracking parameters with the base web address, meaning it’s not possible to strip the URL without breaking the link.

Working With Clients

Millennial Money Advice That Gets Attention

Mainstream wisdom is everywhere.

Your audience is bombarded with the same advice all the time.

– cut back on lattes

– eat more vegetables

– go to bed earlier

– avocado toast is why you can’t afford to buy a house
– etc etc

But what sets you (or your client) apart from everyone else is where they disagree.

So ask yourself: what controversial opinions can I highlight?


What mainstream advice do I (or my client) DISAGREE with?

That’s often what makes for the best hooks, emails, or ad angles.

Now, a caveat:

You need to be able to make a logical case for why you disagree.

Don’t just disagree to be a contrarian or to grab attention… unless you can back it up.

Working For Yourself

Table For One

Work-life balance is a constant struggle for freelancers.

That’s why, in addition to having a structured workday where you start and end around the same time…

One of the best ways to create separation between work and personal is to eat lunch away from your desk.

Even if it’s just 15-20 minutes…

Giving yourself a break from the computer screen is good for mind and body.

(We recommend trying it with a smile on your face though 🙂

Tools We Love

SPOTTED: International Freelancer Cackling as He Converts USD Into Local Currency

Inflation may be out of control…

But the U.S. dollar’s been getting stronger lately.

Which means international freelancers *should* be pocketing a little more than usual on every invoice…

Only problem is:

Most of them rely on PayPal (or god forbid, their local bank) to convert their currency.

Instead, they should be using Wise.

With Wise, you can:

  • Get better rates on currency conversions than PayPal or a local bank
  • Send money cheaper and easier than old-school banks
  • Get paid like a local in 10 different currencies
  • And convert & hold up to 53 different currencies.

In fact, Wise is 6X cheaper than other international accounts on average.

That’s why over 13 million people trust them to handle their international payment needs.

So if you’re an international freelancer…

Set up a free Wise account today to start saving big every time you get paid.

Gig Alert

Quote of the Day

“Momentum solves 80% of your problems.”

— John C. Maxwell

ICYMI: