🤑 Improv artist’s secret to stacking high-income skills

Happy Friday! Forecaster extraordinaire Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow yesterday, predicting colder temperatures for the next six weeks. Boo. Luckily for us, he’s only right about 39% of the time — so right on par with your local weather person.

Discussed in today’s newsletter: ChatGPT, TikTok, and LinkedIn. Plus the improv artist’s secret to stacking high-income skills, and why sacrilege pays at the Temple of Zuck.

Read time: 3 minutes and 40 seconds

Making the Rounds

  • ChatGPT begins to monetize. The viral chatbot has begun to sell subscriptions for $20 a month that come with priority access, faster response times, and early use of new features. It’ll take more than a couple to defray their estimated $100k/day operating expenses.
  • TikTok beefs up DM options. The surging short-form video platform has expanded who you can receive DMs from to better compete with Facebook and Instagram.
  • SEO options for LinkedIn articles. Authors can now customize SEO titles and descriptions when they publish articles on the platform.

Working With Clients

The Improv Artist’s Secret to Stacking High-Income Skills

The fundamental principle of improv is:

“Yes, and…”

What does this mean?

Instead of rejecting what’s been said, you learn to go with the flow and build on it.

And this doesn’t just apply to the stage — it also applies to your freelance career.

If you’ve developed a solid relationship with a client, they’ll often ask you if you can (or want to) tackle another project before they look elsewhere…

Even if it’s outside your wheelhouse.

Now, it can be tempting to refuse out of fear that you’ll bungle it…

But so long as they’re not asking you to build a rocket…

It’s often better to say “YES!”  and then figure the rest out later.

Opportunities to learn on the job are worth their weight in gold…

And if you’re still in the early stages of your freelance career…

Meaning you’re still working to stack high-income skills so you can raise your rates, land better clients, and create more freedom in your life…

Then make “yes, and…” your new life motto.

Aim to capitalize on every chance you get to demonstrate your resourcefulness, expand your skill set, and learn more about what you enjoy doing.

From The Paid Ads Gig

Why Sacrilege Pays at the Temple of Zuck

What makes Facebook ads so powerful?

The almighty algorithm.

Its ability to optimize ad targeting over time is second to none.

Even in this post-iOS 14 hellscape.

Problem is, the Facebook algorithm needs 50 conversions per week, per campaign, in order to optimize properly…

… Or so it says, anyway.

Now, the more data you can feed it, the better it will do, naturally.

But this conversion volume benchmark creates a dilemma for advertisers…

Should you optimize for an earlier conversion (like Leads) or the end conversion (like Purchases)?

For example…

If you’re selling a high-ticket product or service…

One lead might cost you $20, while one sale might cost you $2,000.

So to hit 50 conversions per week, you need to be spending $100k a week… which comes out to just over $14k per day.

Now, if you’ve got the budget — great!

But what if you don’t?

Well, on the one hand, optimizing for Leads means more scrumptious data for the algorithm to snack on.

But like any campaign, a lot of those Leads won’t be a perfect fit for your product…

Which means your results (in terms of sales) could actually get WORSE over time…

As the algorithm focuses more on finding people likely to become leads, not buyers.

That’s why you should always experiment with Purchase-optimized campaigns… 

Even if you can’t hit 50 conversions per week.

Ultimately, Facebook knows who the buyers are.

So we often find this conversion objective yields better results than Leads, Registrations, etc…

Even when we’re *not* spending enough to hit 50 pixel fires a week.

Now this doesn’t mean it works every time…

But if you or a client worship at the Temple of Zuck, don’t be afraid to challenge assumptions.

Sometimes crime sacrilege pays.

Gig Alerts

Looking for clients? These freelance jobs were posted on Upwork in the last 24 hours:

NOTE: We only share job postings from Upwork. We’ve found it to be the most trustworthy platform with the highest-quality clients. Furthermore, job postings must be for high-income skills like copywriting, media buying, funnel building, graphic design, remote closing, etc in order to qualify.

In Case You Missed It:

Quote of the Day


“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”

— James Clear

Tools of the Trade

Looking to upgrade your toolkit? Here are some of our favorite tools we use to powerful our freelance business:

  • ConvertKit — Email marketing for creators. Simple, easy to use, and very cost-effective.
  • ​Kinsta — Super fast website hosting trusted by 25,000+ small businesses.
  • Fireflies — AI note-taker that can record client calls + create searchable transcripts.
  • ​Krisp — Eliminates echoes and background noise on calls and meetings using AI.
  • ​Wise — Unbeatable rates on currency conversions. Saves you a ton of money if you’re an international freelancer.

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