OpenAI

🦠 Guaranteed to go viral

by

Happy Tuesday! This is The Gig. We’re like the GPS for your freelance business, here to help you chart a direct course to the freedom and fulfillment you deserve.

Discussed in today’s edition: TikTok, U.S. banks, Microsoft and OpenAI. Plus a powerful reframe for anyone stuck in the wilderness, and if AI tools had their own Slack channels.

Read time: 2 minutes and 52 seconds

Making the Rounds

  • TikTok employees can make any post go viral. All they have to do is hit the “heating” button to guarantee a specific piece of content gets a certain number of views, according to documents seen by Forbes. We’ll bet the U.S. regulators reviewing the platform’s pending security deal were tickled pink when they heard that.
  • U.S. banks band together on new digital wallet. Seven American banks, including JPMorgan and Wells Fargo, are collaborating on a new digital wallet to compete with other wallet operators like PayPal.
  • Microsoft confirms new multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI. Turns out the rumors were true: the Windows maker confirmed another “multi-year, multi-billion-dollar” investment in the company behind viral chatbot ChatGPT.

Working For Yourself

A Powerful Reframe For Anyone Stuck in the Wilderness

Entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster ride.

It can bring the highest of highs, but also the lowest of lows.

Lots of famous founders and inventors, like Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, James Dyson, and many more, failed repeatedly before finally hitting it big.

But tales of trials and tribulations don’t offer much comfort if you’ve hit rock bottom.

Or worse, if rock bottom has come up and smacked you in the face.

One of the reasons why is because we often struggle to find meaning in failure…

Ani It’s not until we’re well beyond them that their meaning reveals itself to us.

Like Steve Jobs once said, “you can only connect the dots looking backward.”

That’s why we enjoyed this recent interview with authors Tim Ferriss and Steven Pressfield.

Specifically, Pressfield talks about the importance of “time in the wilderness”…

And how this fundamental rite of passage shapes everyone in ways they often don’t realize.

So if you’re still stuck in a 9 to 5 you don’t like…

Or struggling to shift your freelance biz into high gear…

Give this episode a listen.

It provides some much-needed perspective from someone who didn’t score their first big win until age 52…

Yet still became (arguably) one of the most influential authors of all time.

Click here to check it out:

[LISTEN]: Steven Pressfield on Going from Truck Driver to Bestselling Novelist, Overcoming Self-Sabotage, Building Momentum, Dancing with the Muse, Turning Pro, and Letting Your Underground River Flow (#642)

P.S:

One of our favorite things about The Tim Ferriss Show is that transcripts are released with every episode.

So whether you want to go back and take notes after you’re done listening…

Or if you’d simply rather read the interview rather than listen to it…

You can find the transcript here.

Tools We Love

If AI Tools Had Their Own Slack Channels

Everyone’s high on AI these days.

And for good reason…

We’ve been blown away by ChatGPT’s potential for ideation and content creation.

But it’s not the only AI tool that’s caught our eye.

Another tool we’re loving is Bearly.ai.

It’s built on GPT-3 (also from OpenAI) and acts as a jack-of-all-trades.

Some of our favorite features include:

  • Asking it to summarize any piece of content (studies, long-form articles, 200-word blog posts, etc 😂)
  • Asking it to write the next line or graph of an email (to defeat writer’s block)
  • Asking to write copy from scratch using proven frameworks (PAS, AIDA, BAB, PPPP, etc)
  • Asking it to answer questions about a piece of text

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Because Bearly.ai can do a whole lot more.

So if you’re looking to streamline your workflows and supercharge your productivity with AI…

Click below to check it out:

Try Bearly.ai for free today.

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.

Quote of the Day


“Teamwork is connected independence”

— David Cottrell

🤖 will chat 4 food

by

Happy Thursday! Today’s version is a little shorter than usual, as we’re hard at work on a new weekly content feature to help you master marketing strategy. Look out for that below the fold in next Thursday’s edition.

In the meantime, here’s what we’re talking about today: OpenAI, Meta, Google, Snap, and TikTok. Plus an inconvenient truth about productivity.

Read time: 1 minute and 54 seconds

Making the Rounds

  • OpenAI announces plans for ChatGPT Professional. The free lunch may soon be over for those currently using ChatGPT: OpenAI, the company behind the viral chatbot, announced plans to offset its “eye-watering” operating expenses with a paid version called ChatGPT Professional.
  • Meta is removing the ability to target teenagers by gender. Zuck and co. have been steadily reducing advertisers’ ability to target anyone under 18, which is now limited to age and location only.
  • Big Tech companies including Google, Snap, Meta, and TikTok face addiction lawsuit. Lawyers representing the plaintiffs argue that social media platforms are addictive by design and should be held legally responsible for their negative effects on younger users. We’ll be watching this one closely, as it would be a bombshell if proven in court.

Working For Yourself

An Inconvenient Truth About Productivity

When projects start piling up, it can be tempting to push harder.

But here’s an inconvenient truth about productivity…

Studies show that taking regular breaks actually helps you get MORE work done.

Now these breaks can be as short as 5 minutes or as long as 60 minutes…

And they can be anything from going for a walk…

Reading a book…

Or even just lying down with your eyes closed.

(aka “non-sleep deep rest” or NSDR)

Think of your brain like a rechargeable battery…

When you’re plugged in and working hard, you’re sucking up lots of juice.

And just like a battery, your brain needs time to recharge in order to function at its best.

When you give it that intentional recharge time, what you’ll find is…

Your subconscious mind is still working… even when you’re focused on other things.

In fact, it’s often unable to fully focus on the problem until you step away from it.

And it’s not until you take a break and then come back to it that the solution finally appears.

So next time you’re feeling stuck or burnt out… 

Take a break, step outside, and give your brain the chance to recharge. 

Your projects and deadlines will still be there waiting for you, but you’ll come back to them with a fresh perspective and renewed energy.

Just make sure to save the icy cold brew for the end of the day 😉

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.

Quote of the Day


“If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.”

— Erica Jong

📸 Anti-Shop

by

Happy Wednesday! This is The Gig. We’re like a digital lighthouse, here to help you navigate the (sometimes) stormy seas of freelancing.

Discussed in today’s newsletter: Instagram, Microsoft, OpenAI, ChatGPT, and YouTube. Plus the unpleasant fate reserved for those afraid to network, and one key ingredient for paid ads that scale in 2023.

Read time: 2 minutes and 46 seconds

Making the Rounds

  • Instagram is deep-sixing the Shop tab. Users will still be able to shop products from Reels, Stories, and Posts, but the dedicated Shop tab is set to disappear at the beginning of February.
  • Microsoft looks to integrate ChatGPT into Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more. Why stop at Bing when you can integrate the world’s hottest chatbot into all your products instead? That’s what Microsoft is thinking as it plans to invest another $10B into OpenAI, the company behind AI models ChatGPT and GPT-3.
  • YouTube begins rev share with Shorts creators on February 1. Creators will need at least 1,000 subscribers and over 10 million Shorts views in the last 90 days to qualify for the Partner Program, where they’ll be able to earn 45% of ad revenue from their videos.

Working For Clients

The Unpleasant Fate Reserved For Those Afraid to Network

Doors don’t open themselves.

You need someone to open them for you.

So if you’re looking to land more clients…

Sharpen your entrepreneurial skills…

Get access to bigger and better opportunities…

And ultimately fast-track your freelance career to 6-figures and beyond…

Look to build connections with other people on social media.

This isn’t strictly about finding clients, either.

Building connections with other service providers (even ones who offer the exact same services you do) can empower you with knowledge that’s otherwise impossible to obtain.

  • Typical rates and fee structures to help you price yourself
  • Valuable insights from time in the trenches
  • What it’s like to work for Company X or Client Y
  • Uncommon strategies for marketing & growth
  • Etc etc

Of course, referrals always make for the best hires…

So having a strong network can easily lead to paying work as well if a client puts the word out.

Bottom line:

Getting paid to work in your PJs can be pretty frickin’ sweet…

But if you spend all day keeping to yourself…

You’ll never even know how many opportunities are passing you by.

From The Paid Ads Gig

One Key Ingredient For Paid Ads That Scale in 2023

Running paid ads without a 3rd-party tracking system is like driving a car blindfolded.

You might get to your destination eventually…

But you might also veer off the road and end up in a ditch.

Native tracking systems on platforms like Facebook and Google *used* to be fairly reliable before iOS 14…

But not anymore.

These days, you simply can’t rely on them to track your ad performance…

Even if you’ve got their Conversion API set up and firing properly…

And especially if you’re only spending $100-$200 per day.

So, what’s the solution?

Implementing a 3rd-party tracking system like Voluum, Hyros, or SegMetrics.

Now each one of these tools differs slightly in how they work…

But the core function of all three is STOP you from hemorrhaging valuable data… 

So you can make informed decisions to optimize and scale your ad campaigns.

As a bonus, Hyros and SegMetrics also reveal the entire customer journey so you can see…

  • The specific ad they clicked on
  • The audience and campaign they were in
  • Which emails they received, opened, and clicked
  • When they bought
  • How much they paid
  • Etc etc

They even use IP addresses to merge contacts who use a different email to buy..

Giving you a much clearer picture on how exactly people go from strangers to customers.

So if you (or your client) are serious about using paid ads to scale front-end acquisition…

Make sure you’ve got a 3rd-party tracking system in place.

Gig Alerts

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

Quote of the Day


“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”

— Saint Augustine