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Happy Thursday! Welcome back to The Gig — the morning memo for freelancers building profitable client businesses.

Mentioned in today’s newsletter: OG App, Instagram, Facebook, Meta, and unlimited paid vacation. Plus 12 ways to deal with difficult clients, freelance bookkeeping for dummies, and how to give yourself a raise without increasing your rates.

Read time: 2 minutes and 31 seconds

Making the Rounds

  • New OG App eliminates ads on Instagram. Tired of seeing ads in your feed? Now you can scroll Instagram without ads or suggested content thanks to something called the OG App. If it catches on, it could complicate ad tracking and lead Meta to change their API to neutralize it.
  • Meta testing new account switching interface for Facebook and Instagram. The updated Accounts Center aims to make it easier to manage notifications across different accounts. If you listen closely, you can hear the cries of joy from social media managers everywhere.
  • Viral Twitter thread reveals unpopular “anti-perks” in the workplace. Unlimited paid vacation was the surprise favorite, along with free food, mandatory travel, and employer-sponsored coaching programs.

Working With Clients

12 Ways to Deal With Difficult Clients

Difficult clients are almost impossible to avoid.

Sometimes it’s because you missed (or ignored) red flags during the sales process…

And sometimes it’s because they start out super laid back…

Only to assault your inbox with 47 emails once you actually start working together.

Either way, it’s important to know how to deal with them…

Because firing them isn’t always an option.

(at least not right away)

So check out this article from our friends at Forbes to discover 12 different ways to deal with difficult clients:

[READ]: 12 Effective Strategies For Dealing With Difficult Clients

Working For Yourself

Freelance Bookkeeping For Dummies

It’s easy to get caught up working IN your business and forget to work on your business.

Especially when it comes to bookkeeping.

But at the very least, you should be tracking:

– Revenue

– Expenses

– Profit

… on a monthly basis.

Because you aren’t just the technician who delivers the service…

You’re also the operator who runs the business.

And if you want to scale your freelance business to 6-figures or more…

The journey begins with treating it like a real business.

There are many more ways to monitor the financial health of your business, of course…

(and many benefits to doing so)

But if you’re not accounting-inclined, this is a great place to start.

Tools We Love

How to Give Yourself a Raise Without Increasing Your Rates

Inflation may be peaking.

But the U.S. dollar remains as strong as ever.

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 Alerts

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

Quote of the Day

“The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety.” 

— Josh Waitzkin

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