🧬 The DNA of a perfect freelance client

by

Happy Wednesday! Welcome back to The Gig, your daily morning memo on how to build a thriving freelance business.

Discussed in today’s dispatch: Instagram, Spotify, TikTok, and Microsoft. Plus the DNA of a perfect freelance client, and why A-Player marketers never start from scratch.

Read time: 3 minutes and 31 seconds

Making the Rounds

  • Instagram announces new broadcast chat feature. The platform’s new Channels feature lets creators send out one-to-many broadcasts with text, images, polls, and more to communicate with followers.
  • Spotify planning TikTok-style swipe feed. The audio platform is the latest to copycat features for fun and profit. They’re is reportedly set to announce a vertical swipe-based feed similar to TikTok at their upcoming Stream On event in L.A.
  • Microsoft previewing potential new Bing ads for agencies. With chatbots quickly displacing traditional search, one big question is how companies like Microsoft and Google will integrate paid ads into chat-based search. According to Reuters, Microsoft has already started talking to agencies about what those ads might look like.

Newsletter Shout Out

Don’t Have Time to Listen to All Those
3-Hour Podcasts? Check Out
Best Business Podcasts

⏳ Save 10+ hours a week… and discover the Best Business Podcasts. Get quick summaries of must-listen episodes covering a range of fascinating topics – without enduring hours of audio.

Working With Clients

The DNA of a Perfect Freelance Client

The temptation to take on anyone with a pulse and a credit card as a client is hard to resist sometimes.

Whether it’s because you’re brand new…

Or simply because you need the scratch…

Learning to trust your gut is tough.

So let’s break down what a perfect client looks like.

#1 – Past experience hiring freelancers

Working with freelancers is different than having an in-house team member.

Clients can’t lay claim to 100% of your bandwidth.

You want someone who respects boundaries.

#2 – Validated offer

No matter what service you offer…

The best clients always have validated offers.

“Validated” means they’ve successfully sold their offer to other people.

This proves there’s a hunger for it in the marketplace.

It (usually) translates to a healthy business too.

#3 – Solid social proof

A common byproduct of validated offers is social proof.

Having lots of: 

– testimonials

– screenshots

– and case studies 

… to work with always makes your life easier.

#4 – Reasonable marketing budget

When it comes to paid traffic, everyone likes to say…

“Well if it’s converting, I’m happy to spend as much as possible!”

… No duh.

That’s obvious.

The more important question is: 

“How much are you willing to spend if it’s NOT converting?”

Not everything converts right out of the gate.

So it’s important to have a reasonable testing budget based on the offer, price point, campaign goals, etc.

Which ties in with our last point.

#5 – Understands asymmetrical bets

This applies more to cold traffic.

But a perfect client understands the asymmetrical tradeoff of testing new funnels, offers, or marketing channels.

In other words, one winner pays for a lot of losers.

It’s just like angel investing.

Most of your tests will fail, but that’s often what it takes to find a winner that will scale.

From The Paid Ads Gig

Why A-Player Advertisers Never Start From Scratch

You don’t need to be a creative genius to consistently crank out winning ad copy or creative.

You just need a solid swipe file.

This is one of the things that separates A-Players from rookies…

A-Players never start from scratch.

Instead, they model what’s working right now and put their own spin on it.

So if you’re working to become a high-performance advertiser…

Start building your swipe file.

Here are a few of our favorite tools:

When you see a good ad on Facebook or Instagram, you can also ‘Save’ it by hitting the ribbon icon on the lower right-hand corner of the ad.

This lets you circle back to grab it later.

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

“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”

— Albert Einstein

Intellectual curiosity is a superpower.

Go down the right rabbit holes and you’ll often find money at the bottom.

Share this on Twitter 🐦

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.

* Some of these are affiliate links. This means we may receive a small commission if you sign up for a paid subscription (at no extra cost to you.)