Happy Monday! Welcome back to The Gig, your daily email on how to build a lucrative and location-independent freelance business.
Mentioned in today’s edition: BuzzFeed, OpenAI, Twitter, and remote work. Plus ignore this at your peril, and micro split-testing your way to massive profits.
Read time: 3 minutes and 7 seconds
Making the Rounds
- BuzzFeed plans to lean on OpenAI for content creation. In an internal memo, CEO Jonah Peretti said they would focus on creating AI-generated quizzes with personalized results.
- Twitter launches Search Keyword Ads beta test. Advertisers can now choose Keywords as a conversion objective when creating a campaign. Ads will only be shown to users who are actively searching for specific keywords, as opposed to Twitter’s original keyword targeting, which acts more like a general interest targeting on Facebook.
- Working remotely saved commuters 72 minutes per day over the past 2 years. The findings came from a new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research. We spent all that extra time watching panda Reels on Instagram. How about you?
Working With Clients
Ignore This At Your Own Risk
Digital marketing is a dynamic industry.
Things change fast.
New tactics, trends, and technologies often burst onto the scene in a flash.
Some last and some don’t.
(remember Clubhouse?)
But the fact is, it pays to have your finger on the pulse…
Because these sudden shifts in the marketplace create huge opportunities for freelancers like us.
TikTok is a perfect example.
Plenty of people wrote it off because of a few goofy dancing videos.
And now?
It’s a top-tier acquisition channel for all kinds of brands.
In fact, ad spend on the platform is going up as the rest of the industry slows down.
That’s how dominant it’s become.
And by extension, how valuable TikTok expertise is to the marketplace right now.
So here’s the tip:
If you want to future-proof your freelancer business…
Take the initiative to learn new skills and technologies whenever you can.
Not only can this knowledge help earn you and your clients a sh*tload of shekels…
But it makes the work a hell of a lot more fun too.
On that note, if you’re interested in trends…
Check out the free Exploding Topics newsletter.
They do a great job covering new trends and shifts in the marketplace before they go mainstream.
From The Paid Ads Gig
Micro Split-Testing Your Way to Massive Profits
One of the keys to producing big results is knowing which levers to pull.
Because no matter what kind of work you do…
Some things are more important than others.
Like a thumbnail on a YouTube video…
The headline on a landing page…
Or the first image in a carousel.
When it comes to Facebook ads, one of the most powerful levers to increase performance is the first 125 characters.
This is how much ad copy appears “above the fold” on mobile…
(i.e before the ‘See More’ button)
And split-testing different variations of this copy can be a game-changer for your campaigns.
Now these can be totally different variations of course…
But they can also be “micro split-tests” where you’re only swapping out a few words.
For example, let’s say this is our control hook:
Freelancers — here’s how to land your first client on Upwork with no experience…
We could create a handful of NEW hooks just by rewording the desired outcome:
V1: Freelancers — here’s how to land your first paid gig on Upwork with no experience…
V2: Freelancers — here’s how to land your first paid project on Upwork with no experience…
V3: Freelancers — here’s how to land your first paying client on Upwork with no experience…
We could do the same thing for the avoidance of pain:
V4: Freelancers — here’s how to land your first client on Upwork with no portfolio…
V5: Freelancers — here’s how to land your first client on Upwork with no samples…
V6: Freelancers — here’s how to land your first client on Upwork with no track record…
See how that works?
We’ve found these micro split-tests can produce huge differences in performance.
And can often be the difference between an ad that fizzles and one that can scale.
So next time you’re writing ads for yourself or for clients…
Make sure to write up a bunch of extra hook variations to test.
Gig Alerts
Looking for clients? These freelance jobs were posted on Upwork in the last 24 hours:
- Create advertising creatives and copywriting for FB ads
- Email Copywriter for Affiliate Product Marketing Campaign
- Best landing page designer
- Branding Graphic Designer w/ Some Video Skills
- Google Ads Manager
- Dance Studio Facebook Marketer
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
“Either you run the day, or the day runs you.”
— Zig Ziglar