Jovan Cicmil's Blog
A Guide to Creating and Capitalizing on Viral Tweets
April 21, 2022
On March 22, I wrote this tweet and it went viral.
On the morning of March 23, I had over 1000 notifications. The tweet had over 10,000 likes and over a million people had seen it. I had some good fun with the responses, but I also profited in more concrete ways.
Here’s what happens when your tweet goe...
How To Find Creative and Meaningful Software Development Work
March 16, 2022
A lot is written about how to find cutting-edge work in software development. “Learn this tech over that tech.” “Take this bootcamp.” “Buy my ebook.” You know the drill.
Even more is written about how to make a certain amount of money in tech. Apply to this company. Jump through hoops. Silicon Valley. Buy my other ebook.
Not nearly enough is written about finding work that is ful...
Five Lessons I Learned Bootstrapping a Fantasy Sports Company
February 21, 2022
I was a bootstrapped founder before it was cool.
Back in 2013, when it was all about building a startup and jumping through the funding loops, I bootstrapped a fantasy sports company.
It was profitable from the first month.
I ran it for a few years before finally selling to a larger competitor. Along the way, I learned a ton of important lessons. Here are the main ones. If you’re thinki...
How I Landed a $100k Freelance Client
February 2, 2022
Freelance success rarely comes easy. If it did, a lot more people would be writing blog posts like this one.
I spent a lot of time in the trenches before I started getting quality freelance work.
Starting in 2011, I spent about a year on Freelancer.com doing mainly small Javascript/CSS projects. Then I switched to Upwork in September 2012 because the opportunities were much better there. Thi...
How To Find the Best Clients on Upwork in Three Steps
January 25, 2022
A lot of people complain about the quality of projects available on Upwork these days. Cheap clients, ridiculous requests, impossible projects — you name it, it’s there.
Well, I’ve got some news for you.
First of all, none of this is new. Upwork (and every other freelance platform, for that matter) has always had a rich supply of clients who want insane things done for pocket change. A...
My Trip Down the web3 Rabbit Hole: Separating Hype From Substance
January 17, 2022
If you’re anything like me, you hate hype and you despise pump-and-dump schemes.
Suffice to say, watching kids sell pixelated monkey avatars to each other isn’t exactly the sort of thing I enjoy. At first glance, this is what the much-hyped web3 is: an unregulated marketplace rife for speculation and fraud. A breeding ground for Ponzi schemes and a graveyard for many get-rich-quick dreams.
...
How To Deal With Difficult Freelance Clients
December 20, 2021
Most of my clients over the last decade have been wonderful and easy to work with. I attribute this partly to luck and partly to my ever-growing standards.
However, I’ve had my share of difficult clients, particularly in the first couple of years of my freelance career.
Here are five types of freelance clients that are difficult to work with and how to handle each one.
How to handle che...
Inside the War Between Domain Flippers and Startup Founders
November 26, 2021
No, not the real world. The digital world. I observed the latest battle personally so that I can report to you from the front lines.
A well-known entrepreneur recently announced that he had bought a .com domain for his company. That’s not big news until you hear the rest: it took 6 years of negotiating and $100,000 to get that domain.
His announcement prompted a war of words between his fe...
Why MRR Is Misleading To Potential Investors
November 11, 2021
MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) is an excellent metric for operators of subscription products. It’s an easy way to keep track of your company’s recurring revenue, especially if you offer several subscription packages.
What it is not, however, is a measure of a company’s value. A concerning trend in the world of indie hackers and bootstrapped founders is to use MRR as the main metric for c...
5 Ways To Transform Your Freelance Work Into a Scalable Business
October 27, 2021
One of the most common questions up-and-coming freelancers ask is: where can I take my career once I’m a successful freelancer ?
In the corporate world, career-building is a predictable pursuit. Do great at your job, climb up the ladder, do great at that job, climb further up the ladder, and so on. For freelancers, it’s a dif...
I Published the Same Course on Udemy, Skillshare, and Gumroad — What I Learned
October 19, 2021
About a year ago, I decided to challenge myself to compress ten years of my professional experience into a 2-hour course.
While I leave it to you to judge how well I’ve succeeded, I’ve learned a lot about the online course business and I can at the very least share that knowledge with my readers.
Since first publishing the course, I’ve had ups and downs in traffic and conversion rates,...
How to Write Follow-up Messages That Generate Clients and Close Deals
August 18, 2021
Following up with prospective clients is tricky business. There’s a fine line between a confident, entrepreneurial message and a spammy ping notification that serves no purpose other than to irritate the person on the other end.
During my decade of freelance experience, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to experiment with different approaches to communication.
I’ve also had the pleasure...
The Two-Step System for Getting a Better Deal From Marketing Agencies
August 6, 2021
A digital marketing agency reached out to me a few days ago with an offer to promote my recently released book. The exchange didn’t go well, but it was highly instructive and I believe I’ve discovered a neat two-step approach to filter marketing offers.
Their proposal was simple: for a flat fee of $2,000, they will promote my book to a number of top industry blogs and get me featured on a c...
Why You Should Hire Freelance Workers for Your Startup
July 16, 2021
Those of you who have been reading my work know that I’m a freelancer, entrepreneur, and writer. But did you know that I’ve also hired over 20 freelancers on various platforms over the course of the last decade?
Hiring remote talent can be a daunting prospect. Many still shy away from it because a simple Google search can reveal a hundred hellish experiences suffered by other would-be freel...
Why So Many Freelancers Fail To Achieve Independence
July 8, 2021
Many people go into freelancing with great expectations. They envision themselves sitting on a tropical beach, laptop and all, with an exotic cocktail in one hand and a coconut in the other, while an endless stream of money flows relentlessly into their bank account. Half of their laptop screen is devoted to the job, and the other half to an itinerary for their upcoming trip to Machu Picchu.
Th...
Insights From Publishing My First Book
June 30, 2021
After ten years of freelancing, I finally sat down to share my experience with the world. The idea of writing a book had been simmering in the back of my mind for at least a year, but it needed time to mature.
The Unstoppable Freelancer is now available on Gumroad and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FS72HTK" target="_b...
Why So Many Startups Fail Miserably After Raising Money
June 24, 2021
Roughly 90% of startups fail. This statistic isn’t surprising, but the way many founders lunge into business, you would think that the failure rate is more like 2%.
Having been following the industry for over a decade, I have noticed some patterns — ideas that sound enticing, plausible, or even brilliant. Ideas shiny enough to attract massive investments before crashing into the ground like...
The Best Ways To Find Freelance Clients in 2021
June 9, 2021
The freelance landscape is a constantly shifting one. This is a wonderful thing for adaptable, entrepreneurial people — and freelancers are nothing if not adaptable and entrepreneurial.
Still, some dangers lurk in the mists of this landscape. For instance, it is not beyond imagination that you might find yourself looking for freelance work in an ecosystem that clients have migrated away from....
How to Turn Your Employer Into Your First Customer
June 3, 2021
Imagine this.
You drag yourself out of bed in the morning. It’s a rainy day and your commute to the office is hell. The soundtrack you play in your car doesn’t even come close to drowning out the sound of horns and engines.
By the time you arrive at the office, you are stressed, apathetic, and counting the seconds until you can drive home again in that same rush hour traffic. In the mean...
Community-as-a-Service: A Business Model for the 21st Century
May 13, 2021
It’s 2021 and it seems like every software developer in the world is building their own SaaS (software-as-a-service) products. There’s a revolution of bootstrapping your products and building in public. And that’s great.
But, in the background, there’s a different paradigm developing, one not so easily defined and underst...
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