Jovan Cicmil's Blog
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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" ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Most Entrepreneurs Fail To Understand Competition
May 10, 2021
How many ventures do you think fail because of infighting?
How many fail because of market changes outside the founders’ control?
How many fail because the product just isn’t good enough?
If I had to venture a guess, I’d say your answer to all the above questions is “many”. Maybe you’ve been a part of one such story.
But have you ever considered how many ventures fail ...
7 Excuses Software Developers Make
May 3, 2021
Fear of responsibility is part of human nature as much as fear of the dark. We software developers are no different.
I have made many excuses in my career, especially early on. Later on, I have heard many excuses from the standpoints of a colleague, team leader, and client.
Here are some of the most common programmer excuses along with a translation from dev-speak into human English and ...
5 Unexpected Indicators of a Great Team Member
April 16, 2021
There’s a never-ending debate around selecting and interviewing candidates. Hire based on experience. Hire based on knowledge. Hire based on education. Hire based on a technical interview.
All these criteria have merits, but have you considered hiring based on whether a person plays chess, or based on how they take a joke?
Here are 5 unexpected ways to identify potential great team ...
The Rise of the Indie Hackers
April 12, 2021
Remember when half of the tech world were startup founders and the other half were aspiring startup founders?
When startups became all the rage, they redefined how new companies are built. Terms such as product-market fit, idea validation, and growth hacking became part of the day-to-day English language. And who could forget the mom test?
The lean startup methodology took over the world, ...
Pricing Freelance Projects: Everything You Need To Know
April 11, 2021
Building a freelance career is unique in that each year can require new skills and new adaptations. One thing that remains constant is the necessity of good pricing.
During almost a decade of freelance work, I have encountered every kind of project — from shifting a website menu item slightly to the left to building a browser-based strategy game. Here are some takeaways that should help you ...
Six Ways Emotions Can Make You Fail as an Entrepreneur
March 19, 2021
Entrepreneurs talk a lot about common problems: building a product, reaching customers, getting funding, and hiring the right people.
On the other hand, there is little talk about the things going on within the entrepreneur’s own mind that can make or break their plans.
Here are some ways psychology can stand in the way of success. Being prepared for potential problems is half the cure. ...
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