Jovan Cicmil's Blog - Freelancing

The Elephant in the Room: Where You’re From Matters

The Elephant in the Room: Where You’re From Matters
We would all like to be judged on merit alone, but that’s not how the world works. Here’s one example: in a job interview, we should be judged only on our fitness for the role. But, in reality, we are judged on our appearance, our choice of words in an introductory email, our small talk prowess - and the interviewer’s current mood. As freelancers, this truth takes another form, one we ...

How To Use Downtime Between Projects as a Freelancer

How To Use Downtime Between Projects as a Freelancer
Freelancers dread dry spells. The moment a client project is finished, we feel a void that can only be filled by a new project. Every day not spent working on client projects feels unproductive. It makes us anxious and stressed. Does it really have to be this way? After a decade of freelancing, I’ve been through it all. I’ve been overworked, underworked, evenly worked, and oddly worked. ...

Four Reasons Your Freelance Business Isn’t Growing

Four Reasons Your Freelance Business Isn’t Growing
I remember the early days of my career when almost every month was better than the previous one. I never stopped to question how long I could keep this up. My rates were growing, the number of offers in my inbox was growing, my network was growing…and my ego was growing. But, growth never remains linear forever. Eventually, you reach a plateau and you have to put in a ton of effort to break ...

Two Cold Email Examples That Worked

Two Cold Email Examples That Worked
Today’s blog post will be short and to the point - just like a great cold email. Many people think they need to amaze a cold prospect with their writing skills, amicability, and humor. As someone who has been pitched probably thousands of times across various platforms, I think I speak for all prospects when I say: If I’m after writing skills, I’ll read a novel. If I’m after ...

Is Upwork Premium Worth It?

Is Upwork Premium Worth It?
I’ve been on Upwork since 2012. During the first couple of years on the platform, I made over $150,000 and worked for clients from all over the world. In recent years, I’ve naturally migrated away from Upwork - <a href="/blog/90-of-my-freelance-work-comes-from-recurring-clients-and-referrals" target="_blank">recurring work ...

Pitch Ideas to Your Freelance Clients Like a Pro

Pitch Ideas to Your Freelance Clients Like a Pro
I’ll never forget a conversation I had with a freelance client back in 2013. We were talking about the software we were developing. He paused for a moment, sighed, and then said: “You developers are full of ideas but I always have to drag them out of you.” That stuck with me. How many opportunities have I missed out on because I kept my mouth shut? How many products could have been ...

Avoiding Single Points of Failure: The Key to Surviving as a Solopreneur

Avoiding Single Points of Failure: The Key to Surviving as a Solopreneur
Freelancers were solopreneurs before the word solopreneur existed. As a solopreneur, your life and your business are inseparable. Work-life balance is a concept that doesn’t quite apply here. As a business of one, your business is inseparable from your life. Businesses and investors often use diversification to reduce their risk exposure. As freelancers, we can do the same. Diversify ...

How To Handle Clients Asking You To Lower Your Rates

How To Handle Clients Asking You To Lower Your Rates
Of all the things clients do to freelancers, asking you to lower your rates mid-project might be the most treacherous. It might be worse than being ghosted. When a client disappears, you know where you stand. Being asked to lower your rates after you’ve started work feels demeaning. But, it’s not always an act of malice. Sometimes, it’s a justified business move. It’s happened to me ...

How To Optimize Your Upwork Profile

How To Optimize Your Upwork Profile
Upwork sometimes gets a bad rep. There’s a 10% service fee, many clients are cheap, and the competition is brutal. It’s been dubbed a “race to the bottom” by many freelancing teachers who prefer other client acquisition channels. I have nothing against cold emailing , LinkedIn, or any other alternative to Upwork. ...

How To Double Your Rate as a Freelance Writer

How To Double Your Rate as a Freelance Writer
Imagine you’re a freelance writer charging $0.50/word. How hard do you think it would be to grow your rate to $1/word? How many hours of practice? How many referrals? How many writing samples? How many years of hard work? What if I told you that pricing is a function of positioning rather than a function of delivery? In other words, it’s a function of marketing skills rather than ...

Seven Pieces of Freelancing Advice I Wish Someone Gave Me When I Was Starting Out

Seven Pieces of Freelancing Advice I Wish Someone Gave Me When I Was Starting Out
I got a lot of things right in my decade-long freelance career: I found a bunch of great clients, helped others transition to freelancing, bootstrapped a successful startup, and did the digital nomad thing for a while. But, it wasn’t perfect. When I was starting out in 2011, I didn’t know a single freelancer, let alone a more experienced one. So, I had to learn on the job and adapt ...

Should You Quit Your Job and Become a Freelancer?

Should You Quit Your Job and Become a Freelancer?
I’ve written a lot about finding freelance clients, writing great proposals, and scaling freelance businesses. Somehow, I don’t think I’ve ever answered the fundamental question: should you go down this road in the first place? Leaving 9-to-5 employment to become a freelancer is a major decision that can change your life trajectory forever. It’s important to know exactly what ...

How To Promote Your Freelance Services the Right Way

How To Promote Your Freelance Services the Right Way
Freelancers often shy away from self-promotion. It can feel awkward, cheap, and untasteful. When I started freelancing in 2011, I felt the same way. It took close to a decade to change my mind. If you think of freelancing as a business, self-promotion is nothing but marketing for that business. The trick is to do it in a way that matches your personality. You need to promote what you offer ...

How To Make Money on Upwork With No Experience

How To Make Money on Upwork With No Experience
I’ve been freelancing since 2011. From 2012 to around 2018, I used Upwork as my primary way to get freelance clients. Since then, I have helped many freelancers find their first projects. The one question that always comes up is: how can I make money on Upwork with no experience? Is it even possible? The resounding answer is: it’s not only possible, it’s inevitable - if you adopt the ...

Crafting Freelance Offers: Charge So Much That It Makes You Uncomfortable

Crafting Freelance Offers: Charge So Much That It Makes You Uncomfortable
Let’s perform an experiment. For this experiment, you will need an account with a freelance platform, but the results will be universally applicable. I’ll take Upwork here as an example. Go to Upwork. Find 10 projects with a maximum budget of $5,000 (on Upwork, this is a common budget because it’s one of the default options for fixed-price projects). Make sure you ...

How To Avoid Burnout as a Freelancer: The 70-30 Rule

How To Avoid Burnout as a Freelancer: The 70-30 Rule
Have you ever pushed yourself so hard for so long that you woke up one morning and found yourself unable to work? If the answer is yes, you’ve experienced burnout - something that many live through, but far too few talk about. The consequences of burning out can be dire. To name a few horrifying ones: sleep disorders, aimlessness, depression, social isolation, and even diminished ...

The Only Certain Way To Never Be Replaced by AI

The Only Certain Way To Never Be Replaced by AI
How worried are you about AI replacing you? Many people are worried about losing their livelihoods to the fast-approaching robot invasion. Many people are right to be worried. However, there’s a way to be robot-resistant. You can prosper in the age of AI - assuming you take this advice seriously. Is this article genuine? First of all, most advice on this topic is written by people ...

How To Avoid Getting Cheated by Freelance Clients

How To Avoid Getting Cheated by Freelance Clients
One of the most common questions I get asked is: how do I avoid scams? Beginner freelancers are deathly afraid of being cheated by clients. This fear is often valid. There are malicious clients out there scheming for ways to wrangle free work out of you. Some disappear when you send an invoice. Some try to ...

A Recession Is the Best Time To Start Freelancing

A Recession Is the Best Time To Start Freelancing
Are we in a recession or aren’t we? I leave the speculation (and arguments about semantics) to economists and TV panels. What I know is that the situation is complicated for the working person: companies are firing people wholesale, inflation is brutal, essential goods are painfully expensive, and debt is a huge burden. For many people, it’s hard to find silver linings. But, it is often ...

Why I Chose Not To Start a Web Development Agency

Why I Chose Not To Start a Web Development Agency
Is freelancing the end goal? Or is it an intermediary step on the path to something else? To me, the answer is: both. I’ve been a freelancer for 11 years and I’ve never found it boring. I have, however, leveraged it to do other things: write a book, start a couple of companies (and sell one), and write this blog. What I haven’t done is incidentally the most popular way to scale a ...

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