Jovan Cicmil's Blog - Writing

Should Freelancers Create Content?

November 6, 2024

I started freelancing in 2011. I wrote my first ever piece of content in 2019. In that space of 8 years, I worked for over 60 clients, started two companies, ran one for several years, and sold it. All that time, I never wrote anything. Not even a blog post. Not even a tweet. Nothing. How come? How much do I regret it? What changed in 2019? And how can you apply what I learned to your own ...

Two Cold Email Examples That Worked

June 14, 2023

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 ...

How To Double Your Rate as a Freelance Writer

May 3, 2023

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

April 26, 2023

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 ...

How To Promote Your Freelance Services the Right Way

April 12, 2023

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 ...

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

March 29, 2023

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 ...

The Only Certain Way To Never Be Replaced by AI

March 15, 2023

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 I Write Proposals That Win As Many Freelance Clients As I Want

February 1, 2023

What if I told you that you could get as many freelance clients as you want by following a few straightforward principles? Finding freelance clients can be more simple than you think. Note that I said “simple”, not “easy”. Writing great proposals to prospects is something most freelancers never master. I have over a decade of freelance experience and I’m still learning. Here’s ...

I Wrote My First Book 18 Months Ago — 3 Things I Would Do Differently Today

December 16, 2022

Who would have thought that writing a book would be a learning experience more than a teaching experience? Not me. I thought I had all the answers and all I had to do was organize them into chapters and do a bit of promotion. Far from it. A year and a half after publishing The Unstoppable Freelancer , I am still ...

I Published the Same Book on Amazon, Gumroad, and Draft2Digital — Here’s What I Learned

September 24, 2022

In June 2021, I published The Unstoppable Freelancer — a book about freelance success, work-life balance, and everything in between. I published it on Gumroad first, then jumped through Amazon’s hoops to make it available through Amazon’s KDP, and then put it on ...

I Self-Published a Book One Year Ago — What I Learned

September 13, 2022

In the 90s, unsigned musicians used to print their own CDs and sell them on street corners. It was a way to step around the music industry and its exploitative contracts. Since then, the proliferation of the internet has improved the prospects of artists of all kinds. Now we have many platforms to choose from when publishing our work. Writers are, perhaps, the primary beneficiaries of this ...

Freelance Writing vs Freelance Software Development

July 14, 2022

I’ve been a freelance web developer since 2011. In 2020, I started freelance writing on the side as well. I started unintentionally when a startup approached me to write for them, having been impressed with a piece I wrote here on Medium. Since then, I have found writing to be both a welcome change of pace from coding and a lucrative business. After two years, here’s how freelance ...

Don’t Write Simply. Write Honestly Instead.

May 21, 2022

Is there a more common piece of writing advice on the internet than “keep it simple”? Reigning in your tendency to show off your vast vocabulary and poetic flair is supposed to widen your reach, make your writing more persuasive, and make you more approachable. I agree in spirit. Keeping it simple is better than keeping it complex, everything else being equal. The trouble is, in the ...

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 ...

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" ...

How I Evolved My English Skills as a Non-Native Speaker

January 11, 2021

Have you ever watched a lecture, or read an article, where the author had a lot of knowledge but struggled to express it clearly in English? I’ve personally dropped at least a dozen Youtube tutorials for this reason. If you’re a non-native speaker thinking about creating content, it can be a daunting prospect. Will native speakers mock you? Will your friends find you pretentious? Will your ...