pauljarvis

I spend very little time on my short/solo podcast but it makes a decent amount (much more than $1k) each month with long-term sponsors.

Heck ya! Now if only I could get Jason and Zack to catch up to my steps ;-)

I'm one of the other cofounders (currently the step winner, ha) - I'm happy to chime in too, although Zack was the one who programmed the page, I just made it look pretty (so I could get back to getting all my steps).

I'm digging it!

I've never been on linkedin but i get 10-15 "requests to connect" every week - luckily i've filtered them to skip the inbox, since unsubscribing to them doesn't seem to do anything.

Welcome to HN - where the trolls are loud and proud...

This is so very true. Which is why I ask for EVERYTHING.

preface: obviously i'm not a lawyer :)

but there's no employee/employer relationship, and i would never turn down a gig based on religion, gender, sexual preference, etc.

at least for me personally, it's never come up. it may also help that i rarely work with clients who live in the same country as i do (international law is typically too expensive to litigate for something as tiny as a freelancer saying no to work).

i can't speak for anyone else - but by the same token, i'm not embellishing anything. verifiable? no, because i'm not sharing my bank account statements. believable? definitely - most of my friends make about what i make a year freelancing, so it's not totally out of scope or outside the norm (i also never said i make $30k/week freelancing - some weeks i do, but others, i definitely don't).

i've built a career and an audience by being very honest, even about my epic failures and shortcomings. i know you don't know me from adam - but luckily my audience and client-base does, and really they're the ones i cater to. my pricing is listed publicly on my website, and i wouldn't do that if clients weren't willing to pay for it (i don't have a sugar daddy or sugar mama to support me).

i also appreciate that you voiced your opinion in an actually civil way! i hope it doesn't get down voted.

point #1 - there's a difference between a startup who's figuring those things out (and has the business acumen to know how business' work) and a person who's never run a business before. i'm talking to the latter point, since a freelancer can't really do everything for someone's business (like figure out their market, audience, how to run a business, etc). that's more of a business partner relationship than a freelancer.

point #2 - this again is speaking to people who start business' without knowing how business' work (for me personally, i get a lot of leads like that). through experience i've found that until a person has a good grip on how their business works and how it can make even some money, the spend they'd have on a site design is wasted money (just setup a free squarespace or WP site).

point #3 - there's a big difference between realistic expectations and totally unrealistic expectations. sure, good freelancers can make a business go from not awesome to very awesome, but it has to tempered with reality.

i (the author) am a "regular folk" too. i've been freelancing a long time, so i'm in the trenches. the only reason that i have the word of mouth machine going is because i am picky with my clients :)

cheers! and thanks for the comment.

Exactly. The key to a long-lasting freelancing career: always spend as little money as possible.

1 - great use of "torvaldian"

2 - you can still be picky if you're just starting out and are able to (i.e. rent/food/etc is covered). this helps you define a niche that you want to operate in. niches are important because it's easier to become known or stand out in small group of similar people or companies (instead of trying to stand out for EVERYONE).

to find gigs + build an audience, here are few other articles i've written: https://pjrvs.com/a/scratch https://pjrvs.com/a/audience

i've gone through about 3 niches in the 17 years i've freelanced (pro sports, valley startups, person-as-a-brand online entrepreneurs). each time it's taken about a year to reach critical mass (i.e. many more work offers than i have time for). each time i've been very focused on what i talked abut in original article here.

hope that helps!

Correct - when you can't pick and choose - you're picking to work with anyone so you can pay the bills. Nothing wrong with that. This is for when there is a choice that you can make.

I really enjoy Owen Williams "CHARGED" weekly newsletter" http://weekly.char.gd

There's a raccoon who destroys my veggie patch almost nightly. It doesn't matter how secure I make it, how much mesh/wire/etc I use to try to protect it.

The raccoon is smarter than I am. I'm considering moving.

As someone who's asked to be a mentor often (only because I've been in my industry for a long time) - I find being asked "can you be my mentor?" a little too weighty.

I have no problem with people developing relationships with me and asking me simple/quick questions on occasion.

It's EXACTLY like fiverr...

A/B testing :) But also, since the content straddles work and non-work, it seems like the best time regardless. I stopped testing over a year ago, so another time/day may do better, but I'm happy with it.

Plus, I can't exactly change to monday's now since it's actually called "the sunday dispatches" haha.

Heck ya! Every single week... Except for Dec when I take a 4 week "break" from content writing/marketing.

I've changed the way typekit serves fonts (no longer async, but at least it loads the fallback).

To be honest, I hadn't heard of Ghostery - I've tweaked the code to work with it (just installed and tested it).

Cheers!

I wrote the course myself, I hired a local freelancer that I know to film the video. I also programmed the site and design it myself. I hired a freelance editor too (who I've worked with for 10+ years).

So the videographer was a recommendation from a freelance friend. My editor I've worked with in collaboration on many client projects, so I know her work is amazing.

The site runs on WordPress, payment through memberful.com, emails go out through MailChimp.

If you learn what you need to on the free course, I'm fine with you not buying the paid course (I've told many people not to buy the course if I don't think it's right for them). The free version still has a ton of great information that's already helped the beta testers.

Thank you!

The classes/lessons are slideshows - as I've found people retain more of what I'm talking about if there are words on the screen.

It's all the same stunning personality though, haha...

It would give you a framework for starting to work on gigs with clients, yes.

I updated with sources - here are the direct links to the studys:

http://fu-web-storage-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/content/filer_pu...

http://www.ipse.co.uk/sites/default/files//media/documents/R...

That's a very good point, I'll update with sources (as they are via studies done in the last few years), that was my bad for not including.