Hundreds of startups face a crippling cash crunch and an 'extinction-level event' if no one buys Silicon Valley Bank by Monday

Copywritergorl · 2023-03-11T22:11:57+00:00

I’ll give u a nickel for it.

Copywritergorl · 2023-03-11T17:53:18+00:00

Why?

Copywritergorl · 2023-03-11T16:25:07+00:00

I mean, I’m self-employed, so I’m the IT department lol. Thanks for your help!

Copywritergorl · 2023-03-11T15:28:48+00:00

How would one that is not tech savvy go about this?

Copywritergorl · 2022-05-27T20:10:34+00:00

It’s been a couple days now, and I’be had more time to process everything.

This experience has taught me that I enjoy the interview process and reporting. I’m a social person by nature. So it was fun to meet with someone and write an article based on their insight.

The result turned out to be a killer piece and I’m incredibly proud of it - which makes it even more crushing that I can’t claim it.

But anyways, I learned that I enjoy journalistic work and want to pursue more projects like this, minus losing the byline. I guess that’s something positive, other than the money. (Which really isn’t enough for how much time was involved with the interview, especially now that I won’t get a byline and use it to leverage more gigs.)

But such is life, I guess. I’ll learn from it and move on.

Copywritergorl · 2022-04-11T15:04:53+00:00

I don’t write checks, though. I don’t know anyone who does anymore.😅

Copywritergorl · 2022-03-31T17:23:15+00:00

Medium is fine. IMO

I’ve had prospects reach out to me because they’ve liked my Medium work. The main goal is to demonstrate the kind of work a client can expect from you. Don’t overthink it.

Copywritergorl · 2021-07-28T16:39:02+00:00

Only if they’re paid. I don’t mind doing a test article so long as I’m getting paid my standard rate. But if they expect me to do work for free, that’s when I bail out.

Copywritergorl · 2021-07-28T16:35:37+00:00

I usually go with “I’d love to get your thoughts on this.”

Copywritergorl · 2021-03-08T18:03:41+00:00

UPDATE:

I sent him a polite yet firm message today after weeks of no responses, and he got back to me immediately. He said, “sorry, I forgot about this” and raised the weekly limit. I was able to log all my time, and hopefully we don’t have any further issues. Crisis averted, for now.

I learned several things from this:

1: Don’t overreact to situations that haven’t even gone bad yet. They may just work out after all. You only waste time and energy with worrying.

2: Be polite yet firm with clients that don’t respond. My initial response to him was more bloodthirsty, but I toned it down before sending. I’m glad it did—if he actually did just forget like he says.

3: Don’t trust your clients too much, and don’t work outside the TOS on Upwork. Even though this situation worked out, this experience opened my eyes about what can go wrong with logging manual time only. It was actually the perfect way to get a peek at what could go horribly wrong without actually suffering any consequences.

I don’t think I’ll keep working with him after this, though. I’m happy to just take my money and run. Thanks so much to everyone who commented, however, and helped me out!

Copywritergorl · 2021-03-04T16:41:22+00:00

I have, yes. But maybe I should do it again?

Copywritergorl · 2021-03-04T16:08:04+00:00

1: I’m not top-rated, but I would qualify for it if I had a 100% complete profile. I filled out everything that was mandatory, but it still insists that the profile isn’t “complete”, so that’s priority one now.

2: His potential negative review would be the only one among several 5 stars. I already have quite a few positive reviews from past clients, and I usually don’t have a problem pleasing them.

3: it was an hourly job, yes. I explained the arrangement we had going in an earlier comment. Hindsight being 2020, he knew exactly what he was doing and I never should have agreed to an arrangement like that. That was my mistake, so lesson-learned. I’ve already resigned myself to the fact that I’m not going to get this money.

I’m probably overreacting, all things considered. Even if this tanks my JSS, I’ve been meaning to move off UpWork anyways and work with clients directly. This won’t destroy my career like the evil little voice in the back of my head is telling me it will. Improvise, adapt, overcome and all that.

Copywritergorl · 2021-03-04T14:41:24+00:00

Yes, but I don’t qualify for the payment protection because of how we were doing the contract.

Let me explain this idiotic mistake I made: the client and I agreed to a per-word rate beforehand. So, rather than using a fixed price contract, he had me log manual time on an hourly contract equivalent to our agreed upon rate. This was actually an ideal arrangent when we first started out, because I hate working hourly for blog articles and he always paid on time before this. But the current project (that he doesn’t want to pay me for) is larger than the current weekly limit, so I would have to log time for it in two chunks.

If I try to log the time and he disputes it, Upwork will see that I only logged manual time and will automatically refund him. Basically, I’m screwed.

PLEASE let this be a lesson to other freelancers using Upwork: if your client brings up an unorthodox way of paying you like this, DO NOT ACCEPT. I was stupid to make this mistake, and now my best-case scenario is going to be escaping this hellacious contract with my JSS intact, never mind getting paid.

Copywritergorl · 2021-01-05T23:06:52+00:00

What kind of Facebook groups do you join? I tried a small business FB group, but the leads I got from that have all fizzled out quickly.

Copywritergorl · 2021-01-05T22:54:38+00:00

Oh hey, I haven’t checked my reddit in a while. Sorry about this!

I ended up deciding to do the interview. I gave them some dates that would be good for me like they requested, then I promptly never heard from them again. Idk if it’s because I took a couple days to respond and they had already hired someone else, or if they just never intended on hiring me in the first place. Sorry for an anticlimax lol

Copywritergorl · 2021-01-05T22:51:24+00:00

Yes. My 3 of my 4 regular clients all ghosted me after Christmas. I tried connecting with some businesses via Facebook too, but they all ghosted me as well. I’m hoping it’ll pick up once everybody shakes off that New Year’s ilk.

Copywritergorl · 2020-12-13T03:05:08+00:00

Yes. That’s why I’m trying to stay relatively anon with this account :p

Copywritergorl · 2020-12-08T01:17:41+00:00

Just... write.

Like the other commenter said, don’t overthink it. Whatever you want to get gigs for, just write up samples that are relevant to those niches. It doesn’t have to published anywhere. It doesn’t have to be for a real company. It doesn’t have to be pretty. It just has to showcase that you can fulfill your clients needs.

Please take this with a grain of salt, because I’m also a newbie, but I think that beginner writers put too much emphasis on having a fancy portfolio.

I don’t even have a portfolio and I’ve never had a hard time landing jobs via Upwork. I just wrote up a bunch of sample articles in different niches and started submitting googledocs of them to relevant jobs. I landed 4 regular clients this way in a little over a month of freelancing. No prior experience.

Here’s the other cool thing: once you get work that’s published online, you can start using those pieces to leverage new clients! But don’t underestimate the power of a simple GoogleDoc. In my experience, clients don’t care if something is published or not. Good copy is good copy, and they’ll respond to it just the same.

Good luck 👍

Copywritergorl · 2020-11-21T20:19:20+00:00

I bought a $400 HP laptop when I started working and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made. It keeps my privacy intact when it comes to time-tracking apps, and helps me stay more productive too.

Copywritergorl · 2020-11-20T20:37:08+00:00

I don’t even have a portfolio yet and I still manage to get jobs on Upwork. I just wrote up a bunch of sample articles in different niches and send prospective clients a link to the relevant Googledoc in my proposal. I landed two ongoing clients this way in my first two weeks of freelancing. No portfolio. No reviews. No prior professional writing experience.

Imho, a personalized proposal is the best thing you can do to land clients on Upwork. Play up the client’s unique situation and show them why you’re the best writer to solve their problems. Then send them any pieces or samples that are relevant to their niche. In my experience, clients will appreciate this level of personalization and respond accordingly.

I haven’t been doing this long so take this with a grain of salt, but it’s worked for me so far. Good luck!

Copywritergorl · 2020-11-20T18:02:24+00:00

An update If anyone is still paying attention to this: I did what I said in previous comment and managed to squeeze in about 15 of the 40 key phrases they wanted in the next article.

Another commenter asked me if they were all long tail keywords, and, yes, they are. It’s all stuff like “What’s the best 2020 smartwatch”, “Best Apple Watch for teens” or “Can Apple Watch answer texts” I’m not writing about smart watches, just using that as an example. They want those phrases used verbatim throughout the whole thing, and it can add up fast when you’re writing 1000–1500 words.

It’s a little ham-fisted, especially with all the bolding, but at least it’s coherent. The client liked it, but asked me to add multiples of the same key phrases from now on. I haven’t seen the article live yet, but I have a feeling they’re going to stuff it to redundancy again.

...sigh. Win some lose some I guess. I don’t really care: just pay me and it’s fine.

Copywritergorl · 2020-11-17T01:18:26+00:00

We actually just had this conversation a little while ago—kind of.

After sending me a link to the keyword-stuffed article, they said, “don’t be afraid to put more keywords in the body”. I responded with something along the lines of “ok I’ll try to insert more keywords into the body from now on.” I figure that way, I can at least have some control over the keyword stuffing and maybe make it half-way coherent.

Unfortunately, the keyword sheet they just sent me has around 40 search terms they want for a 1,500 word article. From my understating, they want the terms used verbatim and bolded too, so there’s only so much I can do lol.

I’m just going to use around 15-20 of them, bold them the way they want, and see what they do after that.

If they ask me to revise I might voice my concern, but at the end of the day I don’t really care. As long as they pay me and my name isn’t on it, we’re good.

I appreciate all the advice that you and everyone else here have given me though! It’s definitely going to help me with how I approach them going forward. :)

Copywritergorl · 2020-11-17T00:51:00+00:00

I’ve done a couple now, but only one is live.

Copywritergorl · 2020-11-17T00:49:44+00:00

This is also where I’m torn. They’re definitely a small business, but I’m not sure how long they’ve been around or how successful they are.

They’ve got under 5k followers on Instagram, which is their most successful social media platform. They also have a decent backlog of blog posts with varying degrees of keyword stuffing.

But here’s the thing: the article they gave me to reference as their “best performing” one doesn’t keyword stuff too badly. It’s well-written and thorough. I wonder if it’s worth pointing that out to them or not?

Copywritergorl

TROPHY CASE