đŸŽ„ AI Alive

Author

Jim Hamilton
May 16, 2025

In partnership with

Happy Friday! This is the Freelance Gig, where we share news, tools, tips, and tricks to help grow your freelance business. 

Mentioned in today’s email: TikTok, Notion, Meta and Fiverr. Plus the ugly truth about client work and why most freelancers are stuck at the same income level.

Read time: 3 minutes and 8 seconds

Together with OneNine

The Website Team Trusted by the Highest Performing Marketers

The perfect website team is reasonably priced, incredibly good at communication, highly responsive, very transparent, and actually cares about your success. If your current team falls short on any of that, we would love a chance to prove ourselves.

Most marketers have resources but rarely a true expert partner for design, development, or website management. That is where we come in. OneNine becomes your website team for as many or as few tasks as you need.

Whether you need just design, just development, or both, every OneNine client gets a dedicated project manager who keeps projects moving quickly without needing your constant oversight. We only do website design, development, and management. There are many agencies, but few can say they have been doing this for more than 13 years with a fully North American team and hundreds of active clients who trust them. We can.

Working With Clients

The Ugly Truth About Client Work

Confession:

It’s hard to say no to clients who want to hire you.

Especially if you got into freelancing as a way to break out of a low-paying job.

Turning down money feels plain wrong.

And look, in the beginning, you do what you’ve gotta do to put food on the table.

No questions asked.

But once you’re beyond that first level


Your default answer for prospective clients should be no.

Here’s why:

Not everyone is a good fit to work with you.

This could be because of the market they’re in or the type of business they run


How they prefer to communicate


What their expectations are about the work you do or results you can provide


Or simply the way they view the world.

Point is:

Ignoring red or even yellow flags just to secure the bag almost always leads to frustration and regret on both sides.

So don’t make that mistake.

Develop a strong filter and get clear on what a “perfect fit” client looks like.

Then make sure you stay true to that as often as possible.

Making the Rounds

POLL: Have you ever done any work on Fiverr?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

Working For Yourself

Why Most Freelancers Are Stuck at the Same Income Level

The best thing about freelancing is that you can teach yourself the basics of almost any skill for free online.

Unfortunately, that’s also the worst part about freelancing.

Why?

Because you’ll often pick up a lot of bad habits along the way.

Things you’ll need to unlearn in order to progress and eventually master your craft.

That’s why finding a mentor is so important.

It may not make sense to look for one at the very beginning of your journey


But once you’ve got a few paying clients and steady work coming in


You should be looking for someone to learn from.

There’s a reason Tony Robbins says “the fastest way to achieve success is to model it”...

Because finding someone who can show you the way and help you avoid common pitfalls will shortcut your learning curve.

The simplest way to do this?

Find one who’s got what you want and pay them.

AI Prompts For Freelancers

Prompt of the Week: The 1950s Advertising Legend

This AI prompt is designed to help you create a marketing plan that incorporates old school advertising flair.

Here is the prompt:

Imagine you’re a 1950s advertising legend who time-traveled to today. Create a 5-step marketing plan for my freelance [TYPE OF SERVICE] services that blends mid-century ad charm with modern digital channels.

Sponsored by Authory

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Tool of the Week

Get AI-Powered Transcripts in Minutes With Rev

If you create written or video content for clients


Chances are, you have to sift through hours of their video or audio content first just to pin down their voice and tone.

But not anymore.

With Rev.com, you can transcribe all that content in minutes using AI, then feed those transcripts into your favorite chatbots like Claude or ChatGPT.

And once you’ve got written text capturing your client’s tone, word choice, and messaging


You can train an AI model to sound just like them.

That means:

  • More authentic content that perfectly matches your client’s voice

  • Faster turnaround on drafts (since AI already knows what your client “sounds” like)

  • Less guesswork (and fewer rewrites) for you

So if you want to use raw audio or video to crank out on-brand content, copy and video scripts, consider giving Rev a shot.

It’s a simple way to streamline your workflow
 and create content that hits all the right notes.

Check it out below:

Bonus Points

đŸ’Œ Careers: What if your salary is too high for today’s job market? (link)

đŸ—Łïž Communication: The hidden reason why you’re having communication problems with co-workers (link)

🎧 Work Beats: Playstation 2 Ambient Jungle - Dopo Goto (link)