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A couple of English interviews with Robert Vlach were recorded in December after our international freelance meetup in Sofia, Bulgaria. One longer interview about The Freelance Way and the business side of independent professionals, hosted by the well-prepared Stan Slavev, has just been released on his freelance podcast:
The latest survey State of Independence in America 2023 by MBO Partners offers a rare insight into freelancing and the broader gig economy in the USA, based on a statistically representative data sample.
Its wide scope covers freelancers, independent professionals, and solopreneurs alongside semi-independent gig workers. However, thanks to a simple three-tier segmentation of Full-Time, Part-Time, and Occasional Independents it allows for better understanding which trends observed in the data are most relevant to regular freelancers.
The full 28-page report is arguably the most remarkable in the 13 years these studies have been produced. Here are the 3 most interesting highlights:
Upwork has released yet another disappointing Freelance Forward 2023 survey of freelancing in America.
In short, the research report lacks many statistical details present in their older annual surveys done in collaboration with the Freelancers Union. This is particularly evident in the absence of distinction between full-time, part-time, and occasional freelancers, who represent a majority of the broadly defined freelance population.
The drop in quality of Upwork’s annual surveys is almost as jaw-dropping as the downfall of Upwork stock, down 75% from all-time-high.
Mozilla has launched an AI website builder for solopreneurs, freelancers and independent professionals. Solo (still in Beta) is freely available at Soloist.ai.
The no-code app can import text and reviews from your Facebook, Yelp, or web page, and attach a booking calendar, contact form, etc. It suggests both visual and textual content optimized for SEO, and the resulting microsite is mobile-friendly. Overall, if you don’t need any extra features, Solo might be a useful tool, especially for early-career freelancers.
We rarely share paid freelance online events, but we make an exception this time. Our favorite U.S. writer on freelance business, Sarah Duran, offers a virtual workshop series the 2024 Freelance Flightplan with an early-bird price of $297 until Dec 31. Sarah has a history of great writing for freelancers, so this is an opportunity to kickstart the new year with some guidance from an experienced independent professional.
We had a BIG freelance meetup yesterday, in the fantastic Clubco Brno Vlnena coworking space — 120 freelancers, informal networking, tons of insights, friendly conversations, new encounters, and hopefully many new beginnings…
As always in this series of meetups, Robert Vlach held a debate about freelance business (see pic) and invited Brona Sobotka as his special guest. Brona was brilliant, truly one of a kind!
To get notified of our upcoming events, subscribe to the monthly newsletter.
AI is coming for writers, too… or is it the other way around?
Veteran journalist Steven Levy, who has been covering tech for over 40 years, reviewed the latest addition to the plethora of AI tools, NotebookLM, in a Wired article titled Google’s NotebookLM Aims to Be the Ultimate Writing Assistant.
The app, developed at Google in collaboration with the bestselling non-fiction author Steven Johnson, takes in all provided sources and enables a writer to embed their AI-powered analysis neatly into their writing workflow.
Levy expresses some concerns about whether tools like these will relegate human writers to a secondary role in the writing process. Yet he still admits, “In my 40 years of covering tech, this is the most exciting time I can remember.”
If you’re in the U.S., you can try NotebookLM already. If not, you can watch Steven Johnson present it on YouTube:
Wired did a pretty good job in their recent article titled The EU Wants to Fix Gig Work, Uber Has Its Own Ideas. It explains the ongoing battle for the European Union’s Platform Work Directive between various activists and Uber(-like) platforms — without referring to platform workers as freelancers.
Freelancers, who overwhelmingly dislike being labeled as gig workers, work mostly outside the so-called gig economy, with which the freelance economy merely overlaps. Truly independent professionals will hardly be affected by the new directive.
Check out these pictures. This week, we had a fantastic freelance meetup at Networking Premium Gurko Panorama in Sofia, Bulgaria, as a part of our Freelancers On the Road event series.
Around 50 freelancers showed up: we had an easy-going coworking afternoon, guided tour of the venue including two roof-top terraces led by Bozhidar Ivanov, The Freelance Way presented by Locus Publishing’s Kremena Metodieva, and the evening debate about freelance business with Robert Vlach, hosted by Etien Yanev.
All in all, it was an informal, friendly, and exciting meetup that will hopefully lead to some follow-ups organized by the members of the local freelance community.
Many thanks to Networking Premium for having us, to those who provided pictures, and to Stan Slavev for the video reel.
Stay tuned for more meetups in spring, or sign up to our newsletter to get notified in advance.
Elina Jutelyte wrote a great piece titled Unlock Your Earning Potential: A Comprehensive Guide to Freelance Fees Benchmark for their Freelance Business blog. She argues that using surveys as benchmarks is quite useless for freelancers, but notes other smart ways to benchmark prices.
“As with any business endeavor, intelligence gathering is a crucial part of finding the pricing strategy that works best for you.”