A few days ago, an Iranian guy studying in Canada gut kicked off messaging platform Slack.
U.S. companies are not allowed to do business with people from Iran, and somehow, Slack picked this guy out even though he was based in Canada.
Who cares?
Everybody. Slack is valued at over $7 billion, and the story of the Iranian guy quickly went viral and made the front pages of news aggregators, under accusations of racial profiling.
That’s incredible, when you think about the history of the company.
Slack started as an offshoot of a failed game company run by a guy named Stewart Butterfield.
Glitch, the game they were developing, never went anywhere. But they took their internal messaging platform and turned it into a multi-billion dollar business.
And this isn’t the first time Butterfield has done this. He had another failed game before Glitch, and another side-project that emerged from that game which became a successful company. You might have even used it yourself — it’s Flickr, the photo sharing platform.
So what’s the point?
Well, it’s simply the attitude of pivoting to what the market actually needs.
As it is for tech entrepreneurs like Stewart Butterfield, so it is for copywriters, or even information marketers.
For example, when I got started on Upwork as a copywriter, I was trying to focus on writing autoresponder sequences. I think the title on my Upwork profile read “Email copywriter for soap opera sequences.”
There wasn’t that much demand. However, people started hiring me to write cold emails, even though I didn’t even know what the hell those are. So I become a “Cold email specialist.”
I eventually moved on from cold emails (I don’t believe they work well, and when they do, you don’t need a copywriter). But then lots of clients started hiring me for advertorials and writing Ben Settle-style daily emails, so I pivoted again. I’m currently selling “Hype-free sale copy (Emails, Advertorials, and Sales Letters).”
What does this mean for you?
If you’re looking to build up your freelancing career on Upwork, get going now. The market will quickly tell you which services you should offer, which ones you should drop, and which skills you should develop.
And if you’re looking to maximize your Upwork success, from a guy who gets paid $150/hr and has a 100% job satisfaction rating, check out my upcoming book. It won’t make you a Slack-like success. But with the info inside and with a little dedication and work, you will soon be an Upwork force to reckon with.
For more info, check out the following: