This website was archived on July 21, 2019. It is frozen in time on that date.

Sonya Mann's active website is Sonya, Supposedly.

Monthly Shenanigans, Spring 2018

Happy June đź‘‹

Once again, you are reading The Newsletter Formerly Known as Exolymph! Hopefully you’re all aware of that by now and I can stop using the disclaimer.

It’s appalling, but the last time I sent one of these dispatches was during February. In the meantime I wrote seven installments of an experimental project called Sonya Notes, mostly about epistemology. You can read those posts on my website or on Substack.

The biggest change since February is that I quit journalism! In May I joined the Zcash Foundation as its third employee. My job entails messaging strategy, marketing, PR, and general outreach. We’re a small team, so I tackle whatever needs doing, as long as I can pull it off.

A lovely side effect of not writing articles for work is that my creative drive is slowly refreshing. Stay tuned for a handful of essays in the coming months. Perhaps I’ll make a zine again! I miss zines.

What have you been up to? Any interesting projects?

Best,
Sonya

Monthly Shenanigans, February 2018

Hello again đź‘‹

Welcome back to The Newsletter Formerly Known as Exolymph! May its cyberpunk self rest in peace. The other way you’d know me is as tech reporter Sonya Mann. At some point you signed up for this mailing list on one of my websites.

Reporting ✍️

Here are the best articles I’ve written since I last emailed you:

  • A profile of San Francisco-based Republican lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, who is representing fired Google employee James Damore. [link]
  • A takedown of self-proclaimed “cryptocurrency genius” and actual grifter James Altucher. [link]
  • “These College Startups Don’t Charge Tuition Until Grads Make $50,000 a Year” [link]
  • What it was like to eat 90% meat for two weeks. People loved this one! Presumably because it’s fun to read about crazy diet experiments. [link]

Thoughts đź’…

These days I’m always asking myself, “What do you want?” It’s a hard question (although not at the level of a quarter-life crisis). Also, it’s a question that I’ve asked myself many times before.

The answer varies somewhat. Usually what I want the most is to be an independent creator, along the lines of Ben Thompson. Alternately, one of those people who churn out zombie novels for Amazon Kindle users.

I’ve read the “1,000 True Fans” essay a couple of times and it’s fueled hours and hours of daydreaming. Daydreaming is easy — the hard part is committing to a particular vision and putting in the work. I sorta did that with Exolymph… until my creative juices dried up.

To be clear, I don’t feel sorry for myself. My life is charmed in most respects. I live in an economically vibrant area with good weather, near my family. I have a committed relationship and two friendly cats. Finances are comfortable. My health is stable. I am grateful for all of these things.

Nevertheless, I’m dissatisfied. I wonder if this is pure hedonic treadmill, and I’m just predisposed to wish for greater levels of achievement no matter what. Before I got my job as a full-time reporter, that seemed like a milestone that would erase my discontent. And yet here I am!

I waffle about the practical options too. Do I want to stay in journalism, despite the perverse incentives that have remade the industry? (As much as I love the internet, it’s been terrible for news businesses.) Should I jump ship to do content marketing? I’d make more money.

On the other hand, money isn’t everything. ClichĂ© but true.

Are you where you want to be?

Bunny and guinea pig photo by Chris Parfitt.
Photo by Chris Parfitt.

How I Find Clients as a Freelancer

I’ve been working as a freelance writer on-and-off over the past four years, and full-time for most of 2016. My career has only just started to flourish — knock on wood — but since last December I’ve learned a lot about finding work. Even more so, I’ve learned about where to find the best work. “Best” means most interesting and most lucrative.

I’m not promising to Unlock! Your Earning Potential!™ or anything like that. If you’re intrigued by the nitty-gritty of freelancing, you’ve probably read versions of my experience before. But if you’re new to this mode of employment, hearing about how I manage could be helpful. Just another data point to tuck away in your brain!

TL;DR

Freelancing is a relationships game, and this holds true across many industries. Here are the two most important things you can do to improve your career in the long-term:

  • Find the people who are getting paid to do the work that you want to do. Make friends with them.
  • Find the people who are hiring other people to perform the work that you want to do. Make friends with them also.

It doesn’t matter whether you network online or in person, but nurturing solid connections with individual human beings is vital. In fact, “networking” is just a smarmy word for befriending fellow industry participants. Making public contributions to the community will also help expand the mouth of your funnel.

Yes, the unfortunate reality is that building relationships takes time. There is no shortcut that I’m aware of, unless your parents have relevant connections. It’s taken me years to get where I am, and like I said, I’m only just getting the hang of things. However, both aptitude and chance will affect your results. YMMV!

Ways to Meet Clients

Remember, I’m not a veteran freelancer. That said, these three methods do reflect four years of experience. The list descends in order of quality, from most preferred to least preferred. That also happens to be the order from most time-consuming to least time-consuming.

1) Via Friends or Referrals

I became a contributor at Mattermark quite serendipitously. Alex Wilhelm and I had followed each other on Twitter for a while and exchanged a handful of messages. Then he got hired as Mattermark editor-in-chief. On a whim, I sent him a DM along the lines of, “Are you looking for pitches at Mattermark?” The answer was yes.

For me, Mattermark is a perfect gig. I get paid fairly to write about a subject that fascinates me. I have thoughtful editors and I’m able to accrue clips for my portfolio. Writing about startups and venture capital also allows me to conduct interviews that widen my circle of acquaintances.

Desirable jobs like writing for Mattermark come about either because someone I know wants my services, or someone I know suggests me to a person or company in search of a writer. Often these leads literally come through Twitter, because I spend a lot of time talking to people on that service. A subreddit, niche forum, or IRL meetup could work just as well. Sometimes I initiate contact and sometimes the prospective client asks about my availability.

Making friends in order to find clients can take months or years to pay off. It’s speculative and unpredictable, but luckily the process is intrinsically rewarding.

I view every new person I befriend as a possible source of work, and try to comport myself accordingly (with mixed success). Someone won’t hire me or refer me unless they feel good about my work ethic, analysis skills, and integrity.

2) At Random

Sometimes people contact me out of the blue. The projects they bring to the table can be delightful or baffling. Sometimes these prospective clients accept my rates without batting an eye, and sometimes they ghost when I start talking numbers.

I am not sure how to optimize for this other than having an online presence and constantly self-promoting. Although it’s a bit mysterious, I do like getting work via surprise email. It seems to be a result of personal marketing that I’ve already done and would keep doing anyway.

For example, a Dutch tech consultancy reached out and asked me to help internationalize their website. If I remember correctly, they found me via a blog post about product communication that I shared on Hacker News.

3) By Applying Willy-Nilly

I do this less now, but I used to get one-off jobs all the time by applying to Craigslist listings. Other sites like Indeed and Glassdoor can also be fruitful, but people tend to look for full-timers on those platforms, rather than freelancers. Besides, Craigslist is unmatched in terms of posting volume, and their simple, utilitarian interface is a blessing.

The key here is to have a general cover letter that you can adjust as needed. The amount of time you spend customizing your initial contact with the prospective client should be directly proportional to how much you want the job.

Applying to a random Craigslist ad is how I got my first professional freelancing gig, managing social media for Creeklife. I’ve landed numerous other gigs this way, ranging from soulless #content writing to sociopolitical essays.

Conclusion

That’s it. Those are the three ways that I’ve found my clients. As you can tell, I vastly prefer the first method. Four years in, I feel like networking is finally starting to pay off for me. Thank goodness that my personality prompted me to do lots of arguing and chitchatting in the first place! (I know that not everyone is able to spend years doing speculative emotional labor. I’m not sure how to change that.)

It’s not easy. Anyone who tries to sell you a simple step-by-step guide to being a successful freelancer is oversimplifying. Maybe you noticed that the guidance in this blog post is pretty overarching and vague. I didn’t even cover how to differentiate yourself from the competition! And how do you go about making friends, anyway?!

Well, them’s the breaks. You have to muddle along yourself. Seek out information proactively. Anyone who’s not comfortable doing that isn’t suited to freelancing.

That Feel When the Brick Saw Earns Six Times Your Wage

“If you look at my body as a tool of the company, I am not receiving the same level of maintenance as this inanimate object [the brick saw]. From the $164.08/mo I pay in health insurance, to the gas and vehicle wear I expend driving around to jobs, to the thousand extra calories I have to eat every day to maintain at such high levels of activity, all the way down to the sunscreen I have to wear every day and the ibuprofen I take to ameliorate the pain caused by the job — all of it is paid for personally by me, from my wages.” — user TRASH_UPLOADER on Reddit

Eat the rich or the rich will eat you. Photo by Nick Mustoe.
Photo by Nick Mustoe.

To Be Fair, Filing Is Boring

Amazing tidbit from an Ask a Manager compilation of anecdotes about terrible job applicants:

“Because I used to get about 500-600 applicants every time a file clerk was posted, I started putting one prescreening question. [¶] The question was ‘Rate your interest in the following job duties: Filing’. It was the only job duty listed, since it was the only duty of the job. The only options were ‘Interested’ and ‘Not Interested.’ I could usually weed out 2/3 of the applicants because they would put ‘Not Interested.'”

Sign up for my newsletter to stay abreast of my new writing and projects.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program. If you click on an Amazon link from this site and subsequently buy something, I may receive a small commission (at no cost to you).