Matt Olpinski
Community Founder
Creator of The Freelance Institute • Web Designer & Developer • Freelancing Expert • Owner of Matthew's Design Co.
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One of the biggest challenges freelancers face is finding new projects and clients. That's why we've been tinkering with a robot that searches the web for freelance jobs and automatically posts them in our community.
We're excited to share that the Project Leads space is now active!
Lead Sources
Our robot searches 20+ sources and automatically posts job leads that contain the words "freelance" or "freelancer".
While we know these leads aren't as fine-tuned as other paid services such as SolidGigs or EverLeads may offer, we're excited to include this exciting feature in your membership!
Frequency
Our robot posts a job as soon as it finds it. It does not queue them up and there's little or no delay. So when a client posts a new job online, our robot will find it quickly and post it here so you're the first to know.
So far, our robot is finding about 10 new freelance jobs per week!
Notifications
At the moment, Circle is having a problem sending notifications for topics added through an automation. They're aware of this and working to resolve the issue.
That means you won't see a notification when a new job post is added 😞, but if you scroll down to the Project Leads space in the sidebar, you should see an indicator showing how many new job posts have been added since you last checked.
Sharing
If you know someone in the community who mentioned they're looking for a project and you see one in the Project Leads space, take a moment to tag them in a comment under that job post so they don't miss it!
We hope you find this feature valuable and we'll continue improving it over time.
Enjoy!
We're excited to share that the Project Leads space is now active!
Lead Sources
Our robot searches 20+ sources and automatically posts job leads that contain the words "freelance" or "freelancer".
While we know these leads aren't as fine-tuned as other paid services such as SolidGigs or EverLeads may offer, we're excited to include this exciting feature in your membership!
Frequency
Our robot posts a job as soon as it finds it. It does not queue them up and there's little or no delay. So when a client posts a new job online, our robot will find it quickly and post it here so you're the first to know.
So far, our robot is finding about 10 new freelance jobs per week!
Notifications
At the moment, Circle is having a problem sending notifications for topics added through an automation. They're aware of this and working to resolve the issue.
That means you won't see a notification when a new job post is added 😞, but if you scroll down to the Project Leads space in the sidebar, you should see an indicator showing how many new job posts have been added since you last checked.
Sharing
If you know someone in the community who mentioned they're looking for a project and you see one in the Project Leads space, take a moment to tag them in a comment under that job post so they don't miss it!
We hope you find this feature valuable and we'll continue improving it over time.
Enjoy!
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You won't find me on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram anymore. This was a big decision for me, so I wrote an article about why I made it and how I think it will impact my career and personal life.
Don't worry, it's not political, but it is deeply personal.
As with every decision, this is not one I took lightly or made hastily. There are a lot of good things about social media, but the good doesn't outweigh the bad for me anymore. If you're curious, I encourage you to give it a read.
Perhaps the biggest shock to people here will be the deletion of Twitter. I've backed up years of data and will be repurposing it into articles, newsletters, and of course, valuable content for TFI. TFI Twitter is still alive and well.
Feel free to share your thoughts, comments, and feedback here since this is where I'll be putting my focus from now on 😄👍
Don't worry, it's not political, but it is deeply personal.
As with every decision, this is not one I took lightly or made hastily. There are a lot of good things about social media, but the good doesn't outweigh the bad for me anymore. If you're curious, I encourage you to give it a read.
Perhaps the biggest shock to people here will be the deletion of Twitter. I've backed up years of data and will be repurposing it into articles, newsletters, and of course, valuable content for TFI. TFI Twitter is still alive and well.
Feel free to share your thoughts, comments, and feedback here since this is where I'll be putting my focus from now on 😄👍
Wow, that's surprising!
Matt Olpinski
I mean, I have considered quitting Instagram or in any case just one at a time! But yours was an all-in move 😄
How does it feel? You were very active on Twitter, do you think this will affect your business / products in any way?
I mean, I have considered quitting Instagram or in any case just one at a time! But yours was an all-in move 😄
How does it feel? You were very active on Twitter, do you think this will affect your business / products in any way?
· 1 reply
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Hey everyone! I thought it'd be fun to share a list of places we've all visited as a way to get to know each other better. No context or stories needed! You can list countries, states, or specific locations or landmarks using a map or list. It's totally up to you!
Most of my travel has been domestic via road trips, so here it goes:
Most of my travel has been domestic via road trips, so here it goes:
- Dominican Republic
- Belize
- Canada
- The following 35 U.S. states:
I had a trip scheduled to Panama and Belize this last summer until the world went to hell!! How was Belize? I want to sit on a beach on Ambergris or Caulker and enjoy life!! Anyway I have lived in Milwaukee, Denver, Melbourne, AU, Cape Town, SA and now Tokyo, JP. Interesting where life takes us?
Any other digital nomads living elsewhere?
Any other digital nomads living elsewhere?
· 6 replies
Went to Hawaii on my honeymoon and was that beautiful. Agree with you totally. We stayed in a small studio on the ocean for a few days and I still vividly remember having my morning coffee staring over the water. Hope to get back to that scene one day!
· 2 replies
Yep, I love to travel and have itchy feet, as they say. So far I have visited 44 countries. I've lived in a few — Chiang Mai, Thailand for about 10 months. Marbella, Spain and Pokhara, Nepal for about 6 months each.
Here is a world map demo I made to display the countries I've visited (work in progress, best viewed on desktop):
https://musing-pike-b7a8d0.netlify.app/.
https://musing-pike-b7a8d0.netlify.app/.
· 2 replies
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We've added a
Support Bot
to our community! It will help us automate many tasks as our community grows. You can send Support Bot a direct message or mention it in posts and comments, but its greatest task is gathering job leads.
Support Bot spends every day roaming the vast and mysterious depths of the internet, searching far and wide for freelance jobs. When it finds a new job, it makes the long, perilous journey back home and delivers it to the Project Leads area of our community.
Left to its own devices, Support Bot would bring home any and all job leads, but we have given it extensive training from Master Feedly and Master Zapier.
Support Bot will only bring back jobs that are specifically for freelancers, lest it make the treacherous journey home only to find the job was deleted or left unappreciated by our community members.
You can find
Support Bot
in our member directory and see what jobs it's delivering in the Project Leads area of our community.
Support Bot spends every day roaming the vast and mysterious depths of the internet, searching far and wide for freelance jobs. When it finds a new job, it makes the long, perilous journey back home and delivers it to the Project Leads area of our community.
Left to its own devices, Support Bot would bring home any and all job leads, but we have given it extensive training from Master Feedly and Master Zapier.
Support Bot will only bring back jobs that are specifically for freelancers, lest it make the treacherous journey home only to find the job was deleted or left unappreciated by our community members.
You can find
Woohoo for those job leads!! Can't wait to see what our little support bot can do :) How often does the list get updated?
· 1 reply
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Can anyone help me use the Circle API to display the total number of community members on our marketing website?
I'd like to do this via Javascript or jQuery. Working with APIs is pushing the boundaries of my development knowledge, but I can probably write the function if I can figure out how to access the data.
This isn't an urgent request, but if anyone has a few minutes to help me at least make some sense of how to access the API data, I'd be very grateful!
I'd like to do this via Javascript or jQuery. Working with APIs is pushing the boundaries of my development knowledge, but I can probably write the function if I can figure out how to access the data.
This isn't an urgent request, but if anyone has a few minutes to help me at least make some sense of how to access the API data, I'd be very grateful!
Hey! Would be more than happy to help on this. Let me try to write up a little JS Snippet that just pulls the number and then I can drop it over to you and you should be able to easily grab it from there.
More than happy to chat more if you have questions, but let me see if I can at least just get it pulling some of the basic info.
More than happy to chat more if you have questions, but let me see if I can at least just get it pulling some of the basic info.
· 1 reply
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Right now, Circle's text editor is a bit limited. There's no emoji support, only one "heading" option, and the way you have to embed links is powerful, but the UX is strange.
However, they should be releasing a new and improved text editor in the near future that is MUCH better. I've used it myself and it's pretty awesome (and it includes emoji support)!
Until they release the new editor, you'll have to copy and paste emojis from another website like https://emojicopy.com
However, they should be releasing a new and improved text editor in the near future that is MUCH better. I've used it myself and it's pretty awesome (and it includes emoji support)!
Until they release the new editor, you'll have to copy and paste emojis from another website like https://emojicopy.com
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Hey everyone! If you didn't know, our community admins have special access to Circle's product roadmap, user feedback, feature requests, and direct access to the Circle founders themselves.
That said, we wanted to give you a heads up about some of the new platform features that you should be seeing in the near future!
Remember, Circle is a brand new platform (launched August 2020) and while it's pretty awesome, they are making some exciting improvements:
That said, we wanted to give you a heads up about some of the new platform features that you should be seeing in the near future!
Remember, Circle is a brand new platform (launched August 2020) and while it's pretty awesome, they are making some exciting improvements:
- New Text Editor (Released!) - the current text editor isn't great. There's no emoji support and embedding links is a pain. We've used the new editor and it's MUCH better. Were looking forward to this update very soon!
- Renaming "Topics" to "Posts" - I always thought the "Create Topic" button sounded strange. Circle agrees and I have the inside scoop they are actively working on renaming "topics" to "posts" throughout the platform in a future release!
- Mobile App - the Circle mobile app is currently in beta and should be launching soon. It will be focused on member-features (not admin-features). The mobile web version of our community is really nice, but a native mobile app is going to be a very nice upgrade!
- Improved Onboarding - when members join the community, their experience will be even better. We believe this includes some kind of built-in checklist!
- Improved Direct Messaging - the direct messaging functionality is currently very limited (no formatting whatsoever and no attachment support). This should be getting an overhaul in an upcoming release
- Group Messaging - along with improved direct messages, we should also be getting group chat functionality as well!
These updates roll out instantly, just like they did in Slack, but the timeline is pure speculation based on what we're seeing in the Circle product community.
Circle has many more updates in the works, but those are the big ones that will have the most impact on you and should be released in the near future (hopefully within a month or two).
If there are any features you want to see Circle add, let us know and we can be your spokesperson to them!
Update: I found Circle's public product roadmap so you can all see the exciting features they're working on!
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Hey everyone! I just wanted to briefly explain what the tags or "badges" mean on member profiles (especially since that's new to members coming from Slack):
In Circle, we can assign tags (with colors and emojis) to member profiles! These are very flexible, so we can be creative with how we use them. Here's what I was thinking (and what we have in place currently):
In Circle, we can assign tags (with colors and emojis) to member profiles! These are very flexible, so we can be creative with how we use them. Here's what I was thinking (and what we have in place currently):
- All paid members will get a Pro badge. The Pro badge does not indicate you're a pro freelancer.
- Freelancing experts will get a Mentor badge, which will be manually assigned by admins and moderators at our discretion. In the future, we may allow members to nominate each other for this badge!
- Guests will get a Guest badge, which is good for guest speakers, event hosts, and anyone visiting temporarily.
- Community Managers will get a Manager badge, which will help you know who to contact for help, support, moderation, or suggestions.
- I gave myself a Founder badge so you can easily find me when scrolling through comments, but also just for fun :)
- Admins get the special (and default) Admin badge.
As the community grows, we may offer free, limited access memberships, which would not get a "Pro" tag on their profile. We can also add, remove, or change tags at any time.
If you have other ideas or suggestions, I'd love to hear them!
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This is easily my new favorite website and Twitter account for quick, simple, and actionable advice on how to be better at marketing:
and their Twitter account is filled with great insights as well:
I hope you enjoy this as much as I do!
and their Twitter account is filled with great insights as well:
I hope you enjoy this as much as I do!
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In August 2019,
Rachel
and I took a road trip across the mid-western United States. We flew into Denver, Colorado, then drove through Utah and Arizona before spending a few days in Los Angeles, California.
Here are some of the sights we saw along the way (and why we chose to take this amazing trip!)
Here are some of the sights we saw along the way (and why we chose to take this amazing trip!)
