This page is part of the MAQTOOB Heritage archive. The essay described here appeared on MAQTOOB for Entrepreneurs, the Medium publication run by this domain’s original team between 2015 and 2018. The current site is under new, independent ownership and is not affiliated with the original company or the essay’s author. We keep this record because other sites still link to the essay at this address.
What the Essay Said
Josh Hoffman published this short, sharp piece on September 27, 2016. Most freelancers, he wrote, describe their business as word of mouth based, and that is exactly the problem. Word of mouth may be the strongest form of marketing, but it is limiting and uncontrollable: it happens one person at a time, and you cannot decide when or to whom people recommend you.
His argument was that freelancers who rely on referrals alone surrender control of their own pipeline, which is why so many of them end up back on the job market when referrals dry up. The fix is to treat marketing like any business does, with several channels working at once. Elegant Themes and the Freelancers Union blog both pointed their readers to it.
Read the Original
The author keeps the essay on his personal Medium account: read it here.