Hey friends, happy Monday

I don’t know from which side of the world you’re from, but here where I’m writing from it’s starting to smell like spring, and that vitamin D infusion really helps in boosting productivity and hope.

For many, that’s often a sign to take on some new challenges like seek out a new job or educational venture, and for others it’s a sign to jump into entreprenural waters and see what happens.

Many of you were DMing me for weeks asking me how I did it, how you can do it, and whether it’s too late to try freelancing or some other form of small business.

I say, the best time was in 2018 but the second best time is today - as long as you don’t put it off for tomorrow. So in this newsletter, I’ll be sharing the exact steps of how I started growing my business from my aunt’s dining room to being my own consulting company founder.

First Steps

I was 21 when I started freelancing, and before that, the only real job I had was helping my parents in their clothing store. At the time, I’ll admit, starting your freelance journey was easier than it is today.

But at the same time, it was still challenging because every freelancing platform had a very closed ecosystem that didn’t let you share about your freelancing journey and neither was everyone so open on social media as they are today.

There were 3 freelance platforms where I was able to work:

1. Upwork
2. Fiverr
3. PeoplePerHour

I didn’t use PeoplePerHour much, but it was a good option during dry months, like June-August and January-March.

Most of my income came from Upwork, where I’m now expert-vetted freelancer, the 1% of the entire platform (and no, I didn’t buy that badge, I was chosen for it.)

At the time I only had basic coding skills, and didn’t quite have a direction where my tech career will go. So, I became a tech writer. And tech didn’t just mean writing listicles and laptop reviews, it also meant writing API documentation, tech guides, user documentations and everything connected to software writing.

Oftentimes, I also did manual testing of the sites and website copywriting for different apps. My writing career grew and spread, and I was starting to make twice my median salary in the country, paying my tuition and living nicely.

I was making more than an average software developer working at Big 4 in my country, and more than most developers at Microsoft in my country and while I was approaching the end of my studies, I decided to stay writer, unaware that my writing life will change.

I prioritized several things to be able to find job:

• I built a portfolio by posting on Medium, and other sites
• Joined various Facebook groups and actually found many clients like that
• Focused on talking about my clients’ problems over my experience and skills
• Made my bio and profile very readable and concise
• Asked for feedback along the work, so I could improve over time and ensure 5-star ratings

When I felt confident in my data skills, I asked current clients whether they’d like me to analyze some data they had and help them build better customer experiences.

So after that, I helped my photographer client find the best locations to travel to, and other client who specialized in sleep health build an interactive sleep calculator that uses machine learning.

But I was still heavily dependent on writing, especially after the COVID pandemic and several tragic events struck my family. But my clients decided to use AI to write for them and that meant my career would plummet and luckily, so did theirs because they went all-in AI and it couldn’t sustain their business yet.

Meanwhile, I reorganized, embraced data science fully and began learning LLMs and generative AI. And on top of that, I had social media on my side.

Social Media + Freelance Platforms, the winning formula

It’s a well known fact that on most social media platforms, you can’t give your external contact info or get paid outside the platform unless you already have signed a contract with your clients.

But what if you used your social media to drive clients to Upwork, and other outlets like newsletter?

Thanks to my social media presence on @codingmermaid.ai which started growing soon after my main client laid me off, I was able to partner with over 30 companies to work with them as a consultant and data scientist.

On top of that, I was accepting small data science gigs on social media on Fiverr and Upwork to get back in form.

• Creating dashboards
• Collecting data through scraping
• Building simple predictive models through Time Series analysis
• Doing customer segmentation for the holiday season and similar projects

If you want to grow as a freelance data scientist, start with the smallest projects, some that are fully automated and won’t take too much of your time but will allow you to make money while searching for the bigger job.

Data scraping for example, can be fully automated with the right tool.

Documenting your journey on social media

Getting back to my old level of expertise required a complete rebrand, and I was ready to throw myself in the fire and get out of it stronger.

And the best way to stand out to potential partners and employers is by documenting your journey. So I started documenting my learning journey and translating my most well-kept secrets into the Roadmaps I’m selling.

They’re detailed e-books that I derived from my learning notes, study backlog, experience working with clients and the time I worked at Kanban Zone for 2 years. And I update them every few weeks with new experiences and findings I made while studying with my students.

It’s okay to admit that the industry is changing and things may not be the same as they’re while I was a student, and I want to provide the best possible learning experience and define a path that is accessible to everyone.

At the same time, social media enabled me to partner for collabs with different AI brands. And, that wasn’t just me creating a reel, I picked brands I believed in and it’s made me very happy to work with them. In addition to post collabs, I helped them define their AI product strategy, how to use their data smarter and make data-driven decisions.

So, you can say that they were my clients and I was their data consultant. I continued sharing content on Instagram, TikTok, and Linkedin, and offers kept coming. My point is, keep the momentum moving, get yourself out there, and work on projects that are meaningful for your career.

Educate

Use your knowledge to educate others, through posts, masterclasses, workshops, guides and mentorship. Every week, I audit at least 5-10 resumes and Linkedin profiles, and other freelancers often reach out for The Upwork audit I recently started doing.

It’s easy to take expertise from professors, Google and Netflix employees and scientists, but people are often looking for social proof, like they need to see that college dropout took a grip of themselves and transformed their life for the better. They need to see that the person who was struggling figured it out and is sharing their knowledge now.

But essentially, I still use Upwork, and it’s a big part of my career. I believe it’s the stepping stone into your entrepreneurship career. I wrote a detailed freelancing guide called Upwork Mastery. Currently it’s $60 off so you can tap into my 8-years long career in it and how I became top 1% freelancer.

Productizing Services on Upwork and Fiverr

Freelancing is shifting. Instead of chasing clients and writing endless proposals, top freelancers are turning their services into products. Upwork and Fiverr are adapting to this, letting you package what you do into clear, fixed-price offers that clients can buy instantly.

On Upwork, this happens through Project Catalog. You’re not waiting for job invites—you’re listing a service with set pricing, clear deliverables, and a structured workflow. Instead of “I can build you a chatbot,” it’s “I’ll create a custom AI-powered chatbot for your business in 7 days.” The buyer knows exactly what they’re getting.

Fiverr has been doing this for years, but the model has evolved. It’s not just logo design and voiceovers anymore. Top sellers are productizing AI consulting, automation scripts, technical writing, and even full-stack development services. If you’ve been relying on custom project work, it’s worth testing if your skills can be packaged into something repeatable.

This approach removes the constant back-and-forth. Clients see what you offer, the price is upfront, and there’s no need for negotiations. You focus on delivery, not pitching.

A lot of freelancers hesitate because they think productizing means low value or cheap gigs. It doesn’t. If you’re solving a clear problem and delivering an outcome, you can charge premium rates. It’s the difference between offering “data analysis services” and a defined “data-driven business insights package.”

The second one sounds like a solution, not just labor.

Upwork still plays a big role in my career. I see it as a stepping stone into entrepreneurship—whether that’s moving into consulting, launching your own AI product, or building a personal brand around what you do. If you’re still relying only on bidding for jobs, it might be time to rethink how you position your services.

7 Resources & Tools I use as Freelancer turned AI entrepreneur

My toolkit has truly evolved over time so I’ll be sharing exactly what I used and learned from to become good at what I’m doing today.

Notion

I use Notion because of its beautiful templates I can build from scratch and adjust to my needs and preferences. I have my very own Financial planner, Freelancing OS I built to control which projects I’m applying to, save all my cover letter templates, optimize my resume, etc.

I’m currently building a separate business where I’ll talk about this more, and I can’t wait to show you. Notion is also where I place my main content plans, even after publishing and I can always go back to that content if necessary and repurpose it.

ChatGPT & Lovable

Like many others, life is starting to be unimaginable without AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude and others. I try not to be overly reliant on these tools, but they help me finish work faster and smoother.

I use ChatGPT to help me clean data, recognize some patterns I may not be able to, help me in writing documentation, optimize some code and practice for interviews when I need it.

Data scientists greatly benefit from tools like ChatGPT & Lovable, but if you want a specific tool that can help you get more things done, you should try Julius!

ManyChat

I still didn’t use the full potential of this app, but essentially ManyChat helps me respond automatically to your comments, replies and DMs on social media. It’s my elevator-pitch tool and I don’t shy away from using it. I try to keep contacts at 2K because it can get really expensive to use.

Typefully

As I started writing on other social media like Threads, Bluesky and Linkedin, I’ve found the need to automate my post schedule. While I’m still in the process of exploring Typefully, I was able to schedule posts which helps me organize time better.

Topmate

I use Topmate for the mentorship and consultation services, and have even made it to top 200 European coaches. I coach in data science, AI and entrepreneurship, and while the individual mentorship programs are now closed, you can use it to book an Upwork or Linkedin profile audit, as well as a Resume audit.

The Ultimate Branding Course

After university, this was the biggest investment I made into my skillset and expertise and I’ll NEVER regret it. The Ultimate Branding course allowed me to meet so many talented ladies who know what they want and how to make money.

This is not a paid promotion or sponsored in any way, but this course not only helped me become a better data scientist because I finally understood how modern-day sales and marketing works, but also lead my business towards exponential growth only 1 month into 2025.

I learned more about effective communication, how to provide more value to my students, how to be a better educator and more importantly communicator. It covers from the very basics of sales and branding to how to create sales funnel, how to run a successful Newsletter services, how to story-tell effectively, and the modules keep expanding.

There’s also a community consisting of over 50,000 people who share their wins and tips and tricks to success EVERY DAY.

This course helped me synthesize the freelancer service provider, a consultant and digital business owner and educator that I am.

I’ll forever recommend this course to everyone who wants to invest into secure future and bet on a system with proven track record.

Get UBC!

Zero-to-Mastery Academy

Lastly, Zero-to-Mastery Academy continues to shape my educational path even after I’ve learned everything I need to lead successful business.

The company continues posting new courses about how to freelance as a person in tech (particularly data science and AI), how to run your consulting business, and a more specialized forms of marketing and management courses.

While UBC is general and more suited for entrepreneurs and content creators, ZTM Academy is more focused on data and tech people. Learn more here

That’s About It… For Now

Obviously, a newsletter can’t do it justice to all, but I just wanted to give you a little perspective on the future of online work, especially as a freelancer who utilizes social media to get more leads.

If you’re just getting started with data science, it’ll take some time till you have a clearer vision on your journey.

If you need help breaking into data, check my data roadmaps out:

Get my roadmaps!

Until next Monday!

Danica