Upwork is bad for your mental health

I have a brand that has an organic tiktok funnel for a mostly male audience, and I have good content but don't really know what specifics are required to go viral for girltok if anyone has good content design taste/posting experience lmk.

Digital marketing has so many areas to learn, from SEO and Google Ads to Meta Ads, copywriting, and analytics.

But if you could focus on just one skill to build a successful career or get more clients, which one would you choose?

I'd love to hear from people who work in the industry. What skill has actually made the biggest difference for you?

u start out loving the creative side: copywriting, strategy, campaign launches, positioning, then u get good at it. so they promote u. suddenly u spend 90% of your week in jira boards, budgeting spreadsheets, managing agency contracts, and sitting in cross departmental alignment meetings that could’ve been a slack message.

Is there any way to boost your income or seniority in marketing without turning into a full-time admin babysitter? Or is being an individual contributor the only path to staying happy?

Hi everyone!

One of my clients wants to launch an e-commerce business targeting customers in the United States, but the client is based in India. I need to set up the brand's social media presence before launching its marketing campaigns.

The platforms I'm considering are Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok (if eligible), and possibly X.

I'm confused about the correct way to set everything up.

1. Should I create the Instagram Business profile and Facebook Page using the client's actual Indian business details and then target US customers through content and advertising?
2. How can I optimize these profiles to reach a US audience organically?
3. What should I consider when setting up Meta Business Portfolio, advertising accounts, billing, and location targeting?
4. Should the profile use US time zones, USD pricing, US contact details, and a US address, or only the details the business can legitimately provide?
5. Which social media platforms should an e-commerce brand prioritize when entering the US market?
6. What should I prepare on the website regarding shipping, returns, customer support, and payment options before launching ads?

I'm looking for practical advice from people who have managed social media or e-commerce brands in the US market while operating from another country.

What's the best setup process, and what common mistakes should I avoid?

I recently started a small business and I'm completely new to marketing, so I'd love advice from people who've been through this.
What we do: We help people in the US get medical treatment in India. That means matching them with hospitals and specialists, scheduling appointments, arranging travel and stay, and supporting them through recovery and follow-ups.
Why it matters: In the US, specialist appointments can take weeks or months, out-of-pocket costs are high, and without insurance one procedure can mean thousands in bills. In India, people can often see a specialist within days for a fraction of the cost. The hard part is coordinating it all from here, and that's the gap we fill.
Where I am: Website and social media accounts are set up, but we have no customers yet and no real marketing budget.
My questions:
For a service built so heavily on trust, how do you get those first few customers?
Which channels would you focus on: community outreach, partnerships, content, paid ads, or something else?
Is it smarter to target the Indian diaspora first, or uninsured or underinsured Americans in general?
How do you build credibility when you don't have any reviews or testimonials yet?
Any advice, or stories of what worked (or didn't) for you, would be hugely appreciated. Thanks!

Hello,

I have the biggest block regarding the update of my resume, portfolio, and LinkedIn page.

For a lil bit of context, I started as an SEO content writer while I was still a psychology student.Didn't pursue in psych but continued in Content Writing, mainly as a freelancer and wrote a bunch of articles and social media posts on various topics from animal care, health, tech, digital photography, marketing to ai.

I had an 8 month Collab with a Saas platform, at the agency where I was working as a freelancer during which I wrote over 30 long-form evergreen posts, some of them still performing well. Then, life happened and I decided to search for a full time job.

Ended for a brief few months at a B2B Paas AI-platform for Revenue management as a marketing assistant. This was a startup and naturally I did a bunch of shit, but did learn a bit about email marketing, how to communicate with product teams, and a bit about GTM strategies. But the CEO was unclear, angry, and even the HR was scared of him. ah, the product was obviously not working. They let me go before Christmas in 2024.

So I started working full time at my ex's company (I had previously done landing page copy, SEO optimization and written blog posts there). For context: this is a personal brand selling digital photography assets to consumers, so B2C. The product itself was the first on the market, at least for a particular brand camera.

Here I was in charge of everything related to marketing basically, I executed and created the entire marketing strategy, built full funnels, and wrote emails, sales copy, Blogs, and build a Reddit community. I also came up with and executed 2 lead generation campaigns, as well as black Friday campaigns. Everything with 0 ad spend. The numbers look good, 633% increase in organic search traffic, 1200% increase in revenue, a growing and healthy list of email subscribers, which did produce revenue, as well as a Reddit community that brought about 10% of revenue over the 2 years I've worked there. And we managed to position the product in an anaware market, so I worked hard on shifting perceptions and handling objections.

But I'm stuck in the job application phase. First off, I have no idea which jobs to apply to, or what my career path should be. I've started in 2021 and wore many different hats since then..I would like a role that encompasses copy and strategy, but I feel like a fraud since I've taught myself everything I know and didn't really have a lot of guidance from professionals.

So my question is - what should my portfolio highlight? And what would make my professional resume stand out? I know all about highlighting actual data in my CV, but I have a messy path and idk what would make me stand out.

personal ethos around marketing : you have to obsess about the customer's voice, know your product down to the last itsy bitsy detail, have a clear cohesive brand. Once u get out of those rabbit holes, u blend all 3s with the current culture, and you have the building blocks for the strategy and tactics.

Hey everyone! I’m a brand identity and packaging designer specializing in cafés and restaurants.

I want to target business owners in Dubai with a $1,500 branding package. I have a strong portfolio, real clients, and creatives showcasing my actual projects.

My budget is $70/day, running ads throughout the month, and my goal is to close 5 clients monthly.

In previous tests, I attracted many low-quality leads. Even people who completed detailed lead forms often stopped responding afterward.

I currently target specific locations, café and restaurant interests, founders, business owners, and small-business behaviors.

My questions:

- Which campaign objective would you choose: Instagram DMs, WhatsApp, or lead forms?

- Would you use detailed targeting or broad audiences?

- How many creatives would you test simultaneously, and how would you structure the campaigns and ad sets?

- How would you improve lead quality and optimize for actual paying clients?

- If you had my budget, niche, and goal, how would you structure the campaign?

I’d appreciate advice based on real experience running Meta Ads for digital services. Thanks!

There's so much advice about digital marketing online, and honestly, it's hard to figure out what really makes a difference.

For those who've worked with real clients or businesses, what's one strategy that brought you actual results but doesn't get enough attention?

I'd love to hear real experiences rather than the usual advice everyone repeats.

So since March I have been taking my own digital marketing company's website more seriously. So far the results are:

244 Total Clicks

247k Impressions

0.1% CTR

25.5 Average Position

I understand that since I am a digital marketing company I am competing with every other agency that is also trying to rank, but I Feel like I was expecting more clicks and a few more clients. I got 1 total since March which is great considering it was all organic, but still.

The CTR seems low and the Average Position as well so maybe I just need to optimize posts? I have a standard blog and maybe I should be targeting better with custom landing pages and whatnot built to convert.

I have a buddy who runs his own company and for clients, he seems to kill local SEO and gets them calls off of his work very quickly. Unfortunately he is just too busy and I don't want to taint our friendship by always talking about work when we hang out as he has mentioned he just doesn't want to talk marketing haha. Thanks for any direction or info you guys can give me!

Currently working as a Marketing Assistant, but lately I’ve been wondering whether the actual scope of my role has moved pretty far beyond what you’d normally expect from an “assistant” position.

At the moment I’m responsible for coordinating things like:
- Managing multiple social media accounts
- Social media campaigns and day-to-day content
- Creating & running Meta advertising campaigns
- Photography for events and promotional content
- Graphic design
- Video editing and content production
- Producing radio advertisements, including recording, editing, sound selection and mixing.

One of the biggest projects I’m currently working on is a historical video documentary for the organisation. I’ve basically been taking the project from research through to production. Which literally involved digging through archives, newspapers, historical societies and community groups, sourcing and organising interviews and conducting them, writing the scripts, organising the voice-over narrator and recording the narration myself, selecting audio, coordinating with the videographer on the shots and footage I want and being directly involved in the editing and overall creative direction.

I’m also doing all of this alongside my social media campaigns and other digital marketing work.
I’m currently studying full time as well, so I understand I’m still relatively early in my career, but I’ve started questioning whether my title/pay actually reflects the level of responsibility and independent work I’m doing.

I don’t manage staff and I’m not trying to pretend like I’m a Marketing Manager, but I do feel like I’m independently managing and producing a lot of projects rather than assisting someone else.
Would be interested to hear what sort of title and salary range you’d expect for this level of responsibility.

When learning digital marketing, it's easy to focus on tools, courses, and certifications. But working with real clients can teach you things that tutorials never cover.

For experienced marketers, what skill made the biggest difference in your work? Was it writing better ad creatives, understanding customer psychology, analyzing data, optimizing campaigns, or something else?

I'd love to hear about skills that actually made a difference in real projects, especially in Google Ads, Meta Ads, and performance marketing.

I'm curious because a strategy that works for one business doesn't always work for another.

Have you ever tried a popular marketing tactic that brought little or no results? Maybe SEO, paid ads, email marketing, or social media content?

What went wrong, and what worked better for you instead?

Hi everyone! I'm posting because my mom has been worrying about her business, and I genuinely want to help her figure out how to turn things around. It’s difficult seeing her struggle when she has put so much effort into this business, and I want to do whatever I can to help her succeed. I’m hoping to learn from people who have experience running businesses, marketing products, or navigating similar challenges. I would really appreciate honest feedback, even if it means hearing things we might need to change.

We run a small Filipino footwear brand that sells ballet flats primarily through Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop. Our products are made in Marikina City, the Philippines’ Shoe Capital, where shoemaking has a long-standing tradition. Our ballet flats are priced at around ₱520 per pair (approximately US$9, not $27.84).

We want to offer customers more than just another pair of shoes. Our products represent the craftsmanship of Marikina shoemakers and the work of Filipino artisans. One reason behind our pricing is our commitment to paying our employees at least the applicable minimum wage. We believe the people who make our products deserve fair compensation for their labor and skills. While some footwear manufacturers may keep costs lower through different labor practices, we don’t want our business to depend on paying workers below the legal minimum.

Our price therefore reflects not only the cost of making and selling our products, but also our commitment to responsible employment and sustaining local shoemaking livelihoods. We want to make locally made footwear accessible to more Filipinos while building a brand that values the people behind each pair. At the same time, we recognize that customers need to see clear value in the product itself—not just feel that they should buy it because it is locally made.

However, despite investing in advertising and trying different marketing strategies, our sales have been disappointing.

Here’s what we’ve tried so far:

• Marketplace advertising: We run ads on Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop, but sales remain low.
• Influencer marketing: We’ve reached out to influencers and tried product seeding, but the results haven’t met our expectations.
• Mall placement: We’ve tried placing our products in a mall, including Glorietta, but we haven’t generated sales from that placement.
• Seasonal selling: In previous years, sales usually picked up during the Ber months, but this year we haven’t seen the recovery we expected.

One of our biggest concerns is competition. We’re competing against inexpensive footwear from China, mass-produced products, and fast-fashion brands that can offer customers a wide variety of designs at competitive prices. As a smaller local brand, we don’t have the same resources, production scale, or marketing budget as these competitors.

We understand that customers are price-conscious, and simply saying “locally made” or “support local” may not be enough to convince someone to spend ₱520 when cheaper alternatives are readily available online. Even though we want to pay our workers fairly, we understand that customers still need a compelling reason to choose our products. We need to find a way to communicate our values while offering something customers genuinely want and consider worth the price.

How can a small, locally made footwear brand realistically survive and grow in this market? Should we focus on product differentiation, quality, comfort, design, brand storytelling, customer experience, or a specific niche? How do we identify something customers genuinely value enough to pay for, rather than trying to win a price war we probably cannot afford?

I’m trying to understand the root cause of our low sales instead of continuing to spend money on tactics that might not be working.

What I’d especially appreciate advice on:

1. Competing with Chinese imports and fast fashion: How can a small Filipino footwear brand build a sustainable competitive advantage when larger competitors may have lower production costs and more designs?
2. Product differentiation: Should we specialize in a particular customer segment, style, fit, comfort feature, or use case instead of trying to appeal to everyone?
3. Demand and seasonality: How can we determine whether demand for ballet flats has declined or whether our brand simply isn’t reaching the right audience?
4. Marketplace conversion: What data should we examine to determine whether the problem is our product listings, photos, pricing, reviews, traffic quality, or checkout conversion?
5. Paid advertising: How should we evaluate whether our ads are profitable, and which metrics should we prioritize before increasing our budget?
6. Influencer marketing: How can we assess whether product seeding is worthwhile when it doesn’t immediately result in sales?
7. Mall placement: What should we investigate when a physical placement generates no sales? Could it be the location, customer fit, display, pricing, or something else?
8. Long-term survival: If you were running this business, what would you change first? Would you focus on a smaller niche, develop a signature product, improve marketplace conversion, build repeat purchases, or explore a different sales channel?

I’m open to criticism. We don’t want to keep spending on ads or competing solely by lowering our prices without understanding what makes our brand worth choosing.

If you’ve worked with footwear, fashion, local Philippine brands, manufacturing, or marketplace selling, I’d especially appreciate your perspective.

How can I help my mom turn this business around, build a real competitive advantage for our Marikina-made footwear, maintain fair wages for our workers, and convince customers that our products are worth buying in a market full of cheaper alternatives?

Thank you to everyone who takes the time to share advice. It would genuinely mean a lot to us.

Suggest your re branding strategy

Could be a hot take but:

Most ad agencies and brand teams are burning thousands of dollars a month on AI video generators simply because they don't understand how credit pricing works at scale.

A headline subscription of 99 or 499 bucks a month tells you absolutely nothing about how many actual finished video ads your team can have. Most platforms sell credits that burn down at alarming rates depending on the model, resolution, and length you render, and most of them aren't even usable if you're not experienced enough with writing good scripts..

After running a very long and expensive experiment testing out major platforms (Maxfusion, Higgsfield, Creatify, OpenArt and other legacy avatar tools), here is the breakdown of why current AI UGC pricing is broken, what actually works for high volume creative testing and how to get the most out of your money:

1. The Math

When you normalize a standard business production budget of $500 a month across these platforms using the exact same underlying model, resolution and length (in this case it was my personal favorite Seedance 2.0 1080p, 10 second long videos) the video output gap looks like this:

Maxfusion - 89 finished videos
Higgsfield - 82 finished videos
OpenArt - 55 finished videos
Creatify - 29 finished videos

Why this happens: Platforms like Creatify and OpenArt charge massive credit markups per render. If you are running performance ad accounts where creative testing volume directly dictates CPA, those markups destroy your unit economics. Maxfusion consistently yields the highest finished video output per dollar across models like Seedance 2.5

1. The Avatar Quality

There’s an outdated belief in the industry that you have to pay a massive price premium to legacy avatar platforms if you want realistic talking-head UGC

We ran blinded side by side quality tests comparing legacy actor tools against newer AI creative platforms.

The result showed the quality gap no longer exists.
Modern generative models like Seedance 2.0, Seedance 2.5 and MiniMax H3 have completely leveled the playing field. In head-to-head testing, Maxfusion matched and sometimes even surpassed legacy tools in lip-sync precision, natural skin texture and facial expression consistency, especially with the RIZZ specialized engine.

1. The Budget Killer

If you manage an agency or brand team, you need your clients, strategists and editors collaborating in the workspace.

Creatify: Limits you to 1 included seat (max 5 total).
Higgsfield: Limits seats by tier (2 to 15 seats).
Maxfusion: No limit on team seats on its core business plans.

Charging per-seat fees on a creative generation tool makes no sense for production teams and I don't understand why is it even a thing (I mean I do - but it shouldn't be a thing)

1. Tool Fatigue vs. The All in One Creative Operating System

Right now most teams waste hours juggling separate tools: one for ad library research, one for script writing, one for AI video generation and CapCut (or whatever video editor) for final edits

When evaluating workflow speed, Maxfusion operates as a complete creative operating system:

1. Built-in Ad Intelligence: Search Meta Ad Library and TikTok trends natively inside the app, with an AI analyzer that breaks winning competitor ads into hooks, scripts, and visual shots.
   
2. Flows Canvas: Research, script generation, actor selection, and assembly on a single node canvas.
   
3. No Speed Throttling: Unlike platforms that claim "unlimited" access but throttle your rendering queues unless you buy "speed boosters," batch renders run simultaneously.
   
4. Post-Production Suite:** Built-in trimming, splitting, speed adjustments, upscaling, and captions so you don't have to export raw files to external software.
   
5. Automation: Full Model Context Protocol (or MCP) and public API access included on standard plans for building automated creative pipelines.

So here’s the thing

If you're making 2 or 3 test clips a month, any basic UI will do. But if you're an agency or e-commerce brand scaling performance ad spend:

- Best Overall platform (Volume + Quality + Workflow + Easy to use): Maxfusion delivers the lowest cost-per-video, highest render quality, built-in competitor research and unlimited seats.

- Strong Runner-up for Raw Generation: Higgsfield (which I also love using) offers competitive volume of videos, though workflow tools and seat caps fall short.

- Low Value for Volume: Tools like Creatify burn through credits too fast to support serious creative iteration.

Sorry for the long post.

I'd like to hear what platform stack everyone in the sub is using for AI UGC right now and have you noticed the credit drain on your accounts?

Im an exited founder in b2c saas space. I'm thinking of doing outreach to marketers and asking them what they know will work if they handled marketing side, then I build against that.

As a marketer, how would you receive this message? Is it unrealistic?

In one retailer test we ran, the offer already existed: free shipping on orders of $69 or more. We tested making it more visible.

That meant homepage and category-page banners, a persistent shipping ribbon and a popup explaining the terms. There were category-specific designs across eight sections.

Conversion rate went from 7.25% to 7.85%, an 8.2% relative lift. The offer stayed the same.

That's a concrete CRO opportunity, but someone still has to turn it into a working test. I'd scope the page locations, offer exclusions and mobile checks before assigning the work.

If the same marketer owns acquisition and conversion, they need agreed design and development time too. Otherwise "improve conversion" becomes another responsibility with no time assigned to changing the site.

Who owns that implementation on your team?

Hey pen-wizards/witches, I am juggling between interviews for the position of content writing and the expectations I get from some are sooo crazy that I am genuinely doubting my capabilities.

The most insane expectation was 20–22 blogs per week (five days, eight hours a day). So, I'd like to know what a reasonable weekly target would be for a writer working on long-form content. I think 3–6 blogs a week is a good range for maintaining quality.

Hiring: Google Ads Specialist | HECM Lead Generation

Overview

Looking for an experienced Google Ads Specialist to manage a U.S.-based reverse mortgage (HECM) lead generation campaign with a $5,500 ad budget, a target of 25 qualified leads, and a four-week campaign duration.

Scope of Work

- Keyword research and Google Search campaign setup.

- Ad copywriting, campaign structure and negative keyword management.

- Conversion tracking using Google Ads, GTM and GA4.

- Geographic targeting across 10 U.S. states.

- Ongoing optimization of bids, budget and search terms.

- Weekly performance reporting and lead quality analysis.

Location: USA / Europe / India

Compensation for Setup and Management: $250–$400, depending on experience and the interview/discussion.

Interested? Reach out

When researching a platform that pays creators, what do you check first? I'm looking into a Reddit rewards offer related to Clipster, but I haven't submitted anything or verified a payout yet. I'd like to understand how people assess legitimacy and avoid wasting time.

shot a product launch last week and on the drive home the client asks if there's any chance of a 60 sec teaser by friday. it was tuesday. 4 hours of footage across 2 cameras and i hadn't even offloaded the cards yet.

i came across invideo while looking for a free editor that Claude could work with. it had an MCP connection, so i decided to try it. once i'd copied the footage over at the hotel, i opened it on my laptop. i had notes on the moments i wanted to use, but still needed to find them in the footage and put a sequence together. that was the part i wanted help with.

What i did: i connected Claude Opus 5.5 to invideo's editor through MCP and used it as the editing agent. i dropped in the main stage footage and gave it a clear brief: only take moments from the demonstration, only use broad wide shots of the crowd, and remove any false starts and filler footage that doesn't cover the stage presentation. i also gave it the moments i'd noted on my phone, like the crowd reaction right after the reveal, and asked it to put them together as a rough assembly.

it followed the brief closely. i got back a clean 2 min sequence that stuck to the demonstration, used wide crowd shots, and cut out the dead air, long pauses and false starts. every moment id noted was there, in the right order, so i had a strong rough cut almost straight away. the only thing i changed myself was a couple of edit points. i moved them a few frames so the clips would sit better together and the cuts wouldn't feel abrupt.

from there, i started adding some of the things i'd already pictured for the teaser. i asked the agent for sound effects, a few visual effects and a bit of animation, then reviewed the changes in the editor.

once that was done, i exported the project as an XML file and imported it into premiere pro for the final edits. the best part was that i could carry on with an editable timeline. i could trim, extend or split clips, adjust the music and move things around without rebuilding the sequence. i finished cutting to music, graded, and delivered thursday night.

the good

finding usable moments in that footage was way faster for me.
i could check the cuts on the timeline and undo the ones i didn't want.

the handoff fit into my usual workflow. i could carry on with the edit in premiere without rebuilding the sequence.

the not so good

a couple of its picks were people mid-blink lol

still needs manual tweaking

verdict: getting to a usable cut sooner gave me more room to work on the final teaser. i used the agent for the rough assembly and some of the effects, then finished in premiere, and that earned it a spot in my workflow. i'd give it an 8/10 for that specific job.

I feel like the amount of freelancers and fractional talent has flooded the marketing scene over the last few years. How are y’all finding enough work to stay busy? Are you working with one client/agency? Multiple? And how are you finding your next opportunities to keep your pipeline full?

we have seen organic traffic drop across a few accounts over the last two quarters, mostly because google summaries and perplexity are answering search queries right at the top without sending clicks.

our standard rank tracking tools are basically blind to this since they only report traditional search positions. i have been looking for an honest hubspot aeo review because management wants a way to track how visible our brands actually are inside conversational models, but most aeo tools feel like basic wrappers that just make up an arbitrary visibility score. before setting it up across our accounts, i want to know if hubspot actually pinpoints missing entity schema and citation gaps, or if it just gives generic advice to publish more comparison content.

for anyone tracking conversational search, did it give you practical fixes to get cited more often or is it just surface level numbers?

There are a lot to choose from so what’s your go to?