a force of one

one place for freelancers to create their best digital self

Under 10 Employees
Multiple Founders
Founders Code
B2B
Jobs & Hiring
Marketplaces
SaaS

We are on a mission to build a place where freelancers can create, share and control their ultimate, professional digital self, for more and better opportunities.

April 8, 2022 Building in public by building a community

The ultimate way of learning is of course a community. So we decided to also build a new community for freelancers, (https://www.aforceof.one/community), a place where freelancers should feel comfortable sharing their challenges and helping others. it is “work in progress”, but we want to help freelancers this way in developing their careers and living a happy freelance life

January 19, 2022 Marketing, blogs and content

When it comes to marketing we focus on creating content by using a guest blog option AND giving freelancers the option to use our website to show their skills. Condition is that the content must help or support other freelancers We created a publication on Medium. Freelancers can add their blog about freelancing and we have a feed to our website. https://www.aforceof.one/#Articles and https://blog.aforceof.one/

November 19, 2021 We launched our new website

Learnings and feedback of the last few months made us decide to build a new website. https://www.aforceof.one/

The feedback we got from our early subscribers/feedback group was that they needed more information; about how it works, examples of profiles and our vision.
But it also made us decide to build an Dutch website as well, the home market of 2 (of our 3) founders. So we can test better, get direct feedback from our own network, and to will be easier to focus on the B2B market (in marketing and sales).,
Ate the moment we have a base of 70 + subscribers, not all active users.

As for analytics most visitors from the source Social, we put most effort in communicating on LinkedIn/twitter.

Next phase marketing:

  • focus on SEO as well (blogs/guest-blogs/FAQ/ linkbuilding/video) and
  • focus on social for new subscriber
  • focus on activating our present subscribers.

Next phase development:

  • Dutch website and profiles (expected January 2022).
  • Pricing and an investors page
September 17, 2021 Developments on our MVP

We analyzed how people used their site, for example we used the information from our own database. We can see were they stopped creating their profile. We used feedback from our Slack group (one-on-one works best for us!). But, since not everybody uses Slack, we also used e-mail and the phone to reach out to our users😊.

The feedback actually comes down to two things:
UX and information (or it this the same??). Perhaps not a surprise for a lot of people, but UX is one of the most important focus areas. For us the the workflow and UX seemed obvious, but our users clearly thought different.

For us, our next steps are to build:

  • an easy login,
  • smoother creation of the profile (also by using of other sites/platforms),
  • prefill more information where possible and look at future features like integration.
  • better explain our vision and strategy on our landing page.

So, our job for now is: a new landing page and lots, lots of development in UX.

July 3, 2021 Review of goals after 2 months

So what did we do?

Marketing:

  • A company page of LinkedIn/Twitter, for posts and to share blogs
  • Newsletters to keep our subscribers updated and ask for feedback
  • Subscribe to start-up/voting platforms like Kernal, Indiehackers, Product Hunt, etc
  • Blogs on Medium (to share)
  • Polls and surveys to decide on features

Development:

  • the focus is and was on developing a prototype first and MVP next
  • developing our design furthermore, developing our prototype
  • opening a Slack channel, to communicate, share ideas and feedback with our subscribers
  • developing our basic MVP

Result of the last 2 months:

30 subscribers
81 followers on LinkedIn
21 votes on Kernal
10 posts on LinkedIn aforceof.one account,
2167 views on the last post
13 followers on IndieHackers,123 followings, 6 posts, 18 votes
25 followers on Twitter (aforceof.one), 181 followings, 16 tweets
20 likes on last (personal account) blog @Medium
31 followers on Medium, 202 followings, 5 blogs, 50 likes on the last post
2 newsletters
2 polls
2 surveys
16 channels (personal, website, newsletter, e-mail, Medium, LinkedIn, IndieHackers, Twitter, Slack, Kernal, ProductHunt, Betalist, Betapage, start-up base, Reddit. Quora)
We are very happy with this result so far (as being all part-time freelancers).

What went well:

The collaboration
o The three of us (CEO, CTO, CCO) work very well together. Good diversity in skills.
o We are all very motivated and focused.
o Regularly planned meetings, work with Trello for our planning.
The speed
o In developing a prototype
o In attracting subscribers
The response
o On social media, newsletters.

What did we learn:

Stay agile and change course if necessary
o Up until now, the survey did not respond well
o Some people don’t like to give feedback in public and don’t want to use
Slack
o At some points we changed our product because of the feedback (but we also got it confirmed)

Different channels, a different approach
o Different audiences per channel, different kinds of messages
• Do some research on the different channels and find out where your audience is, or what hashtags to use, or who to follow
• Stay focussed on a few channels, not every channel works for you, and be consistent and post regularly
• Kernal gave us a good start, and I really like their online presence. ProductHunt/Betalist/Betapage didn’t do much and for most start-up platforms you have to pay for a quick review and acceptance on the website. I understand the revenue model, but it didn’t work for us. Reddit did not work out very well either up until now.

Be consistent and patient
o You have to be aware that you have to create a brand from scratch

Take away’s

  • Collaboration/good teamwork is everything
  • Consistency and online presence
  • Stay agile
  • Research the channels of your audienceA
May 23, 2021 Collecting info for our features

We started working on our MVP, but first we needed more information about what features are important and we send out a survey on IH/Twitter/lLinkedIn. The response we got, gave us enough information to prioritize our features for our MVP.

We also set a goal of 50 subscribers/supporters who could help us un giving feedback on our MVP.

May 6, 2021 A force of one was born

As being freelancers ourselves, we believe it is not easy to find the next job or project and it is very frustrating and time consuming when you have to scout all the platforms, marketing and selling your skills, and again and again filling in forms at platforms with your education, skills and portfolio, collecting reviews and recommendations. And as a starting freelancer it is even more difficult.

So we created A force of one.

We are on a mission to build a place where freelancers can create, share and control their ultimate, professional digital self, that will enable freelancers to present their professional digital identity for more and better opportunities.

About

We are on a mission to build a place where freelancers can create, share and control their ultimate, professional digital self, for more and better opportunities.