Freelancing – from nothing to 5 solid leads a week

TL;DR: Split test a niche website, slam it with paid traffic, network like a mofo, make it easy to get in touch with you.

Good advice, in the abstract, but it feels like this post is hyping up the golden path, and totally ignoring the realities of the freelancing slog. I did it for years. Pipeline management SUCKS, at least for a not-so-social guy like me.

So these 5 leads...

Why just 5? Paid traffic and landing pages should be pretty scaleable. Are the 5 leads actually new people from web traffic, or is this the long tail of an in-network recruiting burst?

Are they actually quality leads? I could hit the craigslist gigs section and get you 5 leads in 30 seconds, but they're trash. What kinds of projects, on what timeline, and at what price, were these leads? If they're not sane organizations with 5k+ contracts, a disclaimer is needed. If they're 10k+ contracts, start a business selling them, I'll buy.

How long do they take to close? What's the closing like? The post mentions a chatbox on a website. Do people use it? What do they ask? I find those very corporate. if you're looking for JS-focused customers, do they also find those grating, like most tech people do?

The post says the rate was up and too high, and so he got a lot of requests. How many is a lot? What was the rate? What did it change to? How was that decision made? What was the customer response?

Basically, this post really light on unique content. It talks like it's selling the "secret sauce" but in reality, it's a painfully high level overview of some very boilerplate advice.

I want to hear about a real human experience, not a maybe-scaleable super high level overview of babbys first marketing engine.