Dilyan is an SEO and PPC Specialist with almost 12 years of freelancing experience. He values the freedom and flexibility this lifestyle gives him. Dilyan says he’s most creative at night which is why freelancing works so well for him. According to him the most important lesson for every freelancer is to learn how to listen more, think more and talk less…
1) Hello Dilyan, thanks for your participation in our “freelancer insides” interview series. Firstly, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what are you up to these days?
Hello and thanks for giving me the opportunity to be interviewed by such a great website like freelancermap. My name is Dilyan Grigorov and I’m from Bulgaria, everybody calls me just “Dido”. I’m specialized in SEO and PPC with almost 12 years of professional experience and over 200 projects behind me from many different countries. Some of them are related to some very popular brands around the web like RazorSocial, AgoraPulse, Telus International, College Financial Aid Advisors, Tradologic.
2) What was your inspiration and when did you actually decide to become a freelancer?
Oh, it was 12 years ago, when I created my first websites – some small blogs where I wrote about various different topics. One day a friend of mine came to me and told me: “Hey do you know there is a way you can make your blogs more visible on Google?” That was the start of one passion I have until now – Search Engine Optimization. I love Google, I love reading about algorithms and experimenting different approaches and tactics for ranking websites – both internationally and locally.
3) Did you find many obstacles when everything started? Could you share with our readers the most important lessons you have learned?
Yes, the main thing everybody should learn, the main lesson, is how to “feel” people. You should be very sensitive, you should develop one very important skill – listen more, think more, talk less. Many people lie today, they try to cheat you just because their work should be done, without any payment. I also think that a lot of web platforms for freelancing should think about their future development more in that way – how to provide the freelancers with better security and how to filter out the “bad” freelancers, who don’t do any work, but “steal” money legally from their clients.
4) But it is not all bad! In your opinion, which are the main advantages of working as a freelancer?
Everybody defines its own reasons and advantages to work as a freelancer, but mine are: flexibility and freedom. I can work whenever I want and however I want, without anybody telling me something against my principles or style of work. If I stay in the office for 8 hours I feel much more tired, bored and without any energy, this is just not me. Freelancing is not just a style of work, but also a lifestyle.
5) What kind of services do your clients ask you to provide? Is there any particular project you are proud of?
I do SEO and Google AdWords Campaigns Management all the time. I had a lot of projects, more than 200, but I’m proud of my work for RazorSocial, where some pages still rank very high for keywords with extremely high competition or world recognized brands in digital marketing, and AgoraPulse – top software tool for social media management.
6) What does a typical work day look like for you? Do you use any apps or services to organize yourself?
I don’t have a typical work day 🙂 Sometimes I work in the afternoon, sometimes in the evening, sometimes in the morning or in the night. My inspiration most of the time is in the night. I don’t know why, but I think very differently in the night and all my successful projects are done namely in that time of the day.
I use the Paymo app PM System for my projects, because I find it very convenient and user-friendly. It just has everything I and my team need. I have spent more than 3 months searching for a PM system and was testing more than 100 in trial mode, but I’m totally in love with Paymo.
7) How do you find new clients that are interested in your services?
I use very different approaches. It all depends on where my clients are on the web. Sometimes I write cold emails, sometimes I participate in webinars, sometimes I engage with people on social media or just use PPC Ads 😉
8) What advice would you give to someone who is thinking about starting a freelance career? And what does it takes to be successful as a freelancer?
Don’t go directly from your full-time job to freelancing. Start networking and make a lot of relationships with different kinds of people before that. You can first help them for free and do your job perfectly, then they will come back to you with many more tasks you can charge for, or they will recommend you to their friends and so on. That way after a period of time you won’t need your full-time job anymore, because you will get more and more jobs from your freelance network.
A lot of big companies are searching for freelancers too. Try your luck and apply for some of their job ads. Do your job perfectly and you can catch another very big client after that, because they will recommend you too 😉
9) What are your future plans with regard to your career? Would you like to switch to a day job?
My future plans are all about making NetPresenta, my brand new company popular. It’s a small digital marketing studio, with a small team, entirely devoted to SEO, PPC and Content Marketing. We work on many different projects around the world and the main service people ask most of the time is SEO. Part of my future plan is the creation and development of a SEO community where people will have the opportunity to ask everything about SEO absolutely for FREE. We notice everyday that search engine optimization is something people still don’t understand very well, but we are here to help as much as we can.
10) Last but not least, what are the top three books, blogs or magazines you read to stay up to date with the industry?
Actually they are many, but my top 3 – https://www.seroundtable.com/, https://searchengineland.com/, http://seobythesea.com. I love Bill Slawski’s blog, because he analyzes and writes about Google patents and semantics. People like John Muller, Gary Illyes, Eric Enge, Bill Slawski and Rand Fishkin are my inspiration every day.
Freestyle! Is there anything you would like to tell our readers?
Believe in yourself and never give up! Never stop learning and improving your skills!
Where to find Dilyan:
Link to Website: www.netpresenta.com
LinkedIn Profil: Dido Grigorov
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Pic: © Dilyan Grigorov
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