Julien, freelance Product Owner: "I doubled my day-rate in 6 months by ditching gut-feel prospecting"

Julien Martin, 35, freelance Product Owner since February 2025. First semester at €450 day-rate with a random pipeline, six months later at €800 day-rate with three months of visibility. The story of a freelancer who stopped prospecting on gut feel and started running his business on data.

At a glance

Metric	H1 2025 (before Traject)	H2 2025 (with Traject)
Average billed day-rate	€450	€800
Billed days / month	14 (~€6,300)	18 (~€14,400)
Proposals sent	~25 (gut feel)	32 (targeted)
Signature rate	3/25 = 12%	6/32 = 19%
Source of missions	Platforms (Malt, LinkedIn)	60% reactivated network
Pipeline visibility	0–4 weeks	3 months

The starting point: leaving a permanent role without a plan

After six years at a SaaS vendor, Julien left his Senior Product Owner role to go freelance in January 2025. Good internal reputation, a handful of contacts in his network, but no operational framework for the next chapter.

First semester: he accepted the first mission that came in, at €450 day-rate, on a stack he wasn't perfectly comfortable with. He prospected on Malt, LinkedIn and direct emails, without structured follow-up. Three missions signed in six months, lots of gaps between them, day-rate well below market.

"I was spending my days hunting for missions instead of delivering them. I followed up when I remembered, I sent the same portfolio to everyone, I negotiated blind because I had no idea what my profile was actually worth on the market."

Three stacked problems

• No visibility on market day-rates. €450 sounded reasonable because he had no reference point. In reality, the market paid €600-800 for his profile in his sectors (FinTech, B2B SaaS).
• Scattered prospecting. Three platforms, Apple Notes scribbles, a forgotten Excel — impossible to follow up at the right time.
• Dormant network. Six years in-house = dozens of former colleagues, clients, recruiters. None of them had been engaged since he'd left.

The shift: run the business, not just execute missions

Mid-July, Julien started using Traject. First action: pull real day-rate data on his role + seniority + target sectors. The result was clear: median €720, top of range €950 for a senior PO with FinTech exposure.

Second action: centralize his prospecting. Three months of outbound emails, completed missions and former contacts imported into a single Kanban pipeline.

"The day I saw my actual CRM — not the idea I had of it — I counted 47 qualified contacts I'd never followed up with. Forty-seven. Including 12 former managers or clients who'd explicitly said 'call me when you're available'."

What concretely changed

1. Day-rate justified by market data

Julien raised his day-rate to €750 on his first post-Traject proposal. The client negotiated to €720. He signed. Two weeks later, second proposal at €800: signed without negotiation. No mission below €700 since.

2. Kanban pipeline + automated follow-ups

All opportunities centralized: stage (to contact, contacted, in discussion, proposal sent, signed, lost), last interaction date, estimated mission value. Follow-up templates per stage, auto-triggered after defined delays (3 days for a quick reply, 7 days after proposal sent).

3. Reactivating the dormant network

Out of the 47 contacts identified, Julien ran a 12-message personalized campaign across 3 weeks. No copy-paste: Traject surfaces the last known context for each contact (former joint project, prior topic mentioned). Result: 8 replies, 4 introductions, 2 missions signed in 6 weeks.

4. Targeted proposals and dossiers

No more generic portfolio. For each mission, the generator produces a custom dossier that pulls the relevant experiences and rewrites the value proposition based on the client's context. Proposal production time: 25 min instead of 2 hours.

Results at 6 months

• Average day-rate from €450 to €800 (+78%).
• 18 billed days per month instead of 14, with prospecting time cut in half.
• Pipeline visibility: 3 months instead of 4 weeks. Julien can now refuse or delay a mission without risk.
• 60% of signed missions come from the reactivated network, vs 100% via platforms in H1.
• Monthly revenue doubled (~€14,400 vs ~€6,300).

What Julien tells freelancers who are struggling

"Tech freelancing is 30% execution, 70% business ops. If you don't have a clean pipeline, a market read, and a network activation strategy, you'll negotiate blind for years. The day I dropped all that into a single tool, my job changed."

Julien still uses Traject daily. He's recommended the tool to three other freelancers in his network — two of them have since left Malt to go 100% direct pipeline.