Case study
How IC7 won 10 contracts in its first four months
Simon McGeough sells app marketing as a solo consultant. A single auto-bidding setup with one strict filter sent 287 proposals in four months: a 22.7% reply rate and 10 new contracts, with no AI qualifier and no boosting.
Overview
Simon sells app marketing, a narrow niche where the right jobs are rare and generic proposals get ignored. As a solo consultant, every hour spent scanning the Upwork feed is an hour not billed. He joined Vollna in February 2026 and moved bidding to a setup within two weeks.
The challenge
App marketing is a small niche: there aren't 50 good jobs a week to bid on. Winning means catching the few right ones early and pitching them well, without spending billable hours on the feed.
What changed
One auto-bidding setup, one filter, running 24/7. The filter is narrow by design: it clears only 2–3 jobs a day, and the setup bids on each of them while the posting is still fresh. He runs no AI qualifier — the filter alone does the qualifying.
How he runs it
- Proposals go out around the clock — matches posted overnight or on weekends get a bid without him being online.
- Average submission position of 8, without spending any boost connects.
- The AI writes each cover letter from his template and the specific job post. Simon writes nothing — and 43.9% of clients who read a pitch reply.
Results
287 proposals produced 65 client conversations and 10 contracts: one contract per 29 proposals, two to three new clients a month, at $6.68 in connects per client reply.
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