I’ve got my first customers over friends and family. Back then there weren't to many people doing websites, I wasn’t all that expensive either (mainly because I

I’ve got my first customers over friends and family. Back then there weren't to many people doing websites, I wasn’t all that expensive either (mainly because I was young and didn’t know hat to charge). I later tried online forums where people where searching for programmers and had extremely mixed results but even back then there was competition from India that was cheeper. I did have a couple of jobs troubleshooting problems that the Indian programers “didn’t notice” and weren't interested in fixing after “finishing” the job (sort of understandable, do the minimum required and move on when you are the cheapest and don’t care about developing customer relations). Overall you have a couple of points you can compete on. Price, speed, quality and availability/convenience. If you find your customers locally you’ll have availability/convenience covered. You will probably have to compete on price to begin with and you might want to make sure your customers know they are getting a special to build up your portfolio. Speed and quality are something you will have to prove yourself on and you don’t have a lot of control over however your customers see you will be how they recommend you (or not) to others that are searching for somebody. Depending on if you more IT or design savvy you might want to expand your competences in one direction and build contacts in the other. P.S.: I quit the self employment racket after a while but one of my friends still works like this nearly 20 years later.