At the risk of preempting another great reply from Patrick here, let me link a prior related comment he made, on demonstrating value to "real clients" as you pu

At the risk of preempting another great reply from Patrick here, let me link a prior related comment he made, on demonstrating value to "real clients" as you put it, and some approaches to finding them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6391277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6391277 Here is an example. A local lawyer in my community is always holding seminars at local libraries on things like taxes, writing a will, estate planning, etc. These are free informational seminars, so the libraries and village halls basically do the advertising for him. During the seminars, he gives an overview of the topic, and why you might want a lawyer to help with the trickier bits. Now, when some self-selected interested people decide they want a lawyer to help write their will, who is the first person you think they'll call? Maybe the nice helpful clearly-well-informed and capable guy who gives all that free advice at the library? When you see a free online webinar for a technology topic, this is often what is going on. It's just formalized networking: meeting people interested in X, demonstrating you can provide services Y related to X, and making it known that you do Y for X all the time, and boy is it effective.