4 ms·

Where are you supposed to find clients if you're just starting out, and have no reputation?

jcmurrayii 12y ago
There are many many many places to find clients. patio11 talks about it some in his writings/podcasts/etc. Brennan Dunn talks about it heavily in his Consultancy Masterclass. But here is a tidbit for free. Join your local chamber of commerce. Set up a small seminar on a topic closely related to what you do. Invite local business owners to it (do it for free if you can, or charge a small amount..depends on how well established you are). GIVE THEM ALL THE INFORMATION THEY WOULD NEED TO DO WHATEVER IT IS YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. Pass out your email address, and let business owners contact you. You will have stablished your knowledge and authority, and even though you gave them a 4 hour speech on how to do internet marketing (or whatever), they wont have the time or comfort level to do it themselves...but now they will know one person who can. Just one way to get started.
- jmacdotorg 12y ago
  Strong agree on there being many places to find clients. I began my own freelance career by browsing http://jobs.perl.org http://jobs.perl.org and responding to the more interesting requests for contract work. That was like 7 years ago; pretty much everything I've done since then has been through referrals. It's just a question of getting yourself kickstarted. There's plenty of great clients out there who need help, and aren't using crappy lowest-bidder sites (because they care about good work and are willing to pay for it). Good luck... you can do it.
patio11 12y ago
It's not like business owners will stop talking to you if they find out your Klout score. Can you identify a business in your town which has previously purchased software development services? If not, go to a meetup, ask the people selling software development services who they have previously worked for. An alternative: to a first approximation, any business with both millions in revenue and which pays for any professional services can also purchase software development services. Learn to estimate the revenue of a business from the outside (great life skill for consulting). One simple heuristic is "White collar employee count times $200k." Can you identify a business in your town which has 5+ white collar employees? Great. Let's say you have a financial adviser firm in your neighborhood which has 8 white collar employees. Can you describe how a financial adviser makes money? If this isn't obvious to you from a lifetime of reading the Wall Street Journal, the answer is Googleable. Find the guy at the firm who would have the authority to hire you. (At a firm with 8 people, "owner" is a fairly strong bet. You can identify him pretty easily, since he's plastered all over their website.) Talk to him. At a financial adviser firm, since his primary job is going to be sales, talking to him is really easy. You call them up and say "Hiya, I'm a software developer living in town and would like to speak to Bob. I read about him on the Internet and want to talk about financial advising." I predict a 98% success rate at successfully speaking to Bob. You then talk to Bob like two business owners who each can learn something from the other. You can learn a lot about Bob about the financial advising industry. Bob can learn a lot from you about e.g. wild and whacky things computers can do these days, like email people. After you have learned from Bob how his firm works, you say "That's great, but there exist ways to make that even better with a bit of elbow grease. Let me outline how I'd get you more rich clients, directly increasing your revenue. It gets technical but the brief description is [pitch project here]. Interested in talking about this further?"
- cdr 12y ago
  So basically "find work locally"? That seems to ignore that (AFAIK) most people use Freelancer et al because it's remote work, because they live in a less developed country or rural area with poor-paying/nonexistent local work.
  - patio11 12y ago
    Nothing in this intrinsically requires you to be local to the client. I mentioned that because some people seem to be more comfortable with it. I mean, you don't live in Tulsa, right? The Internet connects you to Tulsa. Can you find a financial advisor in Tulsa with 5+ employees using only the Internet? Can you find 10+ firms which are similarly situated in a day? Great. That should get you 2 ~ 5 meaningful conversations.
- gknoy 12y ago
  You then talk to Bob like two business owners who each can learn something from the other. I realize this is largely my inexperience talking, but how does one do that? How do I make that not feel like I'm wasting their time? How do I signal (without losing their interest) that I'm (a) not a customer, and (b) interested in understanding their business in a way that isn't meant to compete with him? This is probably something that comes with experience, but I fear like initial forays would be flaming piles of failure.
  - patio11 12y ago
    You have meaningful expertise with technology and, from the perspective of the average business owner, you know more about that then they'll hope to learn in a dozen lifetimes. As long as you can connect your expertise with technology to concrete business goals of theirs, you won't waste their time. Should they not be in a position to talk to you or work with you, they will not be shy about saying so. We business owners are in business to sell and be sold to. Money goes in and money goes out. This is what we do. You will not offend the typical business owner just by saying that you have an offering available. It is entirely possible that your first forays will be flaming failures. Oh well! More fish in the sea. You'll at least have learned one approach that didn't work, or have heard concrete objections as to why they didn't move forward with you, as opposed to the illusory objections that devs think will cost them business, like "You do not have a Github" or "I don't think you've built a website for a homeless shelter recently."
keslert 12y ago
FreelanceInbox.com can help with the finding clients and some of the jobs are small enough you wouldn't need a large reputation to successfully land one. Without a nice portfolio though you would need to work on a polished pitch. Completing personal projects is also a good way to pad your portfolio and show you're passionate about development. *Full disclosure: I'm the founder of FreelanceInbox.
147 12y ago
I'm in the same situation and I've written a few blog posts on my experiences so far. How NOT to get your first freelancing client: http://christopherdbui.com/how-not-to-get-your-first-freelancing-client/ http://christopherdbui.com/how-not-to-get-your-first-freelan... That post contains things I've tried that have all been unsuccessful, like buying ads... Don't waste your time and money on that stuff. What I learned from Brennan Dunn on Freelancing: http://christopherdbui.com/what-i-learned-from-brennan-dunn-on-freelancing/ http://christopherdbui.com/what-i-learned-from-brennan-dunn-... This post talks about the lessons I've learned from Brennan Dunn via reading his content on freelancing/consulting. Talks about how I went to meetups and got a few leads. Although, the two leads I've gotten from the meetups haven't turned into anything. I should write an update on that. Hope sharing my experiences helps others save time not making the same mistakes.

There are many many many places to find clients. patio11 talks about it some in his writings/podcasts/etc. Brennan Dunn talks about it heavily in his Consultancy Masterclass. But here is a tidbit for free. Join your local chamber of commerce. Set up a small seminar on a topic closely related to what you do. Invite local business owners to it (do it for free if you can, or charge a small amount..depends on how well established you are). GIVE THEM ALL THE INFORMATION THEY WOULD NEED TO DO WHATEVER IT IS YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. Pass out your email address, and let business owners contact you. You will have stablished your knowledge and authority, and even though you gave them a 4 hour speech on how to do internet marketing (or whatever), they wont have the time or comfort level to do it themselves...but now they will know one person who can. Just one way to get started.

jmacdotorg 12y ago
Strong agree on there being many places to find clients. I began my own freelance career by browsing http://jobs.perl.org http://jobs.perl.org and responding to the more interesting requests for contract work. That was like 7 years ago; pretty much everything I've done since then has been through referrals. It's just a question of getting yourself kickstarted. There's plenty of great clients out there who need help, and aren't using crappy lowest-bidder sites (because they care about good work and are willing to pay for it). Good luck... you can do it.

patio11 12y ago

It's not like business owners will stop talking to you if they find out your Klout score. Can you identify a business in your town which has previously purchased software development services? If not, go to a meetup, ask the people selling software development services who they have previously worked for. An alternative: to a first approximation, any business with both millions in revenue and which pays for any professional services can also purchase software development services. Learn to estimate the revenue of a business from the outside (great life skill for consulting). One simple heuristic is "White collar employee count times $200k." Can you identify a business in your town which has 5+ white collar employees? Great. Let's say you have a financial adviser firm in your neighborhood which has 8 white collar employees. Can you describe how a financial adviser makes money? If this isn't obvious to you from a lifetime of reading the Wall Street Journal, the answer is Googleable. Find the guy at the firm who would have the authority to hire you. (At a firm with 8 people, "owner" is a fairly strong bet. You can identify him pretty easily, since he's plastered all over their website.) Talk to him. At a financial adviser firm, since his primary job is going to be sales, talking to him is really easy. You call them up and say "Hiya, I'm a software developer living in town and would like to speak to Bob. I read about him on the Internet and want to talk about financial advising." I predict a 98% success rate at successfully speaking to Bob. You then talk to Bob like two business owners who each can learn something from the other. You can learn a lot about Bob about the financial advising industry. Bob can learn a lot from you about e.g. wild and whacky things computers can do these days, like email people. After you have learned from Bob how his firm works, you say "That's great, but there exist ways to make that even better with a bit of elbow grease. Let me outline how I'd get you more rich clients, directly increasing your revenue. It gets technical but the brief description is [pitch project here]. Interested in talking about this further?"

cdr 12y ago
So basically "find work locally"? That seems to ignore that (AFAIK) most people use Freelancer et al because it's remote work, because they live in a less developed country or rural area with poor-paying/nonexistent local work.
- patio11 12y ago
  Nothing in this intrinsically requires you to be local to the client. I mentioned that because some people seem to be more comfortable with it. I mean, you don't live in Tulsa, right? The Internet connects you to Tulsa. Can you find a financial advisor in Tulsa with 5+ employees using only the Internet? Can you find 10+ firms which are similarly situated in a day? Great. That should get you 2 ~ 5 meaningful conversations.
gknoy 12y ago
You then talk to Bob like two business owners who each can learn something from the other. I realize this is largely my inexperience talking, but how does one do that? How do I make that not feel like I'm wasting their time? How do I signal (without losing their interest) that I'm (a) not a customer, and (b) interested in understanding their business in a way that isn't meant to compete with him? This is probably something that comes with experience, but I fear like initial forays would be flaming piles of failure.
- patio11 12y ago
  You have meaningful expertise with technology and, from the perspective of the average business owner, you know more about that then they'll hope to learn in a dozen lifetimes. As long as you can connect your expertise with technology to concrete business goals of theirs, you won't waste their time. Should they not be in a position to talk to you or work with you, they will not be shy about saying so. We business owners are in business to sell and be sold to. Money goes in and money goes out. This is what we do. You will not offend the typical business owner just by saying that you have an offering available. It is entirely possible that your first forays will be flaming failures. Oh well! More fish in the sea. You'll at least have learned one approach that didn't work, or have heard concrete objections as to why they didn't move forward with you, as opposed to the illusory objections that devs think will cost them business, like "You do not have a Github" or "I don't think you've built a website for a homeless shelter recently."

keslert 12y ago

FreelanceInbox.com can help with the finding clients and some of the jobs are small enough you wouldn't need a large reputation to successfully land one. Without a nice portfolio though you would need to work on a polished pitch. Completing personal projects is also a good way to pad your portfolio and show you're passionate about development. *Full disclosure: I'm the founder of FreelanceInbox.

147 12y ago

I'm in the same situation and I've written a few blog posts on my experiences so far. How NOT to get your first freelancing client: http://christopherdbui.com/how-not-to-get-your-first-freelancing-client/ http://christopherdbui.com/how-not-to-get-your-first-freelan... That post contains things I've tried that have all been unsuccessful, like buying ads... Don't waste your time and money on that stuff. What I learned from Brennan Dunn on Freelancing: http://christopherdbui.com/what-i-learned-from-brennan-dunn-on-freelancing/ http://christopherdbui.com/what-i-learned-from-brennan-dunn-... This post talks about the lessons I've learned from Brennan Dunn via reading his content on freelancing/consulting. Talks about how I went to meetups and got a few leads. Although, the two leads I've gotten from the meetups haven't turned into anything. I should write an update on that. Hope sharing my experiences helps others save time not making the same mistakes.