Try to move beyond the freelance sites as soon as you can. Most of the clients who use those sites are price shopping, and it's hard to get decent rates for yo

Try to move beyond the freelance sites as soon as you can. Most of the clients who use those sites are price shopping, and it's hard to get decent rates for yourself. Avoid passive, low-value channels like putting cards on bulletin boards. You need to go into an active sales process for securing high-value clients. Looking at your site, I'm thinking the kind of clients you're going after probably don't care about the technologies you use. Instead, organize the content more around the business problems that you solve for your clients. See if you can find a particular type of business/client is undeserved. Get one of them as a client, and write up a good case study or white paper. Then book appointments with as many of those types of businesses as you can, tell them the story of how you helped the first client, and how you can do the same for them. If they don't sign up with you on the first meeting, follow up consistently. With an approach like this, you're coming in as an expert and you have much more altitude in the transaction than if you're being hired as a "Wordpress theme integrator" or somesuch. You're in Chicago, you're not going to run out of leads. You need to start booking as many sales appointments as you possibly can. Put a lot of practice into how you tell your story. Practice answering common questions. Video yourself doing this, review including your voice, tempo, etc. Consider getting sales and/or speaking coaching. Call design and communications agencies in your area to let them know you're available. Some agencies often bring in freelancers to supplement their teams when demand is high. (For these folks, your technology lists might be slightly more interesting.) Invest continuously in building your own network, including people who are not your potential clients. Make sure they understand what you do well enough to recommend you within their network when appropriate. Consider offering a referral percentage to people with good networks who refer clients to you.