I recently read a blog post from Alan Hollis about his first month’s experience as a freelancer. Alan asked about tips on finding work, so I’ve collected some together in this blog post.
I’ve now been freelancing for 9 months, and so far I’ve been successful in finding work through these avenues:
Former work colleagues
My first few clients were people that I have worked with in the past, who had gone onto set up their own businesses. I remember Tweeting about being available as a freelancer when I started, and I soon received a few enquiries about my services.
The great thing about this kind of work is that you already know your client, and they know you, so the trust is there from day one.
Networking
I’ve been to a few networking events, including developer meet-ups and co-working sessions. I always take my business card to hand out, and on a couple of occasions I’ve found new work this way. Co-working sessions, such as Jelly are more “soft” networking because you are primarily going to work, and not sell, but can still lead to new clients.
Speculative e-mails
At one point I sent out a batch of speculative e-mails to local web design agencies, highlighting how my experience may be of benefit to them. A couple of agencies got back to me straight away enquiring about my rate, and I subsequently ended up doing a couple of months work with one of them.
My own site
I have a basic page advertising my services and I have had a couple of enquiries through this. I’m currently building out a more comprehensive site for myself, but it’s taking a while as client work always comes first! I reluctantly added Olark to the page to enable me to chat in real-time to visitors, and I was surprised to find someone using it to contact me shortly after I had installed it.
I get a lot of enquiries from recruiters via my LinkedIn profile. Whilst a lot of these opportunities are not at all relevant, every now and again there has been an interesting contract position. Contracts are a “fall-back” option for me — if I’ve not got any freelance work, then I would then consider such opportunities.
Hopefully these tips are of some help to other freelancers.
Glen Scott
I’m a freelance software developer with 18 years’ professional experience in web development. I specialise in creating tailor-made, web-based systems that can help your business run like clockwork. I am the Managing Director of Yellow Square Development.
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Thanks for the Glenn, Very similar to what I’ve been doing already, which is good! How much work have you got from LinkedIn? I can’t help but feel there’s so much potential for getting work from this site, but I’ve got no clue how to unlock it.
I’ve not had a lot of freelance work through LinkedIn, since it mainly seems to be used by recruiters looking to fill permanent positions. If you manage to make it work better for you, I’d love to hear about it!
I think the key to finding work as a freelancer is understanding WHAT kind of work you want to do, and WHO you want to work for.
For example: I’ve been freelancing for 9 years. Over time, I’ve learned that I prefer working for local, tech savvy small business owners building small, targeted ASP.NET apps and supporting them. Those customers prefer to work with independents like me, and typically look for developer resources via search engines, or via referrals. So I concentrate my efforts there.
On the other hand, if you want to work on a large, enterprise level project for a giaganto corp, the approach must be very different. Those organizations often work through HR, and HR may often have preferred vendors they work with. They probably aren’t looking for a programmer on google.
If you aren’t sure how a typical company in your target market might find a resource for the kind of work you want to do, try asking. Find a few people in your network who are typical of the kind of people you would expect to hire you, and offer to take them to lunch in order to pick their brains about this question.
You’re only one person, so you can’t effectively employ a “try everything” approach to marketing your services. Instead, find a couple of the best approaches for the type of work you want to do, and focus your attention on those.
This is really helpful advice, Avonelle, thank you. I think initially, I cast quite a wide net as I was still feeling my way towards the kind of work that I wanted to do. Now, I am definitely feeling that smaller local businesses are the target market for the services that I offer — essentially building bespoke web applications. This is where I will focus a lot of my attention in the months ahead.
Glen – I think we all start there, afraid to use a smaller net because we’re hungry for the work. I’m just hoping other people learn this lesson sooner than I did!
Hi there. I am very new to this world of freelancing. I just made a portfolio website and now I don’t know what to do. I also have this feeling that I am not yet ready for the market so I may need more practice. But I seem to be stuck in some confusion. When did you clear your mind as what you are gong to sell? When did you feel that you could do it on your own? There is no hurry please reply in leisure. Thank you.