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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