Finding Your First Clients As A Freelancer

[awjr]

A friend swears by https://www.elance.com/ (He hires.)

What is more interesting is that he knows how long it should take (within 20%) and discards the crazy cheap offers.

Much of what he does is 'find' people on elance, takes a gamble, and if it works out, he hits them up again for more work.

The more interesting thing about his work process. He always always pays on successful milestone delivery immediately.

[darklajid]

Are you sure that applies? The article is about _first_ clients.

In my experience (I only ever dabbled a bit in the elance et al area) that's crazy hard. The prices are insanely low and - worse for this case - newcomers have zero reputation to build on.

So getting a first(!) client on elance seems to be next to impossible unless you want to work for ~free~ for a while to build up a name, a brand.

[cs02rm0]

Sounds interesting, is that through a bad experience at the lower rates? It always strikes me that the rates on these sites seem very low, puzzlingly so even at the top end. Especially as the projects seem to be relatively short term.

[ryanSrich]

I found it incredibly difficult to get hired for a reasonable rate using any online service. All successful freelance gigs I've had have either come through referral or cold call.

Granted your first gig should be priced accordingly but when the majority of experienced freelancers work for <$50/hr on Elance it's hard to not stoop that low.

[digitalclubb]

If you're a designer looking for work, befriend a handful of good quality developers and likewise - if you're a developer, make friends with the odd designer or two. You will find very quickly that if they have client work, need your expertise and you're their go to person then you won't be short of work.

[scottydelta]

I am a freelancer and I would say Odesk is the best place for freelancing. I have worked on both Elance and Odesk. My first job as a freelancer was on Elance and also the last one on Elance. Odesk seems to have more good projects on the field I work on and that is tasks automation on servers.

As far as getting the first job is concerned, I got mine by quoting a price of $7/hour(lower than the minimum wage) and suggesting the client that he should choose python over bash for the script he wanted despite his unknown attachment with bash. And my suggestion worked out pretty well. I made an account on Odesk on 10th Dec, 2013 and I have already completed 2 projects and 3 are on progress on Odesk.

[Ruska]

Could you elaborate on the differences between the two, and why you decided to write off all of Elance after one bad experience?

[tdumitrescu]

"I got mine by quoting a price of $7/hour(lower than the minimum wage) and..."

Depressing stuff like this is why I've never used the odesk acct I made a few months ago. I pretty much only visit the site when I receive email invitations to "apply" for a job, which is 90% recruiter spam and 10% unbelievably underpaid. Most recent example: "creating the official Diffbot Javascript client library"; fixed project price: $75. wat

[thedawn]

Finding your first client is always an hard mission. You need to be creative and sometimes think out of the box. Mainly your first clients will come to you from mouth to ear and they will probably be friends or friends of friends. My advice is to ask for low price then the market at the beginning, it will gain those clients that will want to earn your low price. Give the best service you can and they will pass your name to their friends. That way in no time you will be able to collect some happy clients and build your portfolio. Good Luck!

[Ruska]

Also, don't underestimate the value of making sure a client is happy. My first client required little more than setting up a WordPress theme and doing some design tweaks. I bent over backwards for them, and now about half of my clients are referrals from that first client.

I'm not saying that you should do everything for everyone, because some people will be unreasonable; when you're first starting out it's probably in your best interest to be a little more flexible.

[cageface]

All my clients came to me unsolicited after they used and liked my own apps. Having some work out there for people to see is your best calling card.

[saryant]

If you can either show a portfolio of past work or get introduced by a friend, hanging around a tech incubator can also work out. I got my first client through a TechStars investor who introduced me to two founders at TS Cloud last year. I contracted with them for a few months while also looking for other clients, realized I hated freelancing and became their first employee.

[RP_Joe]

Odesk and elance are top freelance providers in the US. I have had some success with Guru too.

With all of these you have to weed through the noise to find good clients. It takes time.

[europa]

Finding a project which can be prototyped and sending live link to the prototype in my biddings worked for me getting my first projects in Odesk.

[DonGateley]

To someone about to work the other direction, finding some help, this was excellent info. Nice work.

[gertisen]

Is this a joke?