Ask HN: What can I do to acquire more freelancing projects/clients?

Here are my main tips:

Pick a niche. This is key. You may be the best programmer in the world, but people won't know whom to pick. You might be the best game programmer, but there are many others. However, if you pitch yourself as the expert in getting html games to perform smoothly with poor connectivity, then people with that problem know exactly whom to pick.

For this to be effective: Don't pick too broad a niche.

You can pick the niche based on data -- which if your skills is most in demand, pays the most, has the most wanted posts and so on.

Make sure your whole profile is geared to promoting your prowess in the niche.

Did I mention, pick a niche?

Once you have a niche, you can expand to adjacent niches.

Oh, and don't underprice yourself. The price is a signal of quality so only go as low (if you must) as the market average but no lower for your niche.

Any tips on how to find your market average?

Global rates for software developers are roughly about $25-$100 an hour. $100/hour is more for people with specialist experience in the US time zone. There are people willing to go cheaper than $25/hour, but you'll be a blur among people who are willing to work fo $4/hour.

But usually there are local rates as well based on your country. These are somewhat pegged to the international rates past a certain level of quality. These can be lower than international rates.

Sometimes you can squeeze an even higher price out of a local contract because you'd add the benefit of more strongly understanding the problem, better communication in terms of time zone, language, and face to face interaction. Plus there's some security in meeting a person face to face.

It is not uncommon to charge $125-150/hr for high-end work on something as basic as configuring Wordpress sites.

However, high-end means the focus gets drastically shifted from programming to figuring out what the client wants.

That said, you can charge 250-500 as a freelancer for a few hours of consultation. Your rates should largely depend on:

1) How many hours the client intends on spending with you 2) Urgency of work (and thus how much bandwidth you need to give to it) 3) Client's ROI

If you save your client 1000 hrs of reporting work a year by developing them a custom solution, that is easily worth well over 100,000k for that client: even if they are only paying people $50/hr to create these reports.

You can't charge 100,000k, otherwise the client will not have a great ROI. However, such a solution should take you somewhere around 100-400 hours to complete.

That works out to $125/hr in the worst-case, giving the client a good ROI after the first six months, and should give you a solid 4-6 months of work. If they need it sooner you need to charge them more, because you'll spend less time on business development.

This is a perfect world hypothetical of course ... in reality many other things come into play that will only work to drive your rates down.

How do you maintain good conversion rates for charging as much as how you stated (such as your Wordpress example)? You run the risk of getting no offers. I think the difficult part about charging $125-150/hr, if you have never charged that much, is finding the clients that are used to paying those kinds of prices. You'll have to figure out how to convert talks into sales better before you can charge those prices.

For instance, the person who would want a site for $50/hr is probably not going to pay $125/hr. You could try with that person, but that would be pushing your luck. In this case they're not the right client for you.

It comes down to not wanting to do WP work, so I charge a lot when someone wants it.

Sometimes I give it away ... for a client that is giving me a lot of business.

However, you can charge what is 150/hr for WP work if you have a good reputation and do good work. Literally EVERYONE who has any kind of money runs a charity, or is involved in a business or seven that needs a new homepage ...

This won't work if you're trying to cold call and get clients, you're right.

I started out at 50-70/hr programming. Some of my contracts now are only ~90/hr.

Also, it's about how long the projects take. Sometimes $150/hr for Wordpress might just be done in a couple hours, with a template and an upload.

> If you save your client 1000 hrs of reporting work a year by developing them a custom solution, that is easily worth well over 100,000k for that client...

How do you get this information? Do you ask them how much time is spent on this task per person and their average hourly rate? Or do you go about finding this info out another way? Do you usually prepare a confidentiality agreement to discuss this? How do you bring it up without coming off so blunt?(as in not making it seem like you're using these numbers to figure out how much you can charge them)

+1 to not underpricing yourself. At the lower prices, you will get a lot of low quality clients. If the problem is big enough, they're willing to pay.

When starting from scratch: post on Freelancer Seeking Freelance every month.

You'll reach a groove once 120% of your referrals are word of mouth. The pendulum flips quickly between looking for clients and then getting a good rep. for doing good work and the clients flowing to you. Good work is hard to find.

With that said, don't negotiate for the highest rate possible at the start. Getting a good rep. will get you better paying clients a lot faster.

Can you explain "post on Freelancer Seeking Freelance every month" -- are you referring to freelancer.com? Is there a general "seeking freelance" feature to that website? In my experience, you have to apply to specific jobs. And the chances of getting any of them are extremely low, at least in my experience; it seems to be dominated by Indian and other 3rd world folks eager to build up their skills while working for pennies.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=freelancer%3F%20seeking%20free...

Does Freelancer seeking Freelancer actually work to find high paying contracts?

Yes.

Did they come to you after you posted there, or did you go to them seeing their "Seeking Freelancer" listing?

I recommend doing both. It also pays (literally) to check the normal "who's hiring" thread as companies sometimes post contract opportunities there instead of in the freelancer thread.

We've hired two freelancers from there. Only place I go now to find quality engineers.

If you start out at a lower rate to build a good rep, how do you transition to a higher rate? If someone is referred to you from a previous client, I would think that a rate is shared and so they already have a number in mind for what you charge. Also, what about for recurring clients. If you gave them a better rate in the past and you have now bumped up your rate, do you honor your past rate or do you give them your new rate. For argument sake, let's assume this is not super frequent client that gives you stability, but maybe 15hrs of work every 3 months.

I've been freelancing remotely as a front-end web developer for over 3 years now. Here's my advice:

1. Get off of Upwork, now. You're only getting into a bidding war with low-priced overseas developers.

2. Instead, search remote job boards, Twitter, Facebook Groups, and LinkedIn for freelance remote contracts related to your field.

3. Find the client's email and send them your portfolio directly.

Following this strategy is what has landed me the most freelance gigs these past years.

There's also aggregation newsletters like RemoteLeads that send you remote freelance gigs a few times a week directly to your email.

https://remoteleads.io/

Shameless Plug: I started RemoteLeads to make finding remote front-end freelance leads easier for myself.

Does this actually work?

Where do you find Remote jobs on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn?

Yes, the next email is going out in a few hours. The next one after that on Thursday morning eastern time.

Various sources are scraped to find remote jobs and freelance gigs specific to front-end web development. I go through them manually after I've found them and only send the best 5 max.

Well naturally you have to keep the good leads for yourself ;)

Anyway, I'm a full stack developer so what about the back end stuff or mobile app development?

I'm interested in knowing where you source your leads so I might be able to find contracts in those areas.

Right now, I've only been able to find stuff through UW, so I'm curious that you've been able to find direct clients.

2 Engineers from Microsoft Azure team tweeted about lots of work opportunities yesterday. It was quite interesting. They were looking for Junior/Senior devs writing Go, Rust, JS, PHP, Python and a few more languages.

Get off of Upwork, now. You're only getting into a bidding war with low-priced overseas developers.

As an ex frequent buyer on Upwork I can confirm, that place is the pits.

I was off to a rocky start but thanks to a blog post on gamasutra that ended up on HN I managed to reach my sales goal and I'm in the clear for the next 6 months.

I guess the shrewd commenters who said this piece https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ConstantinBacioiu/20171121/3... was actually something of a subtle sales technique were pretty much spot on!

It wasn't really, but I'm not gonna lie and say I'm not happy it turned out the way it did.

Guess what the goal of the current post is ;-)

Looks like you've gotten some helpful tips so far. Here's a few things I can add.

As far as marketing yourself as niche vs. a generalist developer, it really depends on the types of clients and projects you are looking to work on. Being a generalist means you will qualify for more projects, and probably can create extra work for yourself since you can help clients with a broader range of development tasks. This will be useful if you want to help clients build and scale a product. Niche skills on the other hand means more niche marketability and searchability for clients looking for those specific skills.

When it comes to marketing yourself....keep blogging! Even if its only for 15 mins a day, write something. Share what you've been doing, answer questions for potential clients and other developers. You've already seen the pay off. Netowrk, online and off. Go to events and conferences, share your work and interests. Personal connections still count for a lot, and have a stronger tendency to lead to referrals.

Lastly, don't forget, as freelancer you are your own business. Some freelance platforms will take care of a lot of business aspects for you, but you still should be prepared/ knowledgeable about the following: -Terms of Service Contract -Your own (favorable) NDA -Time Tracking/Invoicing Software - Regular Review of Your Rate

Here's an article I wrote on landing clients as a freelance dev: https://www.codementor.io/blog/land-clients-freelance-develo...

Get on Shapr. I just started using it and I've made quite a few connections.

How do you make clients on Shapr? It sounds like it's more about peer networking.

I connected with a few guys who run consulting shops, who outsource skills that they don't have in-house. Also, some recruiters who can get me contracts with big city corps. I've also gotten in touch with 2 startup founders who are looking for a CTO.

Nice. I'm giving it a go now. I met a few guys who could be friends but no clients yet, but I see the potential there.

What does an ideal target project/client look like?

If you can answer this-- you can direct your own proactive business development campaign. On this subject, Mike Weinberg is brilliant > https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15863998-new-sales-simpl...

Upwork is terrible. All of my work comes through personal contacts and relationships. IMO you've got to find a way to grow your network, be that meetups, events, etc. Get creative. It sounds like you have a lot of skill in your domain, maybe you could do a lecture somewhere and meet people that way. Relationships have a tendency of naturally generating work.

y, you're going to have problems getting viable projects on Upwork.

The best projects with reasonable pay will come from your own network, people you know. So focus on networking following up with old contacts/making new ones.

Reach out to the game dev community, get in contact with podcasts, write articles, get involved with the community.

You worked on The Dark Knight Risers, and Frozen? Details please?

TDKR back when I was with Gameloft, Frozen Free Fall at Mobility-Games as a designer and programmer.

As already said, pick a niche, and make sure you're known for it. Generate content in that area, you're a game designer, so blog about the issues you've faced, how you've overcome hurdles. If blogging isn't for you, create a podcast, just create content in whatever medium you're most passionate about and do something that makes you a thought leader in that space.

When someone is searching for a solution to an existing problem they face and you can demonstrate how you've solved it, and many more in that domain you're immediately valuable.