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Comment by shubhamjain | Hacker News Reader

One thing successful freelancers often suggest about starting out is emailing people, selling them solutions on how their site could be fixed / made better. So far, it hasn't worked for me at all. I contacted various real estate people, from their websites and mailed them why having a sleek and responsive look matters and how I can deliver it but didn't got response from any of them.

May be it stems from the fact that I don't live in the same country as theirs or their skepticism about my claims but I am interested in knowing how exactly this thing works and where I am wrong?

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I tried this when first starting out. I realized I was selling solutions to problems business owners didn't realize they had.

To sell to real estate agents, you need to figure out what problems real estate agents think they have. They consider how those problems, or perceived problems, can be solved with your skills.

(I don't mean "perceived problems" as a pejorative. It's often difficult to know in advance what will actually be of business value)

I've taken screenshots of PHP/MySQL/ASP error pages and sent them to the owner of the site, telling them I can fix the problem. I've had a low but not terrible response to that approach, and I got a couple of my long-term clients that way.

It's hard to convince someone to buy something when they're not looking for a solution.

Try looking at job postings and filtering down by jobs that have been open for an extended period of time (while means they might be hard to fill). Figure out who the hiring manger is for the position and reach out to them (you won't have much luck if you go through HR).

>So far, it hasn't worked for me at all. I contacted various real estate people, from their websites and mailed them why having a sleek and responsive look matters and how I can deliver it but didn't got response from any of them.

Could be the pitch. Reak estate agents don't care for buzzwords like "responsive" (like they didn't care for "HTML5" or "semantic"), and they might think they are already sleek enough (especially if they get the number of customers they want through those sites).

As a (infrequent) user of real estate sites I also could not care less for responsive (I won't search for a house from my phone, and most any site designed for the desktop looks good as is in my iPad too) or sleek (just show me the facts I need and some good pictures of the real estate).

They could be persuaded if they have business benefits from the change. And perhaps real estate guys already do well. Perhaps check some business with a bad website that doesn't do as well -- where a better site could make a different.

I have no idea why this comment was downvoted. This is solid advice.

Out of curiosity: why does it matter?

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