Ask HN: Growing a career in freelance web development/design | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Growing a career in freelance web development/design

14 pointskylechalmers6 comments

I recently made the decision to begin freelancing, so I put together some profiles on oDesk, Elance, etc and started looking for clients. I was relatively lucky to land a client a few days after starting to look at a reasonable rate (was a fixed price, at the end of the project >$20/hr)editing a premium one page WordPress theme for a small business in Australia. I then made some simple web advertisements and a simple personal page for a friend of mine.

After finishing that first project (a bit later than I wanted, but the client was happy), I went back to those same sites to continue my search for clients. After researching on my own and spending time on these types of websites, I quickly realized that I was not going to get a steady flow of work at reasonable rates. I turned my attention to friends and acquaintances who either owned businesses or need things done that they didn't have time for themselves; those resources were quickly exhausted.

Currently, I have a very minimal portfolio hosted at http://kylechalmers.me, this is the second iteration and was my minimum viable product.

I am getting my clients (very) slowly through freelancing sites. I have started to make business to business calls to local businesses who either have a poor web presence, or none at all, however, as expected, I am not getting many clients through this method.

I've ordered a stack of business cards to leave around at local bulletin boards (grocery stores, restaurants, etc), and have begun to think about going to small business meetups and similar events to start networking.

My question is, as a freelancer looking to expand my business with the intent of moving into more technical projects later on, how do I go about most effectively growing my business and network? And more specifically, how do I start getting a steady flow of client coming to me, rather than me searching them out (which I still expect to have to do, at this point atleast)?

Try to move beyond the freelance sites as soon as you can. Most of the clients who use those sites are price shopping, and it's hard to get decent rates for yourself.

Avoid passive, low-value channels like putting cards on bulletin boards. You need to go into an active sales process for securing high-value clients.

Looking at your site, I'm thinking the kind of clients you're going after probably don't care about the technologies you use. Instead, organize the content more around the business problems that you solve for your clients.

See if you can find a particular type of business/client is undeserved. Get one of them as a client, and write up a good case study or white paper. Then book appointments with as many of those types of businesses as you can, tell them the story of how you helped the first client, and how you can do the same for them. If they don't sign up with you on the first meeting, follow up consistently.

With an approach like this, you're coming in as an expert and you have much more altitude in the transaction than if you're being hired as a "Wordpress theme integrator" or somesuch.

You're in Chicago, you're not going to run out of leads. You need to start booking as many sales appointments as you possibly can. Put a lot of practice into how you tell your story. Practice answering common questions. Video yourself doing this, review including your voice, tempo, etc. Consider getting sales and/or speaking coaching.

Call design and communications agencies in your area to let them know you're available. Some agencies often bring in freelancers to supplement their teams when demand is high. (For these folks, your technology lists might be slightly more interesting.)

Invest continuously in building your own network, including people who are not your potential clients. Make sure they understand what you do well enough to recommend you within their network when appropriate. Consider offering a referral percentage to people with good networks who refer clients to you.

Hi Kyle,

I freelance in Sydney, Australia and have been doing now for about 9 months. It sounds like I pretty much went through the same thought process as you when I started. I didn't know where to find work immediately either. What I found out quickly though, is sites like freelancer.com help in no way to providing a reasonable amount of work at a good rate consistently. In fact just the nature of them are geared towards 2nd/3rd world devs/designers that are able to get a good return relative to their lifestyle costs. Which you can't compete with. Starting out I had great success going to meetups where people might need my services. Eg. Small Business meetups. Once you walk in the door you will find that non-technical people have great difficulty meeting and finding the right designer/developer for their websites, apps, projects, etc.

The other bonus is you have met face to face and from a sales perspective you will have far more success in converting people to work with you.

This has been one of the ways I have successfully managed to get work, consistently. It certainly doesn't hurt.

Cheers, Markus

http://mstrazds.com/

I would starting blogging and redirecting your SEO clicks back to your personal site. I did that and it has been working well for me

Example, I wrote a django article a year ago, and if you google Django development it is #3 in the search (at least from NYC/NY today with fresh browser (no cache))

https://www.google.com/search?q=django+development&oq=django...

I didnt intend for this to be the case, but luckily I have gotten freelance clients this way.

I checked out your website. You can try using a Bootstrap theme for your website.

Check these sites out: http://www.littlelines.com/ http://symondsandson.com/

Check out what Brennan Dunn @ doubleyourfreelancingrate.com says about these topics, you'll find them useful.

PS - I'm not Brennan, and don't get any money from sending you over there.

Hey Kyle

Silver Fox Inspections is spelt wrong, thats just a minor edit.

Best of luck man, hope you make a success of it

Reply on news.ycombinator.com