
Finding Your First Clients As A Freelancer - AdamJBall
http://www.conceptcupboard.com/resource-centre/finding-your-first-clients-as-a-freelancer/
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awjr
A friend swears by [https://www.elance.com/](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.

~~~
swalkergibson
I find that if I price myself how a real human with real skills would price
that I am inundated with offers. Those places are overrun with spam, so if you
can demonstrate that you are not a bot when responding to a post, you should
get work.

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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.

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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.

~~~
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

~~~
scottydelta
Yes, you cant be more right about 90% interview invitations being spam.
Sometimes I wish there were a way to send a message to the client when they
fix a budget to $5 for a script and $75 for a SDK. but the thing is once you
have done few projects on Odesk, its easy to get more. for eg, the Diffbot
client invited me to write python sdk even though I dint apply for the project
and I think that was because of review left by my previous clients. and take a
suggestion, dont take small projects like fixing js code, fixing server bug
which yield 20-30$, have patience and try for something worthy of your time.

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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.

~~~
thedawn
Agree, at the end of the day your happy clients will be the best advertising
for you, so happy client is the most important thing for sure.

Also I would say that using platforms such as FB and publish there to all your
friends that you are starting your own business may help you spread the word.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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gertisen
Is this a joke?

