

The High Cost of Freelancing - brebory
http://blog.thinkful.com/post/97816384473/the-high-cost-of-freelancing

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jonawesomegreen
> More likely, you’re going to be figuring out what it takes to find people
> who need your services and how to convince them to choose you over someone
> else.

Does anyone have any experience with this they could share? I've always wanted
to get into freelancing, but not knowing how to build a pipeline of work has
always held me back.

~~~
jaf656s
This is the million dollar question, and is sort of a "choose your own
adventure" type of story.

I personally got my first clients by

1) doing contract work for my former employer.

2) had written a library for an api client that was valuable for businesses.

There are a bunch of other ways like:

* cold calling,

* cold emailing,

* networking,

* literally walking into businesses and talking to people,

* setting up meetings with people who you can provide value for,

* going to meetups,

* asking agencies for extra work on a subcontract basis,

* giving presentations at a local event about the value you can provide,

* looking online at job postings,

* create a website and wait for people to find it

* create a website and pay for people to find it (ads)

The list goes on, but you should get the idea. There's a good article on it
here: [http://clientflow.io/blog/33-ways-to-get-more-
clients/](http://clientflow.io/blog/33-ways-to-get-more-clients/).

You need to pick a couple ways and see how you do with them. I'd strongly
recommend doing this before leaving your job, it will be much less stressful.
You would want to save up several months worth of expenses, too, for the same
reason.

I also strongly recommend that you pick a specific type of business or client
to target. It will make things easier to get started since you won't be
overwhelmed: [http://tenlinesofcode.com/2014/09/09/increase-your-value-
by-...](http://tenlinesofcode.com/2014/09/09/increase-your-value-by-focusing-
on-ideal-client/)

