
Ask HN: How do I get my first contracting client? - haack
I want to do some contracting the next few months but I&#x27;ll be honest, I have no idea how to go about starting. How do people find their first client?
======
aidos
Hmmm - I read in one of your comments that you're just graduating. Does that
mean you haven't done any industry coding work? If so, I'm not sure that it's
a great idea to jump straight into contracting.

You learn a lot in the first year or two on a job. Looking at it from a hiring
position I would never take on an inexperienced dev on a contract (no offence,
you may be great). Junior positions are like an apprenticeship; you know
you're sinking time into someone but are hoping that over time they'll start
providing value. Contractors are generally expected to have experience and,
accordingly, they cost more.

If you've spent a bit of time at a job (2 years is a fairly normal time to
leave) there are a couple of tricks you could try that worked for me.

A) Tell them you're leaving but you're available for contract work. You're a
known quantity, you know their systems/products and can work efficiently when
they need the extra resources. They will send you work (and some will just
take you back on a contract straight away - that's how I started contracting).

B) If you've worked at an agency, ask to take some of their clients. It might
sound insane, but every agency has clients they don't really want. Small
clients that have been around for a while that they still need to service.
That work is just unprofitable noise as an agency grows bigger. As a one-man-
band it's perfect. The client is used to paying agency rates and with you they
get personal service from the person who was doing their dev work anyway. I
have clients from this arrangement that have been amazing.

Hope that helps in some small way.

~~~
mrnaught
"... accordingly, they cost more." I disagree with this. Contractors pay a
significant price by leaving a full time job. No benefits, no company
sponsored talks,training, no paid time off. The extra buck you make
contracting is not extra.

~~~
aggieben
For people who have problems with innumeracy (and lacking a tax advisor's
phone number, I guess) this can be a real problem. For the rest of us, it's
not that hard to figure out what those things cost, add it to how much you
want to make, and then divide by 2000 to figure out an hourly rate.

The real price of contracting isn't the loss of benefits, but the increased
burden of providing those things for yourself (if they were that important to
you in the first place). The real reward is: freedom. You can provide
any/all/none of those things for yourself as you see fit.

All presuming you have work, of course ;-)

~~~
gknoy
I'm not a contractor, but wouldn't dividing by 2000 be a bit excessive? That
would be 40 hours x 50 weeks, and everything I've read about contracting
implies that you cannot bank on having constant work like that.

~~~
adamconroy
I've been contracting since 1997 and I haven't had a single day without
employment. Except when I've chosen to have a holiday.

My secret has been to do such a good job that the client finds me
indispensable and then leave on my terms, always with another gig lined up.
Sometimes I've had to stay with clients for many months when I'd rather move
on. Once I was working for a client that had a smell like they were going
broke so I had to ruthlessly extract myself before my contract was due to
expire, but that proved to be a good decision as a few months later nobody was
being paid and were suddenly out of work.

I worked in a permanent role for 6 years before contracting, and I doubt it
would be a good idea to do it with no experience. My first contract was
acquired through an agency, and probably 50% of my work is through an agency,
the rest is word of mouth and doing more work for former clients.

~~~
sciguy77
What's the agency? How does it work?

------
jorgeleo
If I had to put it in one phrase: work on making your fame preceed you

Make some of your work public, have your blog

Network between people, assuming you are in the us, make yourself member of
the chamber of commerce of your area, participate not only in tech forums, but
in business forums too.

Be nice, be competent, be helpful, all this publically.

Clients are a side effect of this

------
gk1
You already got the hard part done: Getting on the front page of HN. Now hurry
and add more details about yourself in this thread and/or in your profile.
There's a good chance someone reading this could use your help; help them get
in touch with you.

(One of my first contracts came as a result of an HN thread, and because I
have my contact info in my profile.)

~~~
haack
As much as I think it's a good idea, I try my best to not be that "self
advertising guy".

I mean, I would never just post this link to my CV to get everyone to look at
it:
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byk8zRX0L3yPYzMtQW1oMDBTcms...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Byk8zRX0L3yPYzMtQW1oMDBTcms/view?usp=sharing)

~~~
nicolethenerd
One more note - I'm guessing that 2.1 is 2:1, as in "second-class honours,
upper division", right?
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_undergraduate_degree_cl...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_undergraduate_degree_classification))
But to an American reader, it looks like a GPA (grade point average), which
are out of 4 - a 2.1 GPA would not be something you want to advertise. Might
want to clarify that, if you're going to be looking for remote work.

~~~
EStudley
I agree with this, I initially thought that was his "expected GPA at
graduation" which is what many soon-to-be graduates put on their resume. I'd
change this if you're trying to contract for anyone in the US.

------
damoncali
Build something that looks nice so you can show people. Use a good theme or
pay a designer. It's more important that it looks nice than that it works
well.

Then start going to networking events for entrepreneurs and meet people - you
will get quite a few offers, mostly crappy, to build the next Facebook.
Politely say no to these. Eventually, you'll find someone who needs something
simple enough that you can deliver it and make him happy. Take this job even
if the pay isn't so hot (but do get paid - a portion up front). Ideally, it
would be a 6 week-ish project - enough to be significant, but not enough for
you or your your client to get in over your heads.

Keep doing that until the referrals start to come in. Make sure every single
client is happy - contracting is a referral business. If I had a dollar for
every client who came to me because their developer flaked out, I wouldn't
need work.

You can also do this at local small business groups (not the tech
entrepreneurs, but the the plumbers, accountants, and store owners) - just go
and start introducing yourself. You won't get any cool work like this - mostly
just Wordpress sites - but it's easier work to come by, and can pay just as
well if you're smart about it. This might even be a better way to start
because you get more, smaller, clients who can start your referral network.
More clients = more referrals.

------
usermac
There are 2 ways to do it: 1) Cold call on the phone or in-person. I did this
for 9 month back in the day before I got my first client. It was uncomfortable
for me as a young man but necessary. 2) Steal them. You probably hear this in
lore of people leaving a company and then working for that company as a
consultant. Not exactly. What I did was tell those clients while I was working
for the man that I could do the work as "extra" work. It worked also.

I know, I know, it's not ethical but there is a saying in China "the first pan
of gold is dirty".

So end-the-end both methods worked for me. My clients came, some much later
that I wanted but came. It took months and some worked in 2-year cycles and
and would not use me again for 2 years but they'd come back.

Good luck to you.

It gets easier after the first few. They wind up referring you to new clients.
That part is great.

------
brudgers
Suppose you wanted to moonlight as a chimney sweep, what steps might you take?
Well there are two contexts.

1\. Any chimney might or might not need sweeping. Any random person might or
might not have a chimney. This means that just telling the people you meet
that you are available as a chimney sweep might result in work.

2\. There aren't chimneys in hobo camps. Wealthy people tend to hire trades
workers. This means that efforts marketing should be targeted at people who
hire chimney sweeps.

That's consulting. It's preparing the ground to increase the odds of being
lucky enough to find a job and then being saavy enough to land it and capable
enough to complete it. Then you're back at square one.

Developing a backlog of consulting work takes a really long time, a track
record, and more luck. The image of "picking up" consulting gigs is not
helpful. It's picks and hammers and salt mines and most of the veins you hit
when you are lucky enough to hit one, run dry quickly. Any consultant who hits
the mother load was lucky and probably built the mother load theirself.

The easiest way to get started in consulting is to work for another
consultant. The industry is famous for hiring free-lance talent to balance
work load. Which hits the final point: There is no planning to do consulting.
Until the contract is signed there is no consulting to be done. Even after the
contract is signed, there often is no consulting to be done, or less
consulting than the contract might suggest or less payment than one might be
entitled to.

There aren't people just standing around waiting to hire consultants. It's
sales with the leads and prospects and closings and collections that come with
that process.

Good luck.

------
cgabios
0\. Spread time in coffee shops in tech areas, go to conferences snd events

1\. Talk to people, be nice, sincere, helpful and polite. Give and get contact
info (cards or details). (But don't let them milk you for too many freebies,
at some point you need to charge for your time. Be clear and upfront about
what you're willing and not willing to give away. Beware the "friend"
psuedoclient that wants to pick your brain at all hours, at random without
golden-rule consideration.)

2\. Follow up and don't forget to follow up

------
awjr
1) Create 1 page CV, add extra pages for detailed work history.

2) Submit to jobsites knowing rates you should get.

3) Wait about 2 hours. Pick up phone.

\-- Agent will identify you are 'new' and will try and offer lower rates.

\-- Ensure Agent only submits CV to companies you agree.

4) Go to interviews

5) Accept job. Register company and bank account.

6) Accept agent is making money off you but pays you almost immediately.

7) Profit

If you are looking for more freelance work, then I suggest you attend various
meetups and tech events and get your name out there. I would also strongly
suggest you consider using elance to 'farm out' work that you could do
yourself at a cheaper rate and then you can 'audit' the work. Never farm out
work you could not have completed yourself. You will get let down. You will
have to get your hands dirty.

~~~
mattmanser
It might work like that in the bay area, but in most cities and countries
across the world it definitely does not.

------
wellboy
Freelancing is a numbers game. If you're in a city with a good startup
ecosystem go to all tech events you can find for two weeks and hand out
business cards letting people know what you do. After that you'll have your
first client. :)

Face to face connections are very strong and it worked really well for me.

------
rch
Back in the early 2000s I would just sit down in a coffee shop with a small
laptop (about the size of a modern Air). Every other person would ask about
it, so I'd mention how it well it ran visual studio (true); the conversation
often turned to work.

These days I'd probably post on the freelancer HN page and look around on
Craigslist... I actually ended up as a subcontractor to NASA writing code to
contribute to an Eclipse project via Craigslist last year (YMMV).

------
peteretep
I'm guessing you mean freelancing; why don't you give a little more detail on
exactly what you can do? I suspect generalized advice will be less useful to
you than specific advice.

~~~
haack
I'm graduating in CS so I've had a bit of experience across the board. I
particularly want to do web development with Angular and Node. I've done
internships and projects but I'd still need to do a fair bit of learning on
the job.

~~~
scalesolved
I wouldn't suggest diving into contracting straight away then, if you can find
a good perm job with a great team to learn from and mentor you would reap
dividends in your future career. Then with a couple of years under your belt
you'll be able to pick and work with much better clients and command better
rates.

It's tempting to see the contracting rates and just think of the $$ but a lot
of the time it'll be cleaning up awful codebases.

~~~
haack
I'm starting a job in September (in SF!), this is just so that I have a bit of
money to do a cool tech project with my mini-moto. Thanks though!

Any idea what rate I can charge as a masters graduate?

~~~
mtbcoder
Rates will vary depending on the technical abilities needed for the project,
the client's budget as well as the contractor's experience, location, etc. In
SF, going rates will be higher than the rates of someone in Iowa, however, I
certainly wouldn't set a rate lower than $75 anywhere in the US, no matter how
trivial the job is.

------
moron4hire
Don't get stuck in a rut of trying to find work in the same ways all the time.
Internet job boards are enticing because they are easy, but they are really
low-value; it typically takes a lot of repeated effort to even get contacts
out of them.

Networking in person--by attending meetups and conferences _in your potential
customers ' market_ (don't waste your time on tech meetups if you're just
looking for work)--is slower and emotionally harder, but has a much, much
higher yield.

It takes effort either way. I personally like the in person approach. I feel I
do better in person than on paper. People get to see my enthusiasm, whereas
trying to write enthusiasm into things often comes off as just fake.

Go to where your customers are. My wife has given up advertising her sci-fi
novel online. We now go to book fairs. Bam--pre-filtered group of customers
looking to buy _now_. I don't advertise my services online anymore, I now
stick to meeting people at conferences. Best set of contacts I got from a
conference was one at which I had spoke on a discussion panel.

Spend the small amount of money on a booth. Setup a few demos of your work.
It's a lot easier than you think, and it doesn't have to be perfect; some
people like the "I'm just starting out and don't know much about these booth
things yet" story.

I've never gotten anything but run-around and bad deals out of recruiters.

------
ddingus
Take a job, get some experience and perspective. While at that job, network
with others, compare experiences and think about how you would do things and
why that matters and what it's worth. As this happens, you will gain the
insight you need to sell your contract services.

Then, job scenario permitting, take a contract. Complete it, and take another
one, ideally at a better rate, or that is more challenging, or both!

 _Continue to network. If it were me, I would make sure sales people and that
process is part of your network. Tech people often don 't enjoy sales, and
that's perfectly understandable. Do it anyway. Do it because contractors /
consultants do much better when they've got a good understanding of the sales
process and the "science" behind it. When you approach sales in a technical
way, identifying value, helping others to understand it and being able to ask
them for the business means more frequent and better gigs. All of that reduces
your risk and improves your income.

At some point, you will understand how you can make it on your own and then
you can leave the job and go do that.

_...by "network", I mean meeting people and talking about stuff as well as
using the Internet, blog, social media, etc... to establish your personal
brand and value.

------
ilaksh
If you don't mind being relatively poor you can go on upwork (odesk), find a
few projects with some kind of spec or a particular technology they want,
build 1-5 demos, and you will probably get a gig. Works for me. I am poor but
I don't have to go put of the house ever if I don't want to, and there is
always plenty of interesting work.

------
PeterWhittaker
We came to this point with different backgrounds (you, a recent graduate; me,
13 years of industry experience with a specific knowledge area that was in
some demand), so take this with a grain of salt or two.

1\. Hustle. Network. Cold call. However you want to describe it. Reach out to
your friends and acquaintances, tell them quickly and succinctly what you want
to do.

2 (this should perhaps be 0). Pick something. You are young and can afford to
pick the _wrong_ or _less optimal_ thing, but pick something you must: If you
don't, no one will know what you do, no one will want you.

3\. When you talk to people, always get something. Best case, a job offer.
Worst case, the phone number for someone they know who might have a job offer.

4\. Call, introduce yourself briefly, explain how you got their number, ask if
you can meet face to face. If they say no, ask for someone else's phone number
("I understand, thanks for your time. Do you know of anyone else who might
need this kind of work?" or words to that effect).

5\. Meet. Let people get to know you. Force nothing. Get comfortable with this
stage, _it is key, vital, fundamental_ to freelancing, contracting.

6\. Always get something, a name, a number, another meeting. Bears repeating.

7\. As you do this, you will notice trends and patterns, subjects areas or
people who come up again and again. Pay attention to this.

8\. Based on #7, your best informed guesses, and your gut, narrow that list of
people or subjects down to 1 or 2.

9\. Roll the dice on those. Pursue them with your every waking moment.

A. When you have a job, spend part of looking for the next one - but temper
your forwardness, your obviousness about this to the culture in which you
work. Some will think nothing of this, find it perfectly normal; others will
want discretion. Pay attention to this.

Alternatively, look at job ads, find one that interests you, start the
interview process, and "hedge" as you get closer: "It's an interesting
position, but I don't think it is what I am looking for long term. Would you
consider hiring on a contract basis?"

ADDED: You are under no obligation to reveal everything. Be friendly, be
collegial, but be professional. Get good at answering with non-specific
sentences: "What are your career goals?" "Long term, my interests are in X, Y,
and Z. Short term, I want to work independently to gain first hand business
experience." Say it with conviction, that will close avenues of questioning. I
write this because some will attempt to derail you, try to slot you into their
boxes. You have to be firm but polite about staying on your own path.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Part II: do a very good job, which means taking the problem off their hands
and solving it completely. Folks contract out work because its a thorn in
their side; eliminate the thorn, without becoming one yourself.

Then, when they have another thorn, they'll think "That contractor worked
great before; lets use them again". Raise your rate 10%. Repeat.

------
wsc981
In the Netherlands there's a company that calls itself a "Maatschap" (The
Future Group). It's a company that helps freelancers find work. Perhaps such
companies exist in your country as well.

The "Maatschap" has several sales people that try to find jobs. Jobs are then
proposed to "Maten" (freelancers working for the "Maatschap") and the can
choose to take the job or not. Of course, the freelancer will pay a certain
percentage of his wage to "The Maatschap".

Then there are companies like ComputerFutures and Qualogy that provide more or
less the same options and I think both companies operate internationally. I've
been placed at my current job through ComputerFutures, while still being a
freelancer.

------
superskierpat
Put yourself out there, I got my first contract by mentioning my line of study
to clients from my ski instructor job. Then, after befriending the school
counsellor, i got the contract I'm on now because he reffered me to a friend
of his in a local startup.

------
ownagefool
Which country you in? If it's in the UK, you can pretty much just apply for
jobs online. That said, the clients generally want short notice periods.

~~~
neil_s
Where online? Do you use any particular freelance marketplaces, or cold
contact companies from their websites, or something else entirely?

~~~
UK-AL
Normal job sites advertise for Contractors. Many job adverts will explicitly
state Contracter.

------
regisb
I can't believe no one has mentioned LinkedIn yet. I have received virtually
all my inbound contacts through my LinkedIn profile. Explicitely mention your
new status ("consultant"/"freelancer" \+ your specialty) as your main activity
and I can assure you you will get contract offers. They will not be the best
in the world, but that will improve with time (and new connections).

------
thornofmight
Hang out on the freenode freelancing channels.

I work in Magento. I hung out in #magento, and #magento-jobs, and a few other
more general PHP/HTML freelance channels (#startups can help you find channel
names for freelancing). I answered questions in #magento for a month or so,
got a little bit of rep, then started responding to requests for work.
Eventually I got work. Some of it turned into reoccurring work.

------
linuxydave
What city are you in? It really depends on your location. For example, I'm in
London and when I started contracting I simply uploaded my CV to a job site
and my phone exploded with calls from recruiters because the demand for
contractors here is so high.

~~~
neil_s
Which site lead to most high-quality leads? The most common freelancing sites
just seem like a race to the bottom, competing only on price with developers
in developing countries (heh)

~~~
linuxydave
For me it's [http://www.jobsite.co.uk](http://www.jobsite.co.uk). The
contracts are onsite, normally 3-6 months, sometimes rolling. Devs are popular
with digital media agencies because the projects are short term. However, I
don't know how in-demand devs are. Sysadmins/devops with automation and cloud
experience are though.

If you use a recruiter then under UK law you have to sign up with an umbrella
agency or run your own limited company as they aren't allowed to work with
sole proprietors.

------
erroneousfunk
Like other commenters have said, I would recommend waiting for a bit and
working in industry to get a feel for how large projects work, and fail.

You'll know you're ready when they start coming to you ;)

------
throwaway12357
For those in the UK do the "attend meets" and "network" advices still apply?
Or is it still normal to get a good gig from job descriptions posted online?

------
jamessun
With apologies to Glengarry Glen Ross (a must see movie, BTW)...

Always Be Networking

Good luck!

------
UK-AL
In the UK most contracting jobs are advertised along with normal jobs.

------
jackgavigan
jobserve.com or eLance-oDesk

~~~
majc2
First one is good, I'd avoid the second suggestion.

~~~
genystartup
Have you had a poor experience with Elance or something? Just curious, since
I've used it twice before and plan on using again shortly.

------
comrade1
Hit the virtual pavement.

When I decided to take on a new consulting client I researched the local
businesses and created a list of around 10 that could potentially need
programming work and matched my area of programming background. I then did
email contacts to arrange an in-person meeting. (face-to-face is very
important)

I was lucky and found a small company (just two guys) right away that were
changing their focus from print/radio/tv healthcare messaging to internet and
mobile. It started out as a normal hourly rate, but I eventually negotiated to
a revenue sharing model and then later I negotiated to own 13% of the company
+ revenue sharing. This happened over the course of about 10 years and it's
still going strong. (I started with my high normal consulting rate and then
later cut that in half as part of the revenue sharing agreement, then much
later when I took ownership of the company I now no longer charge hourly and
am paid entirely through the revenue sharing)

I've also used other people I've worked with in the past to help me in my
consulting projects. So if you have friends or professional contacts that
you've worked well with in the past it works to contact them. Word of mouth
goes a long way in this business. And I've also met potential clients at local
meet ups, but those have yet to pan out but I think if I really pushed it I
could get some work out of them.

Also, if you have a tech incubator in your area try to meet up with the
startups in the incubator. I've done that in two cities (one in CA, one in
Europe) and it's worked well.

Also, be aware of scummy people and any decisions that you make that can
affect your future career. I lived near the 'other' valley where most porn is
produced and received unsolicited contacts from small porn companies. I didn't
take on any of those projects which is good because later I did consulting in
Defense and NSA projects and also worked for a major San Jose based tech
company for a couple of years.

~~~
getsat
>which is good because later I did consulting in Defense and NSA projects

If you work in the adult film industry, you can't work for the government/get
security clearances?

~~~
caw
I'd like to say that means performers but I'm sure it's intentionally vague in
the document -- security clearance applications are big on screening for
potential things that you could be blackmailed or bribed for. Extensive debt,
gambling, and drug use are all on the form. [http://www.military.com/veteran-
jobs/security-clearance-jobs...](http://www.military.com/veteran-
jobs/security-clearance-jobs/security-clearance-eligibility.html)

~~~
VLM
I went thru the process (a long time ago) and if you worked in pr0n (although
I did not) an excellent way to fail a security check would be trying something
like hiding your past employment from a hard core evang fundamentalist C.O. or
something similar to that. Theoretically leading to an enemy agent
blackmailing you to keep your past quiet if only you'll give him a photocopy
of some document or a password or whatever. But if you already told security
you were a sysadmin at nude-hackernews-posters.com or whatever then it would
be REALLY hard to blackmail you about something that's already public
knowledge...

If this line applies to the issue, you're OK: "The behavior no longer serves
as a basis for coercion, exploitation, or duress."

