

Ask HN: How do you get new freelance jobs/contracts? - hotshothenry

Just curious how you guys get your freelance jobs and contracts.  Word of mouth? Advertising? Self marketing (i.e. blogs)? Job boards? Other?<p>Curious to hear what you guys out there do.
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symptic
I haven't had to market my services since January 7th (I started just a few
weeks ago back on Dec 26 when realized I needed a better way to pay the bills
than try and get a student loan), and I'm still booked solid. It's all been
word of mouth since. Before then I posted on industry forums and hung out in
the same IRC chats they did. You'd be amazed how many people hang out in IRC
still these days. The real beauty is most gigs are rather small, and most
clients understand my reputation as a great serviceman so they usually send me
a payment and then tell me what needs to be done.

I've been a freelancer off and on for the past few years. I'm 22, in
university, and have a start-up habit, so I need a way to fund myself. I found
a great niche for myself in the past month that allows me to focus on
delivering great work at breakneck speeds.

My main focuses are to be fast ("wicked fast", "what do you mean you're done
already?", etc. from some clients since), to deliver great quality, and to
deliver more than I promise, and act beyond professional--yet not quite too
friendly--to clients.

The result is amazing. I'm already at a stage where I need to decline work and
were I to be doing this full time I easily bring in enough requests to amount
to what I've totaled as $525~ worth of work a day, which I could complete were
it a full-time gig.

It's very easy: Make a dead simple portfolio that lets your work speak volumes
where most people use gimmicky words (mine's at <http://sicret.net> ). Make
your clients proud of your work (a lot of my clients love showing off their
new designs, even though it's an industry that typically keeps things very
private for competition's sake). I'm brutally honest with a client as well. If
I am running behind because of some other mix up or I am not satisfied with a
design, I will tell them, and offer them a discount or to redo.

Customer satisfaction is more important than customer acquisition. So is being
truthful.

Don't be afraid to drop ineffective clients. You're in it for business, not to
make everyone happy. your happiness comes first.

The most important thing I've learned: constantly charge more. Eventually
you'll plateau, but until then or until your own project takes off, keep
learning and keep getting better; then keep charging more. You'll be worth
every penny if you give half a damn.

~~~
skolor
This is something I've wondered about for a while. Everyone says "Hang out in
IRC"

That's great and all, but there's a lot of IRC servers with a lot of different
channels. Got any specifics? Its almost like saying "I find using email gets
me a lot of clients". Its specific enough to have an idea, but not enough to
be of any use at all if you don't know where to start.

~~~
symptic
As a direct example: the forum I go to (while I won't say its name) is
tailored for people who make money through advertising. In their IRC they talk
about advertising and I went in looking to just make friends with them and to
let them know I'm a designer, without asking for work. Eventually, one person
came to me asking for work (and by eventually, I mean within hours) and after
the work I did for him, word spread VERY fast about my capabilities and I've
been booked since. The ONE important thing it to make sure you always keep
your word, otherwise the reputation you've built declines.

------
sachinag
Dawdle (<http://www.dawdle.com>) depends on freelance contractors for all non-
essential tasks. It's all about that warm fuzzy feeling.

So, OK, pay attention. I'm going to tell you how to get jobs.

1) IT'S NOT ABOUT PRICE. Seriously. If it was about price, I'd go to eLance.

2) Tell me your rates up front. Period. If <http://www.flingmedia.com> can,
you can too. If you don't, I won't trust you. You have no idea how many
prospects you lose by not doing this. If you don't do this, you depend on
referrals. REFERRALS WHO WILL TELL THE CLIENT WHAT YOU COST.

3) Please, for the love of God, have your portfolio up on your site, and make
the links be target=_blank.

4) Blog. Twitter. I will judge you by the quality of your posts and the number
of followers. Deal with it. It's like SAT scores; you can be smart and get a
shitty score, but you can't be dumb and get a high one.

5) Contribute to FOSS projects. It shows an ability to work with others under
others' terms. Guess what? You work for my company and you're supplementing my
employees' work. If you can't get along with others, you're useless to me.

~~~
jamesbritt
" ... and make the links be target=_blank."

Please do not do this. Let the user decide how to handle links.

~~~
SingAlong
You're right. Coz people's browsing habits vary.

Me for example don't like those target=_blank. For useless sites I often just
use the back and forward buttons of my browser. Infact for going back I use
backspace(FF). So it's pretty faster than closing tabs one by one and
returning to your original tab.

------
brm
Do an incredible job with your current clients

~~~
partoa
This has always worked for me.

Most of my best new clients have been referrals who were behind schedule at
the time and had a freelancer that who had been unable to get the job done so
far. I all cases, I either met their current deadline or missed it by a week,
and earned a longterm client who always gives me his projects. In fact I will
have to hire someone this year and probably use the services of a freelancer.

Last year I officially decided to cease actively seeking clients.

------
lux
For me, it's a combination of these things:

* word of mouth/referrals from happy clients

* people finding my site online, which is so horribly outdated that I've had people ask if I'm still in business, yet people still hire me through it (I am updating it in the next 2-3 months, but I'm kind of scared I won't be able to handle the increase in workload)

* networking

* running an open source project

I've been incredibly lucky though, I never thought to ask for referrals since
I was young and thought that was a no-no or something, but they came in anyway
(which is a good sign :).

I also haven't really had time to do much online promotion, but having an open
source project to show quality of work and to drive people to use my project
and (just often enough) my services probably helps make up for my lack of
online promo efforts.

As for networking, I never really tried to sell, I just go out and meet
people. I often forget to bring cards or to even mention what I do (even
though I do talk too much ;). I heard someone recently explain that networking
isn't about marketing directly, but rather about getting your name out there
and just being a real human being. The network of your network are who you'll
sell to because the people who think you're alright will refer you naturally,
or something like that.

The above has kept me more than busy for years now, and since I'm also working
on a startup I've had to limit what projects I can take on since otherwise I'd
have no time for my own...

------
fizx
Networking, maintenance work on prior jobs, and extensions to OSS.

I did well by making and contributing to some pretty common Rails plugins in
the Rails 0.10-1.x days, and blogging a bit. Some small tech-centric
businesses wanted some Rails expertise, were using the plugins, and contacted
me.

------
brianmckenzie
There are some really good comment here already, but my $.02:

My main gig these days was a client at an agency I used to work for. I was the
obvious choice for them because I built their software in the first place.

Otherwise, I've gotten contracts through friends, craigslist, and various
mailing lists.

Don't underestimate the value of tech-related mailing lists. In the past, when
I've been looking really hard, I've been able to get several leads/interviews
for contract jobs per week, just from mailing lists.

Also, help other hackers find jobs/contracts. It will come back to you.

------
kungfooey
Craigslist is a crapshoot. As are most other online gig-engines (elance,
odesk, etc). Granted, I have very little experience with them, but just
browsing them reveals poor leads, poor pay, and you're generally competing
with guys in eastern Europe and India who are going to eat your lunch with low
rates.

The alternative is setting up locally. All decent-sized cities have networking
opportunities, things like "Business Networking International" where it's
highly structured towards referrals (and while useful, sort of MLM-ish), or
things like Open Coffee or Geek Breakfast. Also there are usually user groups
in your preferred industry or programming language (PHP, Python, etc). Get out
there. One of the biggest mistakes I see newbie freelancers/contractors make
is that they expect jobs to come to them. If you troll the internet for leads
you're also competing against a bunch of other yahoos who are sitting in their
pajamas. Your leads will be fewer, and of a lower quality. Get out there,
shake some hands, show your face, and hopefully when people think, "Hey, I
need a [X]" they will think of you. If you get out there, you never know what
will generate business. I had one fifteen minute conversation with a guy and
he has been directly responsible at least a quarter of my business for 2008
via referrals.

Obviously referrals from existing happy clients are paramount. Whenever I
complete a project, I always mention that the best sort of compliment is a
referral. If they're happy with you, they won't mind giving your name if they
know that you can do the job.

I don't blog much. I do use twitter, but found it to only be marginally useful
in generating business. It is somewhat good at staying in touch with past
clients. LinkedIn is mostly a rolodex, good for little else than getting spam
from recruiters.

------
yan
I was actually thinking the same thing recently, and I'm fairly sure most
people here will respond with "wort of mouth" and recommendations. There are
few things you can do to get more work that will help you more than increasing
your network of people.

------
joshsharp
I've only been freelancing for about 5 months, but so far I've just been
referred into work from my friends on Twitter. My first job, the client
approached me through my site - ever since it has been followers on Twitter
who need work done themselves, or who have recommended me to whoever they know
that needs a developer.

I think this has probably been helped to some extent by networking with a lot
of these people in person at meetups. There's no substitute for coming across
as a nice guy who is knowledgeable and enthusiastic about what he does.

~~~
tocomment
What kinds of meetups did you go to? How did you let people know you're
available?

~~~
joshsharp
Mostly just this: <http://melbourne.twitterusergroup.com/> though I imagine
attending things like StartupCamps would also be beneficial.

Letting people know is as simple as putting it in your introduction when you
first meet. "So what do you do again?" "I'm a freelance web developer
actually, at the moment I'm working on X but I do a lot of different stuff
including Y and Z." There's no need to go overboard on 'selling yourself', if
people like you and know what you do that's enough.

------
icey
100% word of mouth / referrals. When I was just getting started, I just asked
my clients if they knew anyone that I might be of service to. They were happy
enough with my work that just asking that question a few times kept me busy
for years. Try it - it might surprise you!

------
mattmcknight
I worked for two large companies in a consulting/contracting role for about
eight years and built a reputation for good work and network of contacts from
there. I'm still trying to expand out into some other markets to get a little
diversification, so I've been trying a variety of routes to make that happen-
mainly looking for problems that I could solve and building some prototypes
that could be adapted to their needs. We have about 25 people on my team now
though, so I have the coverage to do that kind of stuff.

------
oscardelben
Call 100 business websites owner in your area, and ask them how they heard the
first time about the agency that made their website, and if you are smart
enough, publish them in your blog to build more reputation as an internet
expert.

------
maneesh
I've gotten all of my clients, for both writing (freelance blogging and
copywriting) as well as programming, from job boards. If you have some
previous work that was outstanding, you can often jump to the top of those
boards.

-M

------
quellhorst
By teaching others, doing a great job, giving presentations. I don't see any
sign of a down economy, heck I'm making more $ than I ever had before.

------
hotshothenry
Thanks for the awesome responses guys, for those of you using craigslist,
where do you post?

~~~
quellhorst
Posting on craigslist sucks. I got called from shitty recruiters, my cellphone
gets automated spam calls now, and in general I wasted my time.

------
brandnewlow
Make friends.

------
sarvesh
Craigslist. Try and get a local client first it helps. You can start building
your network from there on.

~~~
mattdennewitz
craigslist, confidence, and flexibility

