

Ask HN: How to become a freelancer without using a third party website? - jorgecastillo

A lot of times I&#x27;ve read comments here, about how looking for projects through oDesk, Freelancer or such websites leads to getting bad clients and to the devaluation the work you do. So if not through this websites how do you get clients? If your starting the obvious thing to me would be to build a portfolio, distribute your mobile apps, use a VM to host your sample web apps, upload code to GitHub, etc. This seems like common sense to me but what comes after that?
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whittet
Your premise needs to be more specific. Such as, "like Linkedin, Blogger,
Wordpress, Hosting service, App Engine, Amazon services, Github, etc." or
"focused on mobile/desktop (app dev/test/product design)". I'd say if you're a
freelancer knowing your specialty and not trying to be so broad based is a
good idea, as you're essentially a one man show and no time to do everything
from scratch. Looking forward to the answers..

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jorgecastillo
Thank for your feedback, I'll be more specific.

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MichaelCrawford
I once handed out a paper brochure at tradeshows. That is, I didn't have a
booth myself, I clipped my business card to my brochure then gave it to the
people who were in the booths.

Be careful not to do this to someone who could otherwise be talking to a
paying customer or distributor - that's what they pay so much money for. But
if they're not busy they're usually cool with it.

I'm about to make paper brochures again, but this time I will mail them.

Don't just wait for gigs to be announced; learn to find the contracts on your
own. When a gig comes up on oDesk, of course lots of people respond, so it
drives the price down, also you are less likely to get it.

