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Ask HN: How do you find clients?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you find clients?

#71

Post by elimisteve »

1. Meetup Groups; 2. Startup Weekend; 3. Hackerspaces

Any Meetups related to the web -- events for developers, UI/UX, and biz meetups -- are great for networking. I'm a developer who gets emails from designers who want to talk on a big job that requires custom dev. You should be able to do similar -- find people who want to take on a job that requires more design or marketing than they can (or want to) personally do. (This may be a good way to meet people directly who need your services, not just people who will give you referrals.)

Attending a Startup Weekend hosted in your town is a _fantastic_ way to meet people, especially if you can talk shop with them like many HNers can.

It's quite the commitment, but co-founding a hackerspace has worked wonders for me. I meet a lot of smart people -- many of whom aren't web developers -- who then refer people they know to me.

If you're a designer or biz person, wander into a hackerspace near you.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find clients?

#73

Post by Schwolop »

mgkimsal wrote: post #67
Schwolop wrote: post #51

The best way I've found to get freelance jobs is to tell people that yes you are unemployed but you're not interested in the kind of work they want done, even though you could do it in your sleep. Then when they push back, quote them an absolutely ridiculously high rate that they wouldn't possibly accept. Then, for some reason I haven't quite fathomed yet, they often say "yeah, that's fine. See you this afternoon." T…

It's not necessarily just 'rich' people/clients, but the effect is more easily seen there. What you're really talking about is 'value' pricing. Figure out what value something has to someone, price based on that value, not on the value or cost of your time, and see what happens. I did a job for someone that took 20 minutes (including time to invoice) and I sent an invoice for $200. My understanding was that they'd ha…

Yeah, it is 'value' pricing, but I think key to its success is both parties having some understanding of the concept. If the vendor prices by value, and the payee doesn't grok the concept, they'll likely think it too high. In my experience, rich people tend to have a better appreciation of this.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find clients?

#74

Post by canadiancreed »

pud wrote: post #34

A hack that worked for me when I was freelancing, was to put my resume on various job boards as if I were looking for full-time employment. When companies called me to set up interviews, I said (on the phone) "Turns out I decided I'm going to freelance. What was the project you wanted to interview me for? Perhaps I can help with that, as a freelancer." I got a lot of business that way and it pretty much started my ca…

Tried that for a while when attempting to do the same thing, and it would effectively kill their interest. Perhaps it's market or location dependant?

Re: Ask HN: How do you find clients?

#75

Post by sherm8n »

IceCreamYou wrote: post #50
adelevie wrote: post #24

Give away some kind of free software that is useful and production-quality. That something should also be related to a larger, growing trend. You'll generally get higher quality clients, a non-low rate, and a more fun project (since it's centered on using a tool that you built). And you also don't have to make cold calls--the software should stand on its own and send the leads to you. I've learned this from my own ex…

I can confirm this. I wrote quite a bit of open-source software that has attracted thousands of users over the years and now my clients find me instead of the other way around. You need to do more than just write the software though -- you need to be active in discussions where people are looking for software like yours, because that's often how people end up arriving at your software. Ideally the software you're bui…

What do you do for consulting and how did you transition into it?

Re: Ask HN: How do you find clients?

#76

Post by roninresearcher »

sidmitra wrote: post #11

Here's what i did to build http://www.cloudshuffle.com from a single dev(me) to a team of over 6 devs(+ a designer) in various countries. Also, from building social network clones(for $200) to building proper webapps for well known startups and companies like Compete, Hubspot. * Sign up for all freelancer Marketplaces: Elance, Odesk, Guru, Freelancer, RentACoder. * Sign up for RSS feeds for jobs(full time/freelance)…

Great advice thanks for sharing your experience!!

Re: Ask HN: How do you find clients?

#77

Post by marcamillion »

binarysolo wrote: post #63
marcamillion wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the response rate for you? Because I tried this, and it turned out to be pretty low - like 1 - 2% (which was on the high-end). So just to get a response, I had to send 50 - 100 emails. Maybe I am misremembering, but it is something like that.

Weird. For me it was literally like 10 out of 10 replies. Though I pretty much had it set to search for "data scraping", "data mining", "data science", "big data", "machine learning", and "data analytics", then have it forward gigs/jobs/etc. to me via RSS.

Interesting...oh right...I can see why you would get more replies. That's a good idea.

Looking for smaller niches where the respondents won't get 200 replies - is probably a better use case.

That's interesting.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find clients?

#78

Post by CowboyRobot »

My most reliable clients have been through contacts I made when I had crap cubicle jobs. I don't know your situation but it may be worth snagging a cube job long enough to meet people. And it may be totally counter-intuitive and potentially mind-crushing, but the people in sales meet all the clients who have money to spend on development. If you could find your way into the social events that sales people go to you'll be halfway there. It's cynical, but getting gigs depends on people seeing you as "a good guy" more than whatever skills you have.

That said, one trick I learned was to always scan the local news looking for local businesses who recently got grants or some other windfall of funding. I assumed (usually correctly) that they would spend some of that windfall on building or revamping their website. I got some good long-term work that way. It was a cold call, but one with research behind it

Re: Ask HN: How do you find clients?

#79

Post by dmak »

bpatrianakos wrote: post #56

Don't avoid cold calls. I started doing web development for myself almost 3 years ago and I was able to support myself and then was picked up by a much larger tech company in Chicago. I work at both now and this is how I made it: Did one free job for a local small business. I sought them out. I just called, told them honestly that I needed to start a portfolio and offered them a free site. I did it quick, on Wordpres…

Just giving my honest opinion, but those "so-so" websites look like websites from the mid to late 90s.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find clients?

#80

Post by logn »

boopsie wrote: post #2

Cold calls rarely work -- unless you are as good at selling (yourself) as you are as a web designer. That's a rare combination. Word of mouth is the most powerful way to get business, of course. So the first step is to let the people you know know that you're available. Tell the people who might need your skills that you have them; if they don't need you, they might know someone who does. (This is a good use for Link…

I think the point was that cold-calling works if you're selling your skills dirt cheap or free, expressly for the purpose of building a portfolio.
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