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Ask HN: How do you find clients when you have no network and can only do remote?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you find clients when you have no network and can only do remote?

#71

Post by urahara »

orthoganol wrote: post #59
penpapersw wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh also I've made http://affluentconfidante.com/ in Clojure and http://editfight.com/ in Node.js using WebSockets and vanilla JS, each in the span of about a day, within the past 2 weeks. Unfortunately that, plus the iOS apps I posted about in my submissions, are about the full extent of my public resume. I've done a lot of private work that I'm not at liberty to talk about, and all I have to show for that are skills…

Honest feedback: those "one day" sites are not impressive, and they will not enable you to win decent contracts. I get what you said, but if you really do have 5+ years experience it confused me why you, someone who want to win clients for freelancing, have not spent any real time, even if a couple weeks, building something impressive for your portfolio. Or building something impressive x 5 given the time frame here.…

Could you give a link to your portfolio to get an idea what kind of portfolio attracts clients these days?

Re: Ask HN: How do you find clients when you have no network and can only do remote?

#72

Post by wtracy »

pacomerh wrote: post #69
wtracy wrote: post #4

The problems with Upwork and Freelancer, while significant, are regularly blown out of proportion. I don't recommend them for more than finding short gigs when you're in a pinch, but they are useful for that. Do be prepared to lose a lot of jobs to bidders from the third world. Take advantage of anything that you can use to differentiate yourself. Also, get a stack of business cards and start going to local business…

Honest question. Are business cards still useful?, do people actually hold to them?. If I'm interested in a person I trade emails, done. I don't know anyone who holds business cards from other people.

If you're only doing business with techies, that's probably the best way to do it.

When dealing with small business owners, you will meet people who don't have a smartphone handy to fire off an email from. Shoot, you will meet people who do not have an email address.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find clients when you have no network and can only do remote?

#73

Post by wtracy »

aoe7uthaoe wrote: post #39
wtracy wrote: post #4

The problems with Upwork and Freelancer, while significant, are regularly blown out of proportion. I don't recommend them for more than finding short gigs when you're in a pinch, but they are useful for that. Do be prepared to lose a lot of jobs to bidders from the third world. Take advantage of anything that you can use to differentiate yourself. Also, get a stack of business cards and start going to local business…

Most of this sounds like reasonable advice. I will warn however, that if you go to the Chamber of Commerce, be prepared to have a lot of people misunderstand what you do (no matter how you frame it) and to get a lot of time-wasting inquiries wanting you to fix their Windows problems for peanuts, even if what you do is, say, graphic design. Likewise, my experience with things on meetup.com has been terrible. It felt l…

That's just the cost of doing business.

There are good groups on Meetup, at least in my area, but you do have to sift through a lot of chaff to find the wheat.

EDIT: "a lot of time-wasting inquiries wanting you to fix their Windows problems for peanuts"

If OP is as desperate for short-term cash as he says he is, Windows problems are another opportunity. Also, when dealing with people who see all these unrelated issues as "computer problems", establishing trust is more important than demonstrating skill. As a result, you'd be surprised how often fixing Windows problems can lead to actual development work, either as your client grows, or through referrals.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find clients when you have no network and can only do remote?

#74

Post by s73ver »

orthoganol wrote: post #59
penpapersw wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh also I've made http://affluentconfidante.com/ in Clojure and http://editfight.com/ in Node.js using WebSockets and vanilla JS, each in the span of about a day, within the past 2 weeks. Unfortunately that, plus the iOS apps I posted about in my submissions, are about the full extent of my public resume. I've done a lot of private work that I'm not at liberty to talk about, and all I have to show for that are skills…

Honest feedback: those "one day" sites are not impressive, and they will not enable you to win decent contracts. I get what you said, but if you really do have 5+ years experience it confused me why you, someone who want to win clients for freelancing, have not spent any real time, even if a couple weeks, building something impressive for your portfolio. Or building something impressive x 5 given the time frame here.…

What kind of thing would you consider impressive? Quite frankly, I have no idea what I should make that would reflect several years of experience (there is also the issue of finding time for all this among other hobbies, but that’s another issue)

Re: Ask HN: How do you find clients when you have no network and can only do remote?

#76

Post by lukaszkups »

I had similar problem while ago. I've decided to leave my previous workplace and search for a new one full-time.

I was applying to both remote and office-based offers, but only in my location (which suffers from lack of good job offers currently-most of them are dedicated for students with low payment).

It took me 2months to finally land in a new workplace)and it is remote which was my very dream form of working-I've done some remote freelance in the past and loved it)

I've applied to dozen job offers, most from LinkedIn, some from remote portals mentioned by other users in this thread.

In the end I've got a job from a job offer that was on stackoverflow, so maybe check there because I don't see anyone mentioned this as a source of job offers.

Keep on trying, as You can see it won't magically come to You without any action. Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: How do you find clients when you have no network and can only do remote?

#77

Post by [deleted] »

s73ver wrote: post #74
orthoganol wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest feedback: those "one day" sites are not impressive, and they will not enable you to win decent contracts. I get what you said, but if you really do have 5+ years experience it confused me why you, someone who want to win clients for freelancing, have not spent any real time, even if a couple weeks, building something impressive for your portfolio. Or building something impressive x 5 given the time frame here.…

What kind of thing would you consider impressive? Quite frankly, I have no idea what I should make that would reflect several years of experience (there is also the issue of finding time for all this among other hobbies, but that’s another issue)

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How do you find clients when you have no network and can only do remote?

#78

Post by navya1089 »

Hi,

I would suggest you to have a LinkedIn profile and update it regularly and start building the network now.. It is never too late. Meanwhile, for the job which you cannot wait for, there are many remote job portals like remoteok , weworkremotely , remote.co ,remotive, workingnomads, WFH.IO ,dribble etc which you can try .. But I would suggest you check angellist (angel.co) which offers jobs from mainly startups all over the world.

Another tip : Apply to local companies which are offering full time jobs , attend the interview and try to convince them to offer you a work from home based role ( It might work out, you never know).

Hope you find a suitabLe job real soon.

All the best ! :)

Re: Ask HN: How do you find clients when you have no network and can only do remote?

#79

Post by tluyben2 »

cjalmeida wrote: post #68
jaymzcampbell wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fellow HN user, gil_vegliach[2], wrote up a very good summary[1] of the Toptal 3% filtering process - it seems fairly rigorous, consisting of multiple rounds with a week long project (doesn't mention if this is paid or not). Basically, it sounds like a "full" tech interview. [1] http://gilvegliach.it/?id=14 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gil_vegliach

I'm on Toptal. I can confirm the blog post is quite accurate on the screening process. They likely receive applicants across the world and they must have a quick filter in process. Remember a lot of so-called "software engineers" can't even solve FizzBuzz. Allegedly, only 5% pass the initial algorithmic step, and the other half fails the other steps leaving only about 3% of the applicants. You set the rates, though t…

Not sure if that changed but I wanted to hire people there as I knew the screening process was rigorous; then I saw what they would charge me and the difference with what the coder gets. They made extortionist markup; I thought Upwork was bad in that respect but his was far worse. Then I read threads like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10107448 . Maybe they changed since but I do not think so...

What rates do you get? Seems we are still talking $30/hr with them getting $100/hr. In a 'normal' company this makes sense: all kinds of benefits, office, computer, car, whatever, but for them, for freelancers, it is not all too great for the coders. But again, might have changed. Just think if you are in that top 3%, why do you need Toptal... Every company is looking for you.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find clients when you have no network and can only do remote?

#80

Post by orthoganol »

urahara wrote: post #71
orthoganol wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest feedback: those "one day" sites are not impressive, and they will not enable you to win decent contracts. I get what you said, but if you really do have 5+ years experience it confused me why you, someone who want to win clients for freelancing, have not spent any real time, even if a couple weeks, building something impressive for your portfolio. Or building something impressive x 5 given the time frame here.…

Could you give a link to your portfolio to get an idea what kind of portfolio attracts clients these days?

There's nothing tricky going on. You should have things that are comparable to what your clients will pay you to build. Mine paid me for their startups, and my portfolio has multiple, complete startup-like prototypes.
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