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Finding Your First Clients As A Freelancer

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Re: Finding Your First Clients As A Freelancer

#2
Finding your first client is always an hard mission. You need to be creative and sometimes think out of the box. Mainly your first clients will come to you from mouth to ear and they will probably be friends or friends of friends. My advice is to ask for low price then the market at the beginning, it will gain those clients that will want to earn your low price. Give the best service you can and they will pass your name to their friends. That way in no time you will be able to collect some happy clients and build your portfolio. Good Luck!

Re: Finding Your First Clients As A Freelancer

#3
A friend swears by https://www.elance.com/ (He hires.)

What is more interesting is that he knows how long it should take (within 20%) and discards the crazy cheap offers.

Much of what he does is 'find' people on elance, takes a gamble, and if it works out, he hits them up again for more work.

The more interesting thing about his work process. He always always pays on successful milestone delivery immediately.

Re: Finding Your First Clients As A Freelancer

#4
I am a freelancer and I would say Odesk is the best place for freelancing. I have worked on both Elance and Odesk. My first job as a freelancer was on Elance and also the last one on Elance. Odesk seems to have more good projects on the field I work on and that is tasks automation on servers.

As far as getting the first job is concerned, I got mine by quoting a price of $7/hour(lower than the minimum wage) and suggesting the client that he should choose python over bash for the script he wanted despite his unknown attachment with bash. And my suggestion worked out pretty well. I made an account on Odesk on 10th Dec, 2013 and I have already completed 2 projects and 3 are on progress on Odesk.

Re: Finding Your First Clients As A Freelancer

#6

I am a freelancer and I would say Odesk is the best place for freelancing. I have worked on both Elance and Odesk. My first job as a freelancer was on Elance and also the last one on Elance. Odesk seems to have more good projects on the field I work on and that is tasks automation on servers. As far as getting the first job is concerned, I got mine by quoting a price of $7/hour(lower than the minimum wage) and sugges…

Could you elaborate on the differences between the two, and why you decided to write off all of Elance after one bad experience?

Re: Finding Your First Clients As A Freelancer

#8
post #2

Finding your first client is always an hard mission. You need to be creative and sometimes think out of the box. Mainly your first clients will come to you from mouth to ear and they will probably be friends or friends of friends. My advice is to ask for low price then the market at the beginning, it will gain those clients that will want to earn your low price. Give the best service you can and they will pass your n…

Also, don't underestimate the value of making sure a client is happy. My first client required little more than setting up a WordPress theme and doing some design tweaks. I bent over backwards for them, and now about half of my clients are referrals from that first client.

I'm not saying that you should do everything for everyone, because some people will be unreasonable; when you're first starting out it's probably in your best interest to be a little more flexible.

Re: Finding Your First Clients As A Freelancer

#10
post #3

A friend swears by https://www.elance.com/ (He hires.) What is more interesting is that he knows how long it should take (within 20%) and discards the crazy cheap offers. Much of what he does is 'find' people on elance, takes a gamble, and if it works out, he hits them up again for more work. The more interesting thing about his work process. He always always pays on successful milestone delivery immediately.

Sounds interesting, is that through a bad experience at the lower rates? It always strikes me that the rates on these sites seem very low, puzzlingly so even at the top end. Especially as the projects seem to be relatively short term.
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