Ask HN: How do you sell yourself as a new freelancer to clients?

I've decided that I want to start freelancing doing web design for local businesses/organizations. It seems that established freelancers or people with extremely good portfolios don't have much problems finding work due to the amount of referrals they get. But for someone starting from scratch, is there a secret sauce to getting your first few customers? Currently I'm just introducing myself and handing out cards to office managers of businesses.

Most referrals actually come from other professionals (i.e. no I'm busy/too expensive, but there's this new kid that looks pretty promising.)

So what should get the ball rolling for you is to build one really great portfolio site at the top of your ability, making it as good as you possibly know how to make it.

Be prepared for it to be taken apart by a keen eye all the way down to someone checking out your HTML/CSS/JavaScript (don't minify!) to see if it's good quality.

Then find your local frontend/freelance community and stand out, be confident, tell people to check you out, approach top-notch guys and ask them for feedback and you should be all set ;)

Start proving yourself anyway you can, right now. You need to start building a kick ass portfolio if you want the referrals to come rolling in.

Take on pro bono projects for charities you respect, shitty lower-paying clients and launch a side project that demonstrates your skills in a real world use cases.

Work into every conversation that you're a freelance designer. It's a big deal.

My last piece of advice is to network with quality people. Stay far way from the insurance agents and MLM'ers; they're looking for the quick sale and they will connect you with people that want the same. Make it a point to get to know _business owners_ and people that call the shots--the ones writing the checks.

Oh, yeah. One more thing: This isn't gonna be easy. So, good luck! :)

For me it was down to networks. When people know a guy who builds websites, that guy already has a starting advantage.

It may be that you'll have to work up the ladder of complexity, but you really just want a portfolio behind you.

People always advise not to do sites for free but at university I did one or two websites for different societies and that was enough to get enough connections to start.

I was doing freelance web work for the past 4 years while being at university. If you don't have an established network of contacts that might benefit with some jobs it's very easy to end up with some "bad" (not sure what other word to choose) clients. Apart from the standard marketing stuff, here is a few things I learned :

- Strong portfolio is a must. If you don't have any freelance work done yet create some templates and mock designs.

- Get to know some other web-creators around you. Some of them are so overloaded with work they might pass some jobs to you.

- When clients look for somebody to get a website done, they quite often contact universities. The job is being then emailed to all the students. For me, it was a goldmine. If you're currently not at the university, befriend somebody who is. Those jobs are not paid a lot, but will help you to build your portfolio and meet new potential sources of income.

- Do stuff for free. If you're not working on something for money at the moment, do some web-charity work. You will get some experience, both in web development itself as well as in dealing with clients.

- Craigslists/gumtree : only if you're very desperate. I did find some local freelance jobs there. Most of them were crap. Once I even made a website for an obscure escort agency. However, you can still advertise there but be prepared to handle some time-wasters.

- Local business centers (in scotland we have www.business.scotland.gov.uk) seem to be a good place for networking too. They do quite a lot of meetings and are happy to connect various start-up/companies/freelancers together. One of my good friends started like that 4 years ago - now he has more work than he can physically handle.

Hope this helps!