How to Find Your First Freelance Clients

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Why Do You Need Clients?

You’re not going to get very far as a freelancer if you haven’t got business coming in. Clients are your lifeblood. You may have monetisable skills, but unless anyone is going to pay for them, you’re not freelancing yet. Regardless of you get them in, your first clients really make or break your freelancing aspirations.

In the early days, clients may come in all different forms – some may ask for one-off work, while others want to work for sustained periods; some may want you for specific tasks, while others want you to learn to do new things for them. All that matters is that you get the ball rolling.

What Do You Need?

Price List

Yes, this is going to be flexible depending on what work actually comes in, but at least know how much you’re generally going to charge for your activity. If you don’t know how much you should charge, check the rates that others selling your service charge on People Per Hour. Create a full rate card based around an hourly rate and think about packages to simplify things.

Know How Quickly You Work

If you write, you need to know how long it takes you to type 500 words. If you make websites, how long will a basic WordPress site take to complete. Yes, it will fluctuate, but you’re much more of an expert on your work rate than your potential clients, so figure this out before you approach people to do tasks for them. You don’t want to overpromise with tight deadlines or put people off with distant deadlines.

Portfolio

Unless you’re an accountant, every freelancer is going to require some evidence of the work they’ve done in the past. Don’t worry if you haven’t got any decent previous clients – or any at all – just as long as you can present some high quality work on command. The more you have, the better, so if you know your portfolio is light, bulk it up. Would you hire a graphic designer without seeing what they can do first? Expect the same in other fields too.

Where are the Clients?

Freelancing would not have been for me in a pre-internet era. All of that IRL networking just wouldn’t have been my bag. Lucky enough, you don’t need to do nearly as much as that to secure clients these days.

Freelancer Hubs

The list of service exchanges is constantly growing. I would that prospective UK freelancers focus their pursuits on People Per Hour. It’s a site that gives you a lot of flexibility to list diverse services with fair commission rates and isn’t riddled with people that undercut on price.

As far as the rest, I could reel off a massive list of them. A couple of the most popular general ones are Fiverr and UpWork, but there are so many niche-focused ones that may be more fruitful for you. For example, copywriters are spoiled for choice with Textbroker, Constant-Content.com and all of the rest.

On Social Media

You’re probably looking to work with clients with some sort of online presence. Finding businesses or individuals that want to work with you just requires a little focus. Work out what industry you would like to start off with (and know well) and go on a hunt for the ones that need support that you can help with via Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

An easy example to start off with is a business that struggles to maintain a consistent stream of social content. It would be easy to swoop in and request whether they need support and go from there. The same applies for a business that you’ve noticed has an email newsletter but seems to use it very infrequently. If you’re an email marketing whizz, you can prepare a proposal to enhance it for them.

Whatever your expertise happens to be, you need to get on your grind to find leads. Contact enough and you’ll eventually come across someone happy to let you take the lead for you. Expect rejections and lots of fake promises along the way, but that’s all part of freelancing anyway.

In the Shadows

You never know who could be watching the things you put out there. If you’re active online with a website and social media profiles, you’re going to have people follow along – often silently. Never underestimate your personal branding.

You’re doing your marketing on autopilot, and these people can end up being your clients. I know I’ve hired people that I’ve seen around on YouTube and Twitter before, so others must do it too. If you don’t intend for your personal social media accounts to be seen as a reflection of how your freelance work is, either make them more professional or consider making fresh, branded ones.