[throwcean]

Thanks. That's valuable input for sure. I don't have the option to freelance for my current employer but that's OK. I know a few people that might know potential customers They have worked as freelancers themselves.

I will now go on reading your blog post and potentially others you have written. Thanks!

BTW I have read that advice to position yourself as a specialist in a niche before. For all others reading this thread here I can also recommend this article: https://andyadams.org/everything-i-know-about-freelancing/

[gregjor]

A business value niche, not a technical niche. Your clients will most often have no idea what React or PHP or Postgres mean. They will understand cost, risk, opportunity. Domain expertise has a lot more value to a freelancer than technical expertise.

I usually start with clients by asking them to list their top five or ten pain points or unfulfilled needs. Those are usually business problems: Our invoices get sent out late, we’re not calculating shipping charges accurately. Sometimes they are technical problems: server crashes every other day, we don’t have good backups, we failed a security audit. I’ve never heard low-level programming problems as top pain points. The potential client wants to hear that you can address their actual problems. How many years of React experience you have, or how cool you think Rust is, are not relevant.