| 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! |