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The High Cost of Freelancing (blog.thinkful.com)
23 points by brebory 4287 days ago
1 comments
jonawesomegreen 4287 days ago
> More likely, you’re going to be figuring out what it takes to find people who need your services and how to convince them to choose you over someone else.

Does anyone have any experience with this they could share? I've always wanted to get into freelancing, but not knowing how to build a pipeline of work has always held me back.

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jaf656s 4287 days ago
This is the million dollar question, and is sort of a "choose your own adventure" type of story.

I personally got my first clients by

1) doing contract work for my former employer.

2) had written a library for an api client that was valuable for businesses.

There are a bunch of other ways like:

* cold calling,

* cold emailing,

* networking,

* literally walking into businesses and talking to people,

* setting up meetings with people who you can provide value for,

* going to meetups,

* asking agencies for extra work on a subcontract basis,

* giving presentations at a local event about the value you can provide,

* looking online at job postings,

* create a website and wait for people to find it

* create a website and pay for people to find it (ads)

The list goes on, but you should get the idea. There's a good article on it here: http://clientflow.io/blog/33-ways-to-get-more-clients/.

You need to pick a couple ways and see how you do with them. I'd strongly recommend doing this before leaving your job, it will be much less stressful. You would want to save up several months worth of expenses, too, for the same reason.

I also strongly recommend that you pick a specific type of business or client to target. It will make things easier to get started since you won't be overwhelmed: http://tenlinesofcode.com/2014/09/09/increase-your-value-by-...

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justintocci 4287 days ago
When i first started out i didn't know anyone but i was a straight commission salesperson in the past. I figured, just go door to door. How hard could it be?

Practically impossible.

I got so much resistance up front that I could hardly process it. i solved the problem by designing a ruler with a bunch of Excel shortcuts on it. i put my card right in the middle. the ruler was just card stock. across the top was inches and across the bottom pixels(72dpi)

when i walked in i just held up the ruler inbetween me and the first person i saw and said "here, have a free ruler" etc... worked like a charm. contact me if you want the design, i get them printed on plastic now. customers love them

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