I’m considering doing some freelance work as a backend dev. I have around 8 years of experience as a full time employee, but I’m not entirely sure how to get the ball rolling as a freelancer.
What are some good platforms to find clients? The only one I know of is searching job postings on LinkedIn.
Are platforms like Upwork and Fiverr good? I’ve heard that they’re a bit of a rat race, and honestly looking at Fiverr ads it does seem that way.
Stay off of Fivr or equivalent if you want to make real money and get a real business off the ground.
As for clients: networking. You just have to be a smooth talker to make it in business.
How do you network with zero or close to zero initial “connections”?
Sure it’s easy to get jobs when you already have a dozen happy clients who recommend you to others. But how do you start initially? Through friends and their connections?
Bullshit. Fake it till you make it. Your new clients don’t know how many current ones you have, regardless of the network you’ve built (mostly).
In business, the cardinal rule is if you want business, look like you don’t need it.
Getting started is always the hardest part. Once you’ve done some good work you can start relying more on word of mouth and charge more.
I would recommend doing some small jobs on Fiverr or Upwork. Contracting isn’t for everyone, nor is running a small business. Fiverr and Upwork will be pretty disconnected from your local contacts so if you mess up or decide it’s not for you then it’s easier to leave.
Ultimately it’s networking, instead of rolling your eyes when an acquaintance has an app idea you can offer to help.
Question: How long does it take to get the proverbial ball rolling on Upwork? I used it for a month and spent $200+ and wasn’t able to get any work.
I started by getting shitty jobs like $10/hour that were not enough to sustain myself but good for building work experience and some nice comments in my profile. I can’t remember paying anything to Upwork but they were less agressive back then.
In about two months I got regular paying jobs.
What industry do you work in? I would focus on that. The truth is that programing is somewhat of a commodity, and a lot of your value is going to come from industry knowledge.
I’ve had good luck with Upwork, moved two of my clients off Upwork. Worked with them for a few years after. One went out of business, one was paying a lot and demanding a lot, eventually I wasn’t able to keep up for personal reasons.
I also had a professional website and ran Google Ads (at a time it was still relevant), got many small gigs and one long-time client this way. I should mention I also wrote and sold a small software addon there, mostly as a way to acquire new clients - tried to make the support top-tier and lure clients into giving me other work.
After that, I haven’t been actively looking for more work and eventually shut the website down as the software became irrelevant and I had work by word of mouth.
