This past week I received three phone calls from friends that I haven’t spoken to in a long time, when I asked how they were doing they each painted similar pictures, unhappy at their current jobs, hoping to pickup enough side projects and clients to justify going out on their own. I know these guys and have worked with them in the past on various projects, they are very talented. One of them is a graphic artist and the other two are developers, very talented developers. Each of them wanted to let me know that they were looking to pickup some freelance work and wanted me to keep them in mind, I told them I definitely would do that, but currently we seem to have everything under control at Pleth, but that could change quickly given the nature of our business.
One of the guys asked me what advice I had for him, he hasn’t done any freelance work in several years and was finding it hard to get his groove back. I shared with him a couple of things that I picked up over the years, I used to do a lot of freelance work back in the day. In fact, that’s how I got started. I was doing work for another company and developing websites for their clients, occasionally I would have a relationship with the client but often times I would not, which was fine with me. Here’s are the things I shared with him:
Referrals are Huge!
When I was first getting started on my own I quickly found that a lot of my clients were the direct result of friend referrals, the same holds true for client referrals. I would say that probably 80% of the calls I have gotten over the years as a result of a referral have materialized into projects. When you do work for a client, there’s no shame in telling them to tell their friends.
Reach Out to Small-Medium Sized Ad Agencies
I found a lot of success early on by reaching out to ad agencies and letting them know that I was available to come on board as a member of their team on a project by project basis. At the time I was breaking into the business the web was still somewhat new, and very few ad agencies actually staffed web developers, it was almost always a product that they outsourced, and even today there are a lot of smaller to medium sized agencies out there that still have a lot of success outsourcing their web work. Trust me, ad agencies are awesome alliances to have and it’s a win-win for all parties involved.
Get Out and Meet People
This, for me, was always the toughest part, because as I have mentioned many times in the past, I hate playing the part of a salesman. What worked best for me was to approach potential clients that I had a sincere interest in working with, regardless as to whether they had a website or not. I would first establish a relationship with them and then share with them what I did. Almost 100% of the time after finding out that I developed websites they would either tell me they had a website but it wasn’t doing as good as they thought it should or ask me if I thought they needed a website. It didn’t hurt that I had pre-rehearsed these answers in my head a few times before approaching them and had a smooth spill that I laid on them. Early on I can remember landing just about every project that I went after, or course the market wasn’t as saturated with developers as it is now.
Befriend Other Developers
I know this sounds weird but trust me it’s in your best interest to be friends with your competitors for a couple of reasons. Over the years I have been brought in by one of my competitors to help them out on a project, and several times I have brought in one of my competitors to help out. You would be surprised at how many times I have been able to land deals that were actually referred to me by one of my competitors. Why would they refer a client to me? They might have been overwhelmed with projects in-house, or possibly I was a better fit for the project. For example, I was one of the first in my area to use Flash on websites, and I admit now that it was kind of hokey, but that’s what a lot of people wanted, the animations and the music, etc. A lot of my competitors didn’t do flash, but they would often hire me just to do the flash components. This same theory can apply to PHP, ASP, ColdFusion, or whatever areas you are the strongest in, be open about what your strengths and weaknesses are.
Another advantage to hanging out with other people in the industry is that you can pick up on a lot of useful techniques or emerging technologies that are out there. Let’s face it, it’s tough to stay on top of everything that is going on today within the web development community. Once a month I have dinner and hangout with at least 50 other web developers at the Central Arkansas Refresh. Technically, we all compete against one another for clients, but when we get together we share ideas and learn from one another, what this does is make our industry better as a whole.
Build Up a Portfolio ASAP
One of the first things a potential client is going to ask for is some examples of your work. I found out early on that my portfolio was a big part of why a lot of clients chose me over my competitors. Even if you do a job pro bono be sure to include it in your portfolio, the more screenshots you can crowd onto a page the better.
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I hope that this has been helpful, I am sure that I will remember some more things later, but this is all that comes to mind right now, it’s been a while since I was out beating the bushes looking for clients but I think that a lot of these tips are still relevant today as they were 7 or 8 years ago. Also, if Pleth can assist you w/ hosting or email solutions, please don’t hesitate to let us know…
Questions or Comments?