The life of the freelancer allows you to create on your own terms, live without the 5’oclockalarm and work from anywhere. Unfortunately, this life doesn’t include client’s as freebies. All this is tougher if you are a newbie without a measurable work experience. But clients aren’t unicorns; it’s not impossible to land them and in this article we would be covering proven steps for landing clients as a budding freelancer and how to maintain them so that you aren’t in a client search loop.
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How to Get your first clients as a Freelancer
1. Build a portfolio of your own projects
Curate projects that display to potential consumers what you can do. A creative portfolio is not a resume, it’s also not a conversation between you and a colleague so don’t write industry jargon.
Simply have your projects show in an easy to understand manner how you approach a project.
When you curate these projects (five high-end projects would do) have them hosted live for clients to view them anywhere at any time. your own website is good for this; it gives maximum control and allows you build an online presence.
If you don’t have the resources for a self-owned website Here are some free sites to host your portfolio for free . For developers there’s Codepen (https://codepen.io/), Glitch (http://glitch.me/), JSBin (https://jsbin.com/). For designers: Behance (https://www.behance.net/), Dribble https://dribbble.com/ and popular Instagram.
2. Utilize the internet
The internet can be your ally in landing clients if utilized well.
In the first place it’s a good avenue to get your work in front of people who already require your services. AI Falk from Medium shares how she uses Instagram to get her service in front of potential clients check out her post here @.
You can also try cold emails to reach out to potential clients and pique their attention towards what you do.
In using the internet try not to get caught up in the noise. Filter your activities to what’s essential to your goal.
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3. Be in touch with the veterans
Your network of contacts should include people who have succeeded in making a living out of what you do.
Your goal is to know people, who have achieved the clients you would like to work with. learn from them either through assisting in their own projects or mentoring and you will imbibe the work ethics they have used overtime to land clients.
How do you Keep a freelance client?
At some point you would land dream clients if the effort is done well but then comes the second part of this write-up – keeping them. The keeping part is crucial, because if achieved you will are sure of a consistent paycheck through recurring jobs from and the ripple effect of referrals.
In keeping clients be concerned about two things; reputation for quality delivery and inter-personal skills
Quality delivery: Quality can be by how fast you deliver good work which for a client means they can get rolling with their own project plans, they know you for this and will keep coming to the guy who does the best job in the shortest amount of time.
People skill: People skill is vital to building a recurring relationship with a client and influences how their view your work. If You can’t deliver good work in quick time you won’t be able to keep clients coming back. If you don’t communicate clearly with them during the conceptualization, production and handoff stage of your work… you won’t keep client!
Clients remember how they were treated and wouldn’t want to come back for another dose of poor treatment.
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Landing clients is not a joy ride
Landing clients takes longer than the time required to finish reading this article. Patience is thus required for it to work In addition your ingenuity is important as the rules states here are not fixed and you might have to break or adapt them to suit your circumstance.
