How to find clients as a freelancer, regardless of what you specialise in, is always a tricky concept. Even if you’ve been freelancing for years and already have a good roster of clients on retainer, chances are that you’ll always be on the lookout for new opportunities to work with/for different people and businesses.
In this guide you’ll find some of the best ways to find clients as a freelancer, some you may have already tried and tested and some you might not have even considered before. Hopefully, you’ll get plenty of inspiration on how to find clients as a freelancer in order to increase your portfolio and consequently, your sales and profits.
The best ways of how to find clients as a freelancer
Networking
One of the best ways to secure new clients is by networking. Networking is one of the most effective means of obtaining new clients as a freelancer as it enables you to build and nurture relationships with potential clients, as well as with other freelancers in your industry so you can get a scope of how they operate their business.
Networking can be done both online and offline. There are dozens of online networking opportunities that you can take advantage of such as virtual conferences, webinars and online meetings. These types of online events will enable you to meet new people, build relationships and hopefully obtain a new client or two.
If you prefer the idea of networking in person, then you can attend local conferences relevant to your industry or look out for freelancer-specific networking events where freelancers and prospective clients come together to talk business, as well as to create long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships.
At in-person networking events, you may wish to bring business cards along with you or at least have some means of keeping in touch with the people that you connect with, so that they have an accessible way of getting in touch with you in the future.
It’s important to remember that networking, whether it’s in-person or online, isn’t just about finding new clients. Networking is also about building a network of people around you, both in terms of clients and “colleagues”. It can be easy to see other freelancers as competitors sometimes, but it’s important to remember to try and see them as colleagues and not competition.
As a freelancer, you’ll likely spend a lot of your working day on your own, so when the opportunity arises to attend events, whether they’re in-person or virtual, it’s a good idea to make the most of them in order to establish and nurture new and on-going working relationships.
Social media promotion
Many freelancers shy away from social media as a means of obtaining clients as it can often look a bit too salesy on platforms that are intended to be a bit of fun. However, if you find a good balance between selling yourself on social media and building a community and nurturing engagement, you’ll likely strike gold.
Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter aren’t just intended for updating your family and friends on what you had for your dinner; they can also be a great way to find clients. Having a dedicated Facebook page for your freelancing endeavours is always a good idea. You can then ask your family and friends to share your page in order to get ‘free’ promotion; you never know who might see your post and be interested in what you have to offer.
Depending on the type of freelancing services you offer, will depend on which social media platforms will work the best for you. For example, if you’re a freelance graphic designer or artist, you may choose to utilise Instagram in order to promote your services. As it’s a very visual app, it will give you the perfect opportunity to sell yourself, while still building an online community.
Pitching for work
Directly pitching to potential clients is undoubtedly one of the most effective ways to obtain new clients as a freelancer as it shows that you have a direct, vested interest in their business.
Pitching can sometimes be quite scary as a freelancer, especially if you have very limited experience doing so. It can take quite a while to perfect your ideal pitch and it may take quite a lot of trial and error in order to see what works for you and what doesn’t.
The best way to pitch directly to businesses you want to work with/for is by doing plenty of research on them before you even attempt to construct a pitch. Find out a bit about their business and always try and find a direct contact email address so that you can make your pitch as personal as possible. Remember to provide plenty of details of what you can offer them as a freelancer and why they should work with you; don’t be afraid to sell yourself, but always remember to focus on what you can do for them and why you’d be an ideal candidate to work with them.
Create an online portfolio
An online portfolio is an incredibly important tool to have as a freelancer. This can be anything from a fully dedicated website that includes details about your services and what you can offer, to a simple blog portfolio or Google Docs collection of all your previous work.
Of course, in order to have an established portfolio where you can showcase your work, you need to ensure that you have previous experience first. If you’re just starting out as a freelancer and don’t have any previous projects that you can add to your portfolio, then consider putting together sample examples of the kinds of services you can offer potential clients.
Remember to include a link to your portfolio when pitching to prospective clients so that they can get a good feel of the type of thing you offer as a freelancer.
Advertising
Advertising your services as a freelancer can come in many forms and usually involves paying to promote what you do.
For example, using PPC and Google Ads is a popular way of advertising yourself as a freelancer in order to find new clients. However, these methods can become quite costly, especially if you’re competing with many other freelancers who all have the same idea in mind.
A more effective and more affordable way of advertising yourself in order to obtain new clients would be to use online business directories where you can list yourself and your business so that potential clients can discover you. Some online business directories may offer a free package where you can simply add a link to your freelancing website free of charge, whereas some others may charge a subscription fee so that you have access to more resources on the directory.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is another great means of advertising to take advantage of as a freelancer. While it might seem like a slightly tricky concept to wrap your head around, once you understand how to utilise SEO, it can be a great way to find clients.
In the most simple terms, SEO works by improving your website so that it becomes more visible in search engines such as Google. There are many complex aspects of SEO, so it’s only something you should consider if you have the time to invest in learning about how it can work for you as a freelancer, but if you do decide to pursue it, it can be very effective when it comes to finding new clients.
Email marketing
Email marketing is another method you can use to find clients as a freelancer.
In short, you can use email marketing to promote your freelancing services to people in your email address book. It may take some time to build up your mailing list, but you can use methods such as social media promotion or pop-ups on your website to promote your mailing list.
Email marketing works by you sharing updates with your mailing list, as well as promotional messages too. For example, if you’ve added a new service to your freelancing portfolio, you can share this update with your mailing list who could then decide that their business could benefit from what you’re offering.
With email marketing, it’s important to remember to try and treat it almost like a networking event. You don’t want to solely focus on the sales side of things, you need to build and nurture relationships as well and even though it’s slightly harder to do via email, it’s still something you should focus on so that the people on your mailing list feel like they’re benefitting from being subscribed to you.
Offer insider tips into your niche or industry, or offer a promotional discount code for your services that only subscribers can benefit from. Not only will this likely boost your mailing list subscribers, but it could also result in a new client who actually wants to take advantage of the offer you’re presenting.
Guest posting
Guest posting might be more associated with promotional efforts for bloggers, but it can also be a great way to acquire new clients as a freelancer.
Guest posting involves you writing an article or sharing a resource for another website where you’ll then receive a backlink to your freelancer website. If you guest post on a popular website that has a readership who are relevant to the type of clients you want to work with as a freelancer, you may find that they click through to your website or portfolio and then enquire about the kind of services you offer.
It’s important to remember that guest posting isn’t a guaranteed method of finding clients as a freelancer, but it can certainly help to boost your portfolio, build backlinks to your site and potentially get your services in front of many people’s eyes.
While you may think that LinkedIn should have been included in the social media promotion part of this guide, we’ve decided to give it its own section as it’s a very important and often very effective way of finding clients.
LinkedIn can be used in many ways as a freelancer to find new clients. It’s a great place to work on your networking skills as even though it acts almost like a social media platform such as Twitter or Facebook, it’s usually done in a much more professional manner so you can ‘meet’ other people relevant to your industry.
Once you connect with people on LinkedIn, you can share updates, whether they’re business-related or personal anecdotes; you can then establish and build relationships with other like-minded people on the platform.
LinkedIn also has a job board section where thousands of new jobs get listed every single day; you can use this to find new clients who might be looking for freelancers to work for them. Alternatively, you can use the search feature to search for keywords and hashtags related to your industry where you might find opportunities of people looking for freelancers to complete their work.
Freelance job boards
Freelance job boards are a popular way of finding clients when you’re just getting started as a freelancer.
While some freelance job boards may charge a subscription fee to be part of their network, you can find plenty of free ones too. When using job boards to find clients as a freelancer, it’s important to be aware of any fees that they might charge for ‘finding’ the client for you.
Job boards such as UpWork, Fiverr and People Per Hour are popular amongst freelancers when they’re just getting started as they’re a good place to start if you have very little experience in pitching to people in order to obtain clients. However, these types of job boards also take a percentage of the money you earn when you’re paid through their platform as they essentially referred you for the work.
Using job boards usually takes quite a lot of time and effort as you have to create and build up your portfolio, bid against other freelancers for projects you want to work on and also build up your reputation on the platform so that you’re more likely to be hired for a job.
If you can try to use other means of finding clients as a freelancer mentioned in this post, then you’ll likely be much more successful and most importantly, you’ll get to keep the money you earned for completing the job for a client.
However, if you’re just getting started in the world of freelancing, then it might be worth looking into job boards so that you can get a feel for the kind of thing you can expect from pitching to clients and obtaining new work.
We have a post on using Fiverr to find freelance work if this is a route that you are interested in.
Referrals/word of mouth
As a freelancer, one of the most rewarding elements of your work is completing a job so successfully that the client refers you and recommends you to someone else, which will then hopefully result in a new client.
Of course, getting to this stage as a freelancer takes a lot of hard work and time in order to build up your portfolio and to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Word of mouth and referrals may take quite a while to reach, but once you do, you’ll be in a great position to not only find new clients but to actually have clients seek you out personally in order to work for them.
With referrals, it’s also a good idea to remember that you don’t necessarily just have to sit around and wait for them. Don’t be afraid to ask previous clients for a referral or a quote that you can include in your portfolio and in your pitches. Providing that you always endeavour to do an excellent job on any project that you complete, you shouldn’t have any issues with obtaining referrals from past clients.
When someone, such as a previous client, recommends you and your services to someone else they know, it usually means much more than reading reviews online as friends and colleagues usually regard each other’s opinions very highly. This means that people trust recommendations from people they know more than what they read online from strangers, so as long as you can give your clients something good to refer to, then you should be on to a winner!
Finding clients as a freelancer might seem like a daunting task at first, particularly if you have no prior experience in selling yourself or your skills, but once you get the hang of things, you’ll soon find it almost enjoyable pitching to new people who could turn into potential clients.
How to find clients: Conclusion
One of the most important things to remember when it comes to the best ways to find clients as a freelancer is to focus on building a network of people around you. Nurture working relationships and try to see each interaction as building a friendship, rather than as a business transaction, but also remember to remain as professional as possible and always put your best self forward when promoting your skills and services.
If you stick at it, you should find that you have a healthy roster of clients that can support your chosen lifestyle.
Just make sure that you don’t oversell yourself and take on too much work. Managing multiple clients is a skill in itself and getting it wrong will ultimately have a negative impact on your reputation as the quality of work will drop and it is also a sure-fire way of burning yourself out.
