Expanding Your Search: The Best Ways To Find Freelance Work

Are you a freelancer fed up with Upwork, Fiverr, and the other freelance marketplaces? Are you not getting the amount of work you need or the rates that you deserve? Fortunately, other ways to find freelance work do exist. While it takes some work to build your business this way, being free of the restrictive rules and steep fees of freelance platforms makes it all well worth it.

Partnerships

Are you a freelance web developer? Get to know some great digital marketers. Instead of doing an average job of marketing a site yourself, bring in an expert focuses exclusively in marketing. Your client will appreciate it, as will the other freelancer. And guess who they will think of first when one of their clients needs to redesign their site? If you can establish good relationships with talented people in related fields, both parties can benefit through the exchange of client referrals.

Networking

First, you need to think about the types of events that you should be attending. If you are a developer, attending a tech talk may be interesting to you and good for your professional development, but you are not going to meet new clients there; you are going to meet peers. Instead, think about going to events for small business owners, since you are one yourself. General networking events like this can be great ways to meet potential clients. Also, if you work in a particular niche, go to an event focused on that industry to learn more about it and hopefully find new business.

Second, don’t go for the close right away. No one wants to meet overly aggressive salespeople at networking events. Instead, just use the opportunity to meet others with similar interests. Take a genuine interest in their business, but don’t try to rush anything. Exchange information, stay in touch, and if these connections need your services in the future, they will know you are available.

Referrals

Once you have some happy clients, try to tap into their networks as much as possible. Remember, the recommendation of a friend or colleague can be very valuable so these should be just about the easiest sales that you can get.

Other Websites

Another great source for freelance work is Reddit. Redditors post help wanted ads for all types of work and typically you will find less competition here than on other sites. Bitwage’s new job site actually aggregates Reddit job and Twitter job posts and allows you to search by remote work only. Currently, we are adding approximately 200 new jobs per day, with many being remote.

How do you find new clients? Feel free to let us know in the comments or join our Slack community and discuss there.

Header via Markus Spiske