This Is How You Can Actually Land Clients As A Developer

Ever felt that it is too difficult to get freelancing clients? I personally have. Let me share some of my thoughts about freelancing in this article

Freelancing is hard. I agree with you. But, what is even worse is landing that first client. You feel like you should go to all these different sites, like Upwork, Fiverr, freelancer.com, and more, but you never gain any success from them. That first client never comes.

Why Are Freelancing Platforms Ineffective In The Beginning?

Freelancing platforms are always a very lucrative place to start your development journey, and for a very good reason. You feel that you can actually get clients, but what you tend to miss out on is the fact that all the clients want to look at testimonials from other clients, and highly judge you on your past work and rating. It seems insane to even have any past work if you are starting out.

But ask yourself one thing, would you hire a developer if you did not see any past work from him?

Aren’t you risking a potential fraud here?

These are the same thoughts that go in the mind of a client when choosing which person to hire.

So, what can we conclude from this?

The game of freelancing revolves around trust. It revolves around past work experience and projects.

In freelancing platforms, it is extremely hard for you to establish trust. There is practically no other way than showing your projects, which also are not enough.

This is where your connections come into play.

If you have a very good looking LinkedIn profile, you can spread your word through your connections!

A simple message like this one can really get your connections to actually care about you:

“Hey {name}, I recently got into the freelancing workspace, and I am just starting off. I am willing to work with other clients, and {x} is primarily what I do. I have worked on {y} projects. If you have anyone in contact who could use some help with {x}, do let me know. I would be happy to help. Thank you!”

Here, you are clearly saying that you are a junior freelancer (humility), working on a particular field in IT(getting niched in), showing your past work (establishes trust), and asking for referrals(CTA)

You could come up with any such variants of this answer, and I highly recommend that you make your answers personalized but to the point.

You can talk to people about freelancing on Linkedin or via Instagram or any other such platform if you are able to find like-minded people. Most software developers always welcome new developers who come with energy and passion.

You might still believe that it's better to spend time developing your skillset than spending time on networking but to be honest, I believe that it is well worth the shot. Not only do you get a better shot at getting a freelancing client, but also you learn a lot from them, have fun, get some reviews, and more. Networking is a big part of the development game.

The next big thing is outreaching.

You need to outreach to as many potential clients as you can, but you cannot be “salesy”, the moment they sense something like that, you have a much lesser chance of landing that client.

A properly structured message, in this case, could be something like the following:

“Hey there! I saw that you are working on {x} business, that is so great! I am {name}, and I have some experience in {skill}. I believe that I can help you {help}, and I think that this would generate you a lot more profit and get more people to convert from casual viewers to customers.”

This seems to be a very well structured message while approaching a client. I might be wrong, and do let me know your thoughts in the comment section down below.

This message seems friendly, gives your client a brief introduction about who you are, what you do, etc-. You talk value straight up, and you actually put something on the table that the client would buy.

For outreaching, you just need a few contacts and a list. You can get these contacts from referrals, requests to startup owners, etc-.

Cold calling and cold DM’ing are 2 very powerful tools that immensely boost your chances of getting that freelance client.

I hope that you found value in this article. Be sure to follow me on Instagram here and feel free to drop any questions that you might have in the comment section.

Thank you.

Priyanshu Saraf