5 ways to find software freelancing/contracting clients

How to get a client might be one of the first questions you have on your mind. It’s one of the hardest parts about contracting when starting out. You’re good at your job but how do you market yourself? Like any business, you’ll need to source leads and do a bit of legwork to make sure you land your first client. In this post, I’ll detail five ways to get new clients.

Sources of leads

Old colleagues and friends

Old colleagues are probably my most preferred source for new contract work. You’ve worked with them before and you know how they work. They’ll also hopefully know what you’re good at and know what value you can bring. You also can have an honest conversation about what they need, what struggles they face and how you can be of help. This prior relationship and shared understanding can make the management of your client relationship much, much easier. If you haven’t started contracting yet and are considering it in the future, make sure to have left a good impression at all your workplaces.

Friends are also a good source for work. They will have followed your career over the years and hopefully have a good idea of what value you can bring. Even if you don’t work directly with your friend, they’ll likely give you a warm and strong introduction to the person you’ll directly be working with.

Discuss your new professional career path with your old colleagues and friends. They may have jobs to offer or know people who have open roles. If this doesn’t yield immediate results, consider posting your contracting status on LinkedIn to see if you can generate any inbound leads.

Sometimes you might prefer working with an old colleague or friend over other sources of contract jobs. Just be aware to treat your job like any other professional engagement. Make sure a day rate is agreed to and a contract is signed. Bring your “work” face during working hours.

Pros:

• Previous relationship and rapport
• Good understanding of how they work
• They’ll be aware of your skillset and reputation
• You’ll often be the first to hear about the job
• You can work out an arrangement that works for both of you (e.g. remote working)
• You might be able to skip their interview

Cons:

• Might start off on the wrong foot if you don’t establish a professional relationship early on

Communities

Another good source for leads are the communities you belong to. For example, I’ve worked at multiple startup accelerators and co-working spaces before, so belong to a few of startup communities. I also belong to paid and closed communities where you can get good leads. Often these communities have job boards where people post jobs that the public doesn’t know about. If you belong to a good community, you can expect the community members to be very good people too. If you have an established reputation in the community or do a good job with one of the community members, you can potentially get word-of-mouth marketing for free. Reputation and word-of-mouth can potentially help you outcompete contractors outside the community.

Think about the professional communities you belong to and make sure to regularly check their job boards. Every so often there’ll be a job. If you don’t belong to any professional communities, look out for them. There are Slack communities for a lot of niches. Some niches have meetups that you can go to (e.g. React.js) where you might meet someone who’s hiring. Get out of your house and start talking to people!

Pros:

• You might have an established reputation in the community
• You’ll often be one of the first to hear about the job
• A warm intro will often place you at the top of the resume pile
• You might be able to skip their interview if they know you

Cons:

• Depending on the size of the community, you might need to wait for a good opportunity
• You might not be able to work out the exact arrangement you want (e.g. 12 months over a shorter term 6 month gig)

Talent networks

There are talent companies like Toptal that have a rigorous interviewing process. If you pass their interviews, you can become part of their network and have them source jobs for you. As one of the very few who’ve made it through their process, clients will view you as a top-tier software engineer and you can command a good pay. Carlos Roso has a great blog detailing how this works. It might require a lot of short-term effort preparing for those interviews but it could save you a lot of time in the long-term, as it’ll give you a source of jobs.

Pros:

• You’ll have a good source of jobs
• Often they’ll charge the client so you’ll get your full day rate
• Your reputation as one of the top engineers will place you at the top of the resume pile
• You might be able to work out an arrangement that works for you, depending on the talent network

Cons:

• The interview process might make it difficult to get into the talent network

Freelancing platforms

There are a number of freelancing platforms that can help you with your job search, such as Upwork. Just be aware that you will often be competing with many, many other software freelancers across the world. This can make it hard to differentiate yourself from other freelancers. Also your brand will be somewhat tied to the platform’s (e.g. Upwork’s). Companies not satisfied with a different freelancer can have a negative effect on your ability to get work. With the high global competition, you might need to push down your price. There might be work that’s paid by the project but try to avoid these as you may not get compensated for overtime.

You might get unlucky and clients may not click with you. They might have unreasonable expectations of you. Sometimes they might not pay you. One person reported that they didn’t get paid on Hacker News. Once, as an experiment, I did a small job on Fiverr. After completing the work, the client’s payment got bounced and the client deleted their account. Luckily it was only an experiment and one hour’s worth of work but freelancing platforms are often not worth it, in my opinion.

There are smaller freelancing platforms like YunoJuno that can be worth a shot. They might have a smaller number of jobs going around but the quality of jobs may be higher in niche platforms.

Pros:

• Lots of jobs

Cons:

• Competing against a global competition
• Competition may drive down your price
• Client might have unreasonable expectations of you
• Client may be unreliable and/or you might not get paid
• Platform may suspend your account. You might not get paid and lose a portfolio of work and reputation built up on the platform

Job listings

The last category is job listings like Angel List. You can set up an alert and see if you get any jobs in your inbox. I’ve not had much luck on this front but have heard that this can be a way to land very good clients in the US/Valley. wellpaid.io appears to offer well paying jobs.

Pros:

• Potentially very good pay if client is in US/Valley

Cons:

• Might take a while to get a job this way
• Your resume won’t get fast-tracked like with other sources of leads

Conclusion

Personally, my favourite ways to get contract/freelance gigs are via old colleagues, friends and communities you belong to. You’ll often get very good leads this way and be able to spare interviewing. If you manage to get accepted into a talent network like Toptal, you’ll have a good source of jobs. Freelancing platforms I personally stay away from, as they’re tricky to navigate and might not land you as good a job as from other sources. Job listings are the old, traditional way of getting jobs but your resume might not get fast-tracked like with other sources.

Note that I’ve left recruiters off the list. As some are said to charge 10–20% on the day rate and may require you to pay them so long as you work with the client, I was reluctant to try them.

Thank you

Thanks for reading this blogpost. 🙂

If you have any thoughts or questions, please do share them with me at mario@contracto.dev. Every comment is important to me, as it will help improve my writing and give you a say in the topics I write about!