I may have asked this before...

Freelancers, what do you do wrt marketing / how do you find clients?

Discord/YouTube

build decent linkedin contact list and then start linkedin shit posting and they find you, or any other social media platforms but I don’t use any of them right now

I have the same question

Lots of coffee dates with different consultant firms - big and small.

In my case sub-contracting is the way to go. They got clients that need consultants, but they have no available in-house employees with a matching resume. They then present you as "one of their own", taking a small cut of the rate while you are left with the majority (90%). It's better for them to get a small cut and someone on the inside than to miss out on a client alltogether.

Oh, and knowing people. Try to build a network of other freelancers / contractors plus regular full time employees in the software industry. They can pitch you in as a consultant if their company is looking for external help.

@devdiddydog That seems like a really good approach especially for getting longer term projects. How do you find these consulting firms?

@TheBeardedOne Just a bit of searching your local area. You've got the big ones (Accenture etc), then you have the medium sized ones (25 - 50 employees) and then the small ones (5-20 employees).

The point is to talk to as many as possible, let them put your resume in their oh-so-magical-database and then be prepared not to hear from them ever again. But every now and then you talk to someone that actually calls you back, tells you they have a client looking for a certain skillset and ask if this would be interesting. Weed out all the bullshitters, find the important few. Out of all those who have my resume in their database, I will only hear from two or three. And those are the same two or three that I will contact as well when I am fed up with the crap and politics of my current client and looking for something new.

These types of contacts are gold.

@devdiddydog How long did it take to gain real traction?

@TheBeardedOne Not sure.. I did some of this crap while still being an employee in preparation to going solo. I ended up contracting for that very same company for a while (make sure you make yourself hard to replace ;) but once I had enough of them I knew who to talk to.

Actually, I made one massive mistake. I hadn't done my calculations and had a figure in mind for my hourly rate that was based on what consultants usually charged. I didn't work out how much that really was without all the overhead companies usually have, so I missed out on a pretty good opportunity because I required way more than necessary. This was really early on, so you might be lucky right away. Check your market value, see how much you actually make and compare that to what you are getting paid. Should be a whole lot more as an independent consultant, since you've got none of the benefits of a full time employee and carry all the risk.

@devdiddydog Thanks yrea I've been pretty careful about that very thing. Of course I'm still just in the investigating options phase