How to Find New Freelance Clients: 5 Top Tips

There are two states of existence for a freelancer: too much work or not enough work.

Both are stressful, but the latter is definitely the worst one. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re hitting a dry spell, there will always come a time when you need to find new clients and new projects. When that happens, the following tips might help you out.

1. Use the Right Sites

Modern freelancers need to join Upwork and Fiverr. PeoplePerHour and Guru should also be considered. Freelancer is another site that many recommend, although I personally don’t think it is suitable for inexperienced freelancers who need long-term employment (due to the fact that it takes its 10% cut before the freelancer is paid).

If you have a good bio and a strong portfolio, these sites should be enough to get you work.

You should also give yourself a web presence for when clients Google you. Create a Facebook page and a blog; put yourself out there. I wouldn’t worry too much about promoting the blog or Facebook page, as most clients will just go to Upwork when they need a freelancer, but it helps to have a presence away from freelancing platforms.

2. Keep Applying

Freelancers are typically stuck in a cycle of applying for work and completing work. They do a lot of one and then the other, and rarely do the two meet.

After all, if you have more work than you can handle, why would you apply for more?

But the problem with this method is that you never know when you’re going to go from lots of work to no work. It usually happens fast, and because it can take a couple of weeks to get the ball rolling again, it means you’ll be exposing yourself to lots of dry spells.

To avoid this, you should always apply for new jobs, even when your schedule is full.

The busier that you get, the higher your quotes and deadlines should be. For instance, if you start by quoting $500 and a 3-day deadline, you can increase that to $750 and 2 weeks, and then $1,000 and 4 weeks. You have enough work, so you can afford to take more liberties. It will ensure that you have more jobs waiting for you and, in most cases, those jobs will pay more.

3. Make Them an Offer

Freelancers are not employees working to a strict salary. They are experts, businesspeople. It’s important to remember this and to treat your freelancing as a business.

If you have some time on your hands and your current clients don’t have anything going, make them an offer. You should have a good idea of what they do for a living and what they need, so offer them content/services at a reduced price.

You’re dealing with business owners who love a good bargain. If you offer them a batch of content at a reduced price, they won’t be able to refuse.

Of course, there is a problem with this method, as those clients might expect that reduced rate for all projects going forward.

There are two ways around this.

The first is to make it clear that you can only work for a limited number of hours or for a limited amount of content. For instance, a writer friend of mine did this early in his career and would phrase it as, “A job fell apart and I have X amount of unpublished articles that I can sell for half price if you want them”. If they said yes, he would tell them that he just needed a little time to remove references to the old client’s business and proofread them.

He gave himself several days to do this, and that was often all the time he needed to actually write the articles.

The second is to reduce your price only on the basis that you’re providing bulk content. That way, they know they will only get the same price again if they order the same amount of content.

4. Ask Around

Ask any long-term freelancer where their biggest clients came from and they’ll tell you that they were all referrals.

It happens to all the best freelancers because entrepreneurs, business owners, and other professionals are very well connected. As soon as they find a good developer, designer, or writer, they spread the word.

If a client introduces you to a friend, embrace that introduction, get to know them, and do whatever they ask. You never know where that job will take you. And when things are a little slow, just ask your client directly if there is anything available.

If you make it clear that you are looking for work, they will put the feelers out and help you. Of course, it depends on the relationship that you have with that client, as some will be more forthcoming than others. But if they are friendly and willing, just ask. The worst they can do is say no.

5. Finally…Keep Working

A friend of mine works as a freelance writer and has done for many years. He was incredibly prolific and was comfortable writing up to 20,000 words a day. During his dry spells, when he barely had any work, he would continue to write articles based on the subjects that he knew, the subjects that his clients usually requested.

It kept him busy between job applications and negotiations, and it meant that he was ready to shift seamlessly back into full-time work when those contracts came.

More importantly, it meant that he had a huge selection of articles that he could offer to his clients. Most of the time, he was able to use the articles he had written. Other times, he just told them that he had some content spare and made them an offer. When that didn’t work, he began launching his own sites, using lessons learned from Neil Patel to optimize and gain some passive income.

Over the course of several years — before he reached a point when dry spells were nonexistent — he sold or used every single article he had written in his downtime.

It sounds like a risky approach, but that content allowed him to keep working and maintain his flow. It also meant that those days weren’t wasted and he was able to get paid for them.

For more tips on freelancing and running a business, take a look at This Week With Sabir on YouTube.