r/Freelancers

How did you get your first clients? 😭

Honestly, I’m losing my mind trying to figure this out.

I’ve been trying to get my first website clients, so I started checking Google Maps for businesses that don’t have websites.

When I find one, I reach out to them on WhatsApp and ask if they’d be interested in having a website. Sometimes, I even create a sample website specifically for their business and send it to them so they can see what I could build.

I’ve created samples like these:

🔹 Rahisi / Brand Builder

https://brand-builder-pro-orcin.vercel.app/

🔹 Premier Events & Decor

https://premier-events-decor.vercel.app/

🔹 Adgreens Landscape

https://adgreens-landscape.vercel.app/

🔹 Eastleigh Physio

https://eastleigh-physio.vercel.app/

You can also check out my portfolio here:

🔗 https://lucy-mwaura-portfolio.vercel.app/

But here’s where I’m struggling… 😭

I find the business, contact them on WhatsApp, explain how a website could help them, sometimes spend hours creating a free sample, send it to them...

AND THEN THEY DISAPPEAR. 😭

No reply. No feedback. Nothing.

So I’m genuinely asking those of you who already have clients:

How did you get your FIRST paying clients?

Did you use Google Maps? Cold WhatsApp messages? Referrals? LinkedIn? Freelancing platforms? Friends and family? Networking?

And most importantly, what did you say or do that actually made someone say YES and pay you?

I’d really appreciate hearing your experience because I’m honestly trying everything I can, and I want to understand what I’m missing. 🙏

Hey everyone, I’ve been freelancing for a while now and have managed to get a few clients, but I’m looking to expand and I’ve realised that my portfolio is becoming a major bottleneck.

Right now, I don’t think my portfolio does enough to build trust or make a potential client want to explore further.

A few things I’ve noticed that could be holding it back:

• The overall design doesn’t look professional enough
• I don’t have proper case studies
• My work samples are redirected to Google Drive instead of being showcased directly
• I don’t have a professional-looking website
• I need more testimonials and social proof

The thing is, I actually have a good amount of work and samples. I just haven’t presented them in a way that communicates expertise, credibility, and results.

I’d really appreciate some guidance on this.

If you have any portfolio examples that you’ve seen perform well or have personally used to convert leads, I’d love to see them.

Or, if you’ve built a portfolio that worked well for you, I’d really appreciate knowing what worked, what didn’t, and what structure you followed.

I’m mainly looking to understand how I can turn my existing work into a portfolio that actually helps me win clients rather than just acting as a collection of samples.

Any advice or examples would be really appreciated!

I’m currently trying to get my first proper freelance client and honestly this shit is harder than I expected 😭

I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time learning, improving my offer, studying businesses, tearing apart landing pages and writing sample rewrites.

Now I’m actually doing outreach.

Finding founders. Researching them. Looking at their websites. Writing personalized messages. Sending them.

And then…
nothing.

Some people accept the connection. Some don’t.

Nobody has actually said “yeah, let’s work together” yet.

The frustrating part is that I genuinely feel like I can do the work.

Give me a landing page and I can usually find things that could be clearer, stronger or more conversion-focused.

But getting someone to trust you enough to actually pay you is a completely different problem.

Right now it’s basically a cycle of:

“Holy shit, this could actually work.”
followed 30 minutes later by:
“Am I wasting my time?” 💀

I know the first client is probably the hardest one, but when you’re in the middle of it, it feels like everyone else somehow figured it out except you.

For anyone who freelances:
How did you actually get your first client?

Hey everyone, I wanted to know how people here send invoices to their clients and handle payments. Do you just ping them email/whatsapp and expect a response, or do you follow a more structured approach? And how do you approach a client who you have already pinged twice but kept putting the payment off?

I am on a fresh account and have no reviews. I have tried searching for quick fixed price jobs and am offering to do them practically free just to try to get reviews. I have sent several applications where I already finished the job (creating an icon attached it to my cover letter, rebuilding a website and I hosted it on vercel and put the URL in the cover letter). They still get ignored.

Is the market just too saturated now to start fresh? Upwork also seems pay to win now with connects so I am just wasting time and money on applications.

will keep this short. i have a client on a retainer model with me, they've been with me for quite a while now, but he doesn't really reply to my messages and has previously paid an invoice late. i'm not quite sure how to navigate this situation, because i genuinely love doing the work and the retainer obviously is a great contribution to my financial situation, i just do not know how to get this client to communicate better with me?

i send emails, when i haven't heard from him i call, and text.

the nature of his job is busy, but i just genuinely feel so unprioritized and borderline disrespected. i'm not in a position to decline the work, and like i said, i really genuinely love it. i just need more communication because it's affecting my work

tldr: how do i get my client to actually reply to me? tyia

Hi everyone, I’m a financial consultant helping businesses with financial analysis, cash-flow management, forecasting, financial modelling, and strategic financial decisions.

Hello! Does anyone know of any legitimate job opportunities or companies currently hiring, or perhaps someone I can be referred to? I’d be happy to provide my details.

I recently lost a client - I was ghosted and unfortunately wasn’t paid for the work I did. I’m also still paying off the devices I invested in for work, so I’m really hoping to find a new opportunity soon.

Any leads or referrals would mean a lot. Thank you!

Looking for freelancer job, but nothing comes. Sent a lot of applications, a lot of bids, but nothing. Just wasted my time for 5 months. Where do you usually look for job?

I’m an experienced software dev and have been on Reddit for 10+ years. I’ve got 24K karma on this account and 14K on another, with most of it coming from comments rather than posts.

I’ve gotten pretty good at understanding Reddit culture, what gets traction in different communities, and how to participate without coming across as spammy. Some of my posts/comments have also ranked well in search and even made it to the news.

The main question I’m trying to answer is:
can I actually use this skill to make some additional money on the side?

I’m not talking about selling/farming karma or spamming links. I’m thinking more along the lines of helping a startup/product build an organic presence on Reddit, finding relevant conversations, figuring out what kind of content works in a particular subreddit, etc.

For those who do freelance work or run businesses:
Is this something companies actually pay for? If so, where would I find these kinds of clients?

According to you whats your best freelancing sites. Apart from upwork or fiver.

I need some advice from freelancers who have dealt with something similar.

I was hired by a direct client for a $1,000 project. I completed around 50% of the work and asked for $500 for the work I had already delivered.

After that, the client disappeared.

I followed up several times. Eventually, he came back and said he would pay me on Friday. I thanked him and agreed.
Friday came… and he disappeared again.

The frustrating part is that this isn’t a random client. He runs a fairly large company, and another client of mine actually referred me to him.

I had also worked with him previously on a $1,000 milestone, and everything went smoothly. That’s why I trusted him this time.

At this point, he owes me the full $1,000, and I’m not sure what the best way to handle this is.

Should I keep following up? Send a formal payment request with a deadline? Stop working completely until he pays? Or take some other action?

I’d really appreciate advice from freelancers who have been through something similar. What would you do in my situation?

So i'll be doing random side projects and sometimes just decide to use AI for things to speed up the process and learning curve but realize either it is really good at the task I want it to do or just straight up horrible. The trouble I'm having is seeing these really good ones makes me think there are probably other good tools out there but just under the radar right now. And the other way around I waste time looking for tools when at this time a human far exceeds AI. Do you guys feel these tools will slowly start popping up more and more to replace humans out of freelance work? I have this site shouldifreelanceit and was honestly shocked how many tools there are when adding to it but I still feel like a lot of them are just shit and we need humans for things (mainly creative tasks imo). I wonder how soon AI will reach our level and possibly replace us. What are yall thoughts?

I've bounced between Notion, Apple Notes, Obsidian, Keep, back to Notion… and finally figured out why nothing stuck: I was cramming four unrelated jobs into one "notes" bucket.

When I actually separated them, the chaos made sense:

1. Thinking out loud - half-formed ideas, journaling. Wants to be fast and frictionless.
2. Reference - articles/docs I want to keep and reread. Wants to be clean and searchable.
3. Talking it through - increasingly I "think" by chatting with AI. That's a note too, really.
4. Watch/read later - videos and links I'll get to. Wants to not become 90 open tabs.

The trick that fixed it for me — it was giving each of those a type instead of dumping them in one pile, then keeping them all in one place so I'm not app-switching.

Curious how others split this. Do you keep "read later" and "notes" separate, or is that just more overhead? What's your actual system?

(Full disclosure since this sub is strict about it: this frustration is also why I ended up building my own thing. Happy to share in a comment if anyone wants, but genuinely more interested in how you all solve it.)

I've been trying to land my first freelance projects on Workana and Upwork for two months now, but I haven't had any luck. On Workana, I paid for a three-month plan and have already sent around 70 proposals, almost exhausting the included bids without any results. On Upwork, I sent about 20 proposals and none received a response, so I'm running out of Connects to keep applying. Outside of these platforms, I also tried contacting over 40 small businesses directly with outdated or poorly optimized websites, but I didn't get any replies either (I showcased work I'd already done for other companies). I feel completely stuck and I don't know what's wrong with my strategy. I would greatly appreciate any advice or feedback from experienced freelancers on what I should adjust at this stage.

Freelancer

I'm 17 and run a small web design/automation business for local trade businesses (landscapers, mechanics, plumbers). Right now 100% of my clients come from cold calling and walking into shops. It works, but it's exhausting and doesn't scale, I'm the bottleneck.

I want to build toward a point where reputation and referrals bring in clients instead of me having to hunt for every single one.

For people who've made that shift:

What actually moved the needle for you, referral systems, local networking, content/social proof, something else?

How did you turn early clients into referral sources? Did you ask directly or did it happen naturally?

At what point did you feel like you could ease off outbound and let inbound take over?

Any specific tactics for a hyper-local service business (not SaaS, not ecommerce)?

Curious what worked in the real world vs. what's just generic advice.

so im a final year btech student and been freelancing since months…never thought i’d actually cross 250k INR when i started this in 1st year😭…like it still doesn’t feel real tbh

somewhere along the way a few people started working with me on projects and now we’re kind of an agency called “recrafte”…still figuring out a lot of stuff as we go ngl

biggest struggle rn tbh is client acquisition, like the actual work part i can handle but going out and consistently landing clients is a whole different skill n i suck at it compared to actually building stuff

anyone else deal with this when scaling up? like how do u even find people who are genuinely good at sales/cold outreach/bringing in clients without it turning into a mess of ghosting or empty promises

A bit of context: I'm a freelance content designer, concentrating mostly on compliance work. I have a steady stream of work ranging from blue-chip clients to solo entrepreneurs, split roughly 50/50 between Upwork and referrals/repeat clients.

A couple of freelancers I've worked with on larger projects mentioned they pick up work through LinkedIn, so I thought I'd try an ad campaign to see what happened. Did the research, tailored it, worked on the pitch and the content. Didn't spend a large amount, but was curious to see what it brought in.

So far, every enquiry has come from nitwits, nincompoops, fantasists, tyre-kickers and chancers, none with any realistic chance of turning into a contract. Allowing for the possibility that my pitch was wrong, is this other people's experience too?

I’m 17 and run a small web design business, I get clients through cold calling and walking into local shops (landscapers, mechanics, plumbers) to pitch website services. I’ve done around 300 calls so far and a bunch of in-person visits.

The calls themselves usually go fine once I’m in them. My problem is right before, that few seconds of hesitation, the racing thoughts, sometimes just avoiding the next call/walking past the shop instead of going in.

For people who’ve done cold calling or door-to-door sales:

What actually worked for you to get over that pre-call/pre-pitch fear?

Any physical or mental tricks you use right before dialing or walking in?

Does it eventually go away completely, or do you just get better at pushing through it?

Would appreciate any real advice, not just “it gets easier with time”, looking for actual techniques.