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Ask HN: How to find clients/contracts/work

6 points by stanmancan ↗ HN
I've been programming for the last 5 or 6 years and I'm pretty good at what I do. I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit (Attempted to start over 5 companies between 12 and 17) and would love to get my own thing going. I've been trying to build up work on the side this whole time, but I can never find any decent clients or send invoices for over $200.

How do you guys find your clients? Find contracts? Find work? I know I have the ability to run a company, especially if I just start being a one man show, but my lack of sales skills, experience and abilities always has me struggling to find work.

6 comments

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_pius
The first thing to do, in my opinion, is to maintain an active Github account and contribute to the open source community.
kkowalczyk
I have plenty of that and in my experience that doesn't lead to contract work.

I get plenty of full-time job offers but no contracting offers.

jfdi
IMHO, the best way is through your network. Great people know other great people, they tend to stick together. So find some great people and get the word out. I'd also suggest having a couple bullet summary of your personal value prop handy.

If you'd like to be more in the startup space then look at startup blogs for networking events in your area and attend. If you're in Seattle, you can attend things like OpenCoffee at Louisa's. I went a while back and met a few folks that were getting plugged in to various projects that eachother had going. I had coffee with Andy S (TechStars) that day. Your portfolio (which may or may not include open source contributions) will help seal the deal, but unless it's really prominent is unlikely to find the leads for you by itself.

If you're looking for enterprise level contracts, then probably the best thing you could do is go through a contracting agency to start. Most big companies don't hire independent 1099ers anyway, many times for insurance reasons (of all things...). Again the point always goes back to building your network so the first gig or two might not be what you want but keep in touch with the people you can. Make sure your gigs are at the best possible companies you can find. Again back to Seattle, Microsoft is awesome to meet great people at and they contract relatively heavily. Also the bio tech's are no doubt in need right now.

Good luck!

davidcann
If your skills are in web and/or mobile, contact design firms and show them projects you've worked on. When you work as a sub-contractor, they find work for you.

Deliver quality work and stay on schedule. Build relationships with multiple design firms and you can pick between projects.

triviatise
consulting is hard :) That is what I do for a living. My first job on my own was from a previous employer. That let me hire a team including sales people. It also let me make a bunch of costly mistakes. Eventually I found a sales person who got me additional clients.

I would say to make it in consulting you pretty much have to have a network. These days you could possibly use something like odesk or elance, but I dont have any experience with those.

petervandijck
Do you offer specific skills? Do you have a website outlining those? Link it from your HN profile.