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I’m a $200/hr freelancer. Here's how I find clients

22 points by _wqlz ↗ HN
I don't have a blog. I'm not popular on social networks - I barely use any. I don't contribute to open-source much. I have no famous friends introducing me all over the place. Oh, and my clients are not really interested in recommending me to other clients because they want as much of my time as they can get. At the end of the day, I'm a total introvert, and I'm not good at sales. I had a hard time finding clients... until 2020. You know, the pandemic, the whole world struggling with financial problems, investors holding the money, businesses are starving... and I'm suddenly thriving the way I never did before.

How so? I've put together a notification system that monitors jobs all over the most popular freelance and hiring platforms. It informs me when someone posts a relevant job request. I filter all the incoming info to get those very rare, most relevant, and most lucrative jobs that I want. So the whole thing ends up sending 2-5 emails with job details. When I see something extremely relevant - I contact the person. I'm always getting a response. Because, you know, I'm the best suiting candidate who sends a personalized message among the first ones, not a random bozo sending the same message template to everyone.

So, I think maybe someone else could find this useful? I'm building a SaaS where you can create a filter and start receiving the most relevant job requests right to your inbox. I'm looking for early testers. If you want to get some, shoot me an email to [redacted] with the subject "job notifications." Pls, describe your case in your own words:

- which platforms you want to get notifications from

- what is the hourly rate (or fixed price) range

- what kinds of filtering you think would get you those most relevant jobs

16 comments

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html5web
Interesting, thank you for sharing this! Spasibo!
codegeek
Nice title but if you are promoting a SAAS where you send notifications about relevant job requests, it has nothing to do with your ability to make $200/Hour.
kulikalov
It actually has... That's how I find clients for $200. Most people thing it's impossible. I'm not promoting anything since the product is not ready yet
codegeek
I didn't mean to be so dismissive but my point is that you making $200/Hour is not just about sending some specific emails based on certain relevant notifications. It has a lot to do with how you sell yourself, domain expertise that you have and your skills to get things done. I think you need to be careful about making claims like this to people who wouldn't be a good fit to charge $200/Hour. Having said that, do a Show HN and we would love to provide feedback.
adkadskhj
Definitely. If s/he was some mainstrain-lang developer with no niche skills, what sppecific job requests would you filter by? You have nothing of specificity, and the job posters see hundreds of people identical to you.

With that said, i do think there's something to be learned from this post and in general the OP. I don't mean to be dismissive to them entirely. Just the idea that this filter approach is general advice seems to be incorrect to me; I imagine your success with that workflow will be proportional to how unique you are in your skillsets.

kleer001
> very rare, most relevant, and most lucrative jobs

What determines that?

xxel
So technicaly how new users of your "SaaS filter" will manage to get 200€/per hour from newly listed adds if your newsletter (notification) will be categorised not to one user but lets say to 10 per job by the similar selected skills (filter) of main experiences (egz. photoshop, html, word, singing, hoby bicycle?

I see a result of filtering *a random bozo sending the same message template to everyone.

akudha
Interesting. What is your skill set that you can charge 200/hr for?
Spooky23
My wife billed $180 as a PM.
kulikalov
Oh, fuck... the point wasn't in $200... I mentioned my rate ONLY because I assumed it's harder to find a client (an individual who works with contractors) for $200, rather than $20/h. That's all.

Imagine that your task is find your ideal client and be first he sees. That's the problem I'm solving.

Here is my profile, but It had literally nothing to do with an idea I was pitching. If you charge $60/h or whatever amount you are charging you still need clients...

https://www.codementor.io/@kulikalov

martinopp
I agree and think the timing is everything - When you are the first one responding to a job request, your chances of winning increase considerably. We are doing this with an internal tool at Light-it (the agency I run) which has been paying off really well. It notifies us via Slack of the best opportunities for our business.

In case anyone is interested in reading how: https://lightit.io/blog/how-we-are-using-technology-to-hunt-...

PS: I think this should not be in the Ask section.

sgillen
> So, I think maybe someone else could find this useful?

If you can offer jobs that pay ~$200/hr that one wouldn't otherwise get it would be of extreme value. The question is, could you actually provide this as a service?

If someone is good enough to convince companies to pay them that much, what makes you think they can't also find and contact those companies?

edit: I think you'd have to convince them that you can provide something they can't easily provide themselves.