Hi again How are you doing? is everything fine? I hope so  Today I'm writing very unusual post, cause I've never written about such thing before. Well, it's never late to start Hope you agree with me.

Lots of you already work as a freelancers or at least thinking of doing a freelance work. It is good, if you already have some client database. Then you can just "milk cow" and make money. By cow I meant client There is always some work to do for old clients, so I'm not going to explain, how to work with them, however sometimes it is also important.

Today I'm going to discuss such moment as getting more clients.

There are actually many ways of getting them. Moreover, this is not a secret that every client needs an individual approach. Some people have some kind of 6th sense and they know, what to tell, to offer or how much to ask Lots of young designers either too shy or thinking about themselves as about a superstar. How to find that equilibrium, that would fit with your experience, skills and client possibilities.

Well, that is not so hard, as it seems to. First of all, review what do you have? Do you have a portfolio? How many works do you have in it? Were they made according to standards and tendency of design? That is not so hard to do. All you need is to browse through some portfolios and compare, what technologies do they use, what kind of works do they put, how their portfolio is structured.

Showcase

Here are some examples of good portfolios:

FA Design http://www.fa-d.com/ Very cool, colorful, flash-driven first page. And html one-page portfolio, blog-styled You don't have to click every time "next" to see next work. You just scroll your mouse and that's all...

Design Attik http://www.designattik.co.uk/ Nice portfolio in blue colors. Cool idea with a man standing and looking into infinity.

Momentum 18 http://www.momentum18.com/ Gray with a small addition of blue tones. Very stylish and clean. Also powerful typography.

Ectomachine http://www.ectomachine.com/ Gray/dark-dark gray with elements of magenta and a cool abstract image + powerful typography

Jack Herbert http://www.jackherbert.com/ I really like the idea, how desings are "standing" on a shelf. Very clean, pure and interesting to watch.

DotCase http://www.dotcase.com.br/ Beautiful and saturated green colors with a tree in the center. It really makes an image of nature-friendly design + some mad ideas in the heads of designers.

Main problem

The biggest problem of young designers is that they don't have enough of works to show client, or they have some works, but all of them were some non-commercial projects for "my counter-strike clan", "my university project", "my homework in digital design" and so on. Imagine you're a businessman and you need a website or some cool Ad. Will you order it from some guy, who don't have any other works for other businessmen. Of course, not. That's the first reason young designers have a rejection Even if you draw an example to a client, but you still have no other commercial works, 80% will be a rejection + you maybe will get your self-rating lowered by sweet words such as "you don't know, what is design, I shall find some other designer, who will be able to make a really cool advertising".

So, in my opinion that is a main problem.

How to get rid of that? You may ask: "How will I get any work if everybody will reject my offers?" Read carefully. I didn't say, that everybody will reject your offers. I said about 80% will do that. The rest 20% will order something from you and tell you, that you're a cool designer

But do you want sitting at home and waiting for somebody to knock at the door and order something from you? That's not how business is have to be done.

Analyze yourself

First of all, try to figure out, what are you good at. This is actually very hard part, cause we always think we are good at everything, and it turns out that we SUCK. Moreover, we can suck in EVERYTHING. Try to ask for other designer's opinion. What will they tell you about your work? This will be the first thing that have to be done before you're going to start looking for clients. Cause you can't just offer client something you're not good at. When this part is over and you know your definite powers and weaknesses in design, you can start looking for clients.

Possible solutions

Here are some ways of getting clients with no serious portfolio or without a portfolio at all:

• search for some local companies, that have really poor websites, old and fancy with violet text over green background and with a pure yellow 2 pixeled borders on tables Yeah, they are still alive...offer those companies some cheap redesign.
• think out 5 to 10 companies and create a full business solution for them - business cards, logotype, website, business applications and so on. If you have your own hosting, you can freely put them "live" and also into portfolio Yeah - that's a risky business, but still - it works for some start. After you receive some clients, you can exchange fictive works with a real ones.
• ask your relatives, your friends, your friends friends and so on. I won't believe, if you tell me, that none of your friends or their friends have some business. Well, of course, if you live in a small village with a population of 20 people, 5 horses, 15 pigs and 3 cows then it will be hard to find somebody, who needs a design. But I don't think that you actually live in such a place
• if you are studying in university, then it is also a perfect place to put advertisements. You can design some flyers and posters for parties, create webpages for professors (cause lots of them are having some second life beside university) and so on.

As you see, there are a lot of ways how you can find some clients. My friend, when he was starting as a designer, has his own campaign. When he was eating in some cafe, restaurant, pub and so on, he always analyzed design of their menus, advertisements , flyers, banners and created some versions of same things, how they could look better. Then he sent those designs to manager of that place and in 70% of cases he received an order for redesigning their business style.

Positive conclusion

What I'm trying to explain. Sometimes there is no need in browsing through freelance websites in search of work. Sometimes it is more simple to look around, because design is a part of fashion. It is developing very quickly and there is always somebody, who needs a good modern outlook for his company

So, if you haven't started freelancing yet, it is not late to do that

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