Where to Find Freelance Clients

Where are the best places to find freelance clients? Let’s look at your options. 

My favorite place to find freelance clients is Upwork along with a few others that we’ll discuss as well. At the beginning of my freelance career, the majority of my clients came from Upwork, and even now as an established business, I still get the majority of my business through the platform.

Some people criticize Upwork for restricting your business and yes there are some things that make it difficult to grow certain types of businesses beyond a point. So I certainly recommend not just staying with a marketplace like Upwork alone but I’ve been able to scale my business past $200k per year and build a small agency just through Upwork clients. 

Now that I’m more established, I get people reaching out that have found my website or from LinkedIn, but it’s mostly because of the success I’ve had on Upwork. 

My Upwork profile and portfolio doesn’t just show up on Upwork, it also shows up in Google when people search for a YouTube strategist or video marketing strategist. 

And because I go after larger projects with bigger clients now, on average, Upwork is only taking 5% of my invoices to clients, so that’s not too much higher than a QuickBooks or PayPal processing fee. If you’re only going after projects under $500 and not trying to get clients to work with you long-term then yes, 20% on every invoice is a ton, and will make it harder for you to grow your business. 

But to be fair, Upwork is doing marketing for you because they are helping to connect you with businesses that need your help. 

In a sense, you’re hiring Upwork as a member of your sales team, so they deserve to get paid. I don’t know how I would have grown my business without Upwork because it helped me get in the door. It helped me connect with clients I otherwise never would have found a way of connecting with. 

So for getting a business going, Upwork is a great place to start, and I know of freelancers on Upwork that are bringing in over a million per year because they are an agency.

Personally, once I cross a certain point, I will have to make it so the majority of my clients are not from Upwork, but for now, it still works as a major lead generation source for me. I’ve created quite a few videos about how to find success on Upwork so be sure to check those out if you’re looking to do the same.

What about some others? 

Fiverr is another freelancer marketplace, but it’s usually best for logo designers, or one-off-project types of freelancers. 

On Fiverr, clients order a project or task and it’s all flat rate, making it difficult to get longer work. I’ve never worked as a freelancer on Fiverr, but I’ve hired people on Fiverr and I know a lot about it from being in the freelancing space and knowing other freelancers who have worked on it. 

I think Fiverr is great for a side hustle and there are some very successful freelancers there, but the payment structure and the practice of hiding real names or not using full names makes it difficult to build long-term client relationships there. 

Aside from freelancer marketplaces, where else can you find clients? 

Well, just working through your current network is one way. Tell family and friends what you do. I’ve avoided this for the most part because it’s not the most effective method, but it can lead to some initial gigs and testimonials that can help with your portfolio. 

LinkedIn. Definitely use LinkedIn to prospect. 

Your target client is very likely active on LinkedIn. A great strategy for LinkedIn is to get in the habit of creating content there to show that you are an expert in the thing you’re an expert in. 

If you’re a video marketing consultant like me then you make posts sharing tips about video marketing. Over time, this can help you actually have people reaching out because they saw your posts or videos and they see that you know some things. 

Also just spending time sending connection requests to potential leads can improve your chances of getting work. You can even use the sales navigator to target specific people more quickly, but you have to pay for it. 

Because I get so many invites to jobs on Upwork now, I don’t spend a ton of time on LinkedIn but the time I have spent has led to clients and I do have people reaching out from LinkedIn just from doing a little bit of content marketing and making connections. 

Most importantly, I keep my LinkedIn profile up to date because potential clients even from Upwork will likely check out your LinkedIn profile to get another angle on you. But if you wanted, you could pour all your effort into LinkedIn only and do pretty well. They actually have a marketplace now that just launched like Upwork but it’s very new and has very minimal features for now. 

So the most effective ways to find clients in my opinion are freelancer marketplaces like Upwork, Fiverr, etc…These marketplaces have exploded in recent years and 145k companies use them to find freelancers. 

30% of all fortune 100 companies use it. 85% of the projects are larger, higher paying projects. You’ll at least be able to grow your business well past 6 figures on Upwork and similar places. 

What are some of the most ineffective ways to find clients? Networking events and going door to door. 

Ugh. I spent a couple months attending various networking events in my area and it was fine meeting some people and practicing communications skills but the time spent driving around to these things hoping to meet someone that happened to be my target client was not worth it. 

You’re in a room with random people, many of whom might not want your services and you just spent half a day getting there and coming back home and you have a boat load of business cards that just get thrown away. 

I think it’s fine occasionally to show up to something in your area just to get plugged into the local business network and it can help your business but don’t see it as a way to find clients easily. It’s not targeted. I do all my prospecting online because I can target specific people that might actually fit the description of my ideal client. 

Obviously going door to door, meaning going to businesses and knocking not residential homes, is also ineffective and I tried that too. It got me out of my comfort zone, it was a good training exercise but my target client is not brick and mortar local shops so it really wasn’t effective for that reason alone. Maybe if your services are directly relevant to local stores then it could be useful for you. 

And when you’re a homebody like me, wanting to spend more time with your kids, then online networking will allow you to stay home more. 

The main reason I’m freelancing is to spend more time with my wife and kids so if I’m off gallivanting all week long spending an hour or more in the car commuting to networking events, then I might as well just have a normal job that also takes me away from home. That was another big motivator to find out how to find clients online. And of course it saves on gas money.

But, different things work for different markets. Try to figure out where your target client is, and what the most effective way to reach them is, and you’ll have a lot more success than just trying something that somebody else says will work. 

No matter what it is, be consistent, make the effort, and grow your business. 

That’s it for today. Let me know where you’ve found the most clients and also what questions you might have about freelancing!