A140 - How can I start freelancing as a web developer? - a podcast by Jason Resnick

Today's episode are the 3 steps you need to do immediately, to start freelancing as a web developer and get your first client today.

How to start anything is to commit to it. So let’s just get that out of the way now and assume you’ve committed to this.

I don’t think it’s a surprise to you if you’ve heard more than a couple of episodes that finding your niche would be the number one thing to start freelancing as a developer.

1. Find your niche

There’s a very tactful reason for this and that is because the sooner you can focus your efforts on solving a particular problem, the easier it will be to find your ideal client, industry, location, technology, to market yourself to.

This will differentiate you from all the commoditized web development services out there in the market today.

You will start to become a trusted advisor because you understand the business, not just the lines of code.

2. Show up

The second step is to just do the work. Let’s assume you already have done some development whether it’s in school, at a job, or for yourself, think about what you’ve done and enjoyed doing and the problem your code solved and do more of that.

It doesn’t need to be elegant or fancy, just seek out someone or some business that you can help. Either by email, through Facebook, or through a friend. However, it may be, don’t worry about being all perfect with it, just reach out.

• Show them that you understand the problem they have


• How important it is to them (usually by explaining that their problem is wasting their time or costing them money)


• Then that you can solve it for them by sharing your past work

This doesn’t need to be overly complex either. What I did when I first started out even though I had built complex Java applications for startups and corporations in the late 90s and early 00s, I found websites online that their contact form was broken.

Reached out to the businesses either through email or some other means and told them. Told them that I could fix it for them for a couple of hundred dollars and it was costing them business. Because back then, most websites out there, the contact form for small businesses was a means to get customers.

Today it could be reaching out to businesses that have a crappy website on mobile or that their SSL certificate is invalid. In both those cases, Google has said that these are ranking factors in their algorithm which results in less traffic to their website.

3. Get yourself testimonials

This is key because you want to show a track record of solving the problem.

There are 2 ways to go about this.

First is just be mindful of compliments via email, phone, Skype, etc. One-liners like “This saves us an hour a day.” is a testimonial.

Second is asking for one. Through email just simply ask for one, but help them to provide you one by asking specific questions, like “what was one benefit in working together”, “what was the challenge in finding a solution before we started and how did I address that”.

This helps you get more focused responses about yourself and gives your client a specific question to answer rather than leaving it open-ended and them wondering if you are looking for just one sentence or 16 paragraphs.

It’s really that simple and your client will be happy to provide you with one.

If you want a surefire way to get testimonials, check out the Freelancer’s Sales Kit where I provide you with the email templates and a video walking you through how to use them and nudge your client to respond to your request.

There are other steps, like getting paid of course. Which when starting out, then just keep it simple by using PayPal or Venmo or some other means of payment like that.

But you can follow these 3 steps and get started today. Land your first client, and then worry about all the other things once you get this ball rolling.

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