Where do clients come from?

[Chris MacDonald]

Bit of a joke title, but I've many times toyed with the idea of going totally freelance; I feel I certainly have the skills, motivation and business sense to go ahead with it, but I always hit the first hurdle and have to reconsider.

 

Those baby steps, that first forray into going freelance; how on earth do you drum up business?

 

My first thoughts on it would be to email/flyer local construction companies, property developers, architects and so on, then follow up with a phone call. But that's about as far as my thought process got.

[Arnold Sher]

Hi Chris,

 

I am going to start you on the easiest path and it is not sending e-mails or cold calling. Think of all your friends and have a chat to them, perhaps some of them are architects or interior designers or they might know somebody who is. That is your foot in the door- personal relationships. About 10 years ago my best friend Monica who had an interior design company kept on pestering about going on my own and when i finally did she was my first client. She also had loads of friends and colleagues in the industry and she was kind enough to through couple of dinner parties and introduce me around. That is how i got started and from there on it was all by word of mouth and reference. I had never had any luck with e-mails or flyers nor do i believe in it but that does not mean it would not work, it just was not the way for me. Hopefully that helps... Good luck!

[Scott Schroeder]

Where to clients come from? Well , a mommy client and a daddy client who love each other very much.......

 

Most of my clients have come from face to face meetings or from someone who knew someone (who knew some guy, who worked with that lady, etc). I had a wealth of success from doing volunteer work, such as architecture/construction/design groups, soup kitchens, and Habitat for Humanity to name a few. You start talking to people you are volunteering with and you start to build a connection.

 

I have had rare success with cold emails or flyers, but it does work. You just have a very low return on your investment with those. I think I sent out almost 100 emails before I actually got a response that lead to work.

 

Usually the clients you know personally are less inclined to jerk you around with crazy requests and poor payment practices. The hardest thing when starting freelance is just getting that first client. Right now, even though you have a wealth of industry experience and/or a sexy portfolio, you don't have any actual business or payment experience in the eyes of the client. How do they know you are going to complete the task on time, deal with payments, contracts, etc? It's that time tested tradition when starting a new venture that you need work experience to get new work, but you can't get new work if you don't have any experience, so how are you to get experience as a new person?

 

I went to see Morgan Spurlock (the director of Super Size Me) speak about his experience in doing his product sponsored movie The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. He talked about how hard it was to get that very first sponsor, it took almost a year of back breaking work and meetings. But when he got that first sponsor, the rest just rolled in. He went to say something that I felt really hit the nail on the head. He said that often when you are starting a new venture, no one wants to be the first as you may be a risky investment. However, no one wants to be the last either and look as if they are behind the times in supporting you. Once you get that first client, the rest will (and always do) come rolling in.

[Tommy L]

Its hard at the beginning, but one client leads to another. Word of mouth will get you work after a while, but its a bit chicken and egg-ish. You're not exactly walking into a booming economy either.

Best way is start doing freelance whilst employed full-time. Then you have a safety net and can make the jump when your freelance workload becomes too much to handle.

[neil poppleton]

Its all down to your network of people.

[satishjogi]

Do a good job and keep clients happy, eventually in the long run you will get more and more referrals. But i must say most of the clients came from former colleagues who i have been working with, and it branches out from there(again if did a good job). I do get 1 or 2 calls a month from people who might have found me from the internet.

[Fooch]

Hi Chris,

 

I am going to start you on the easiest path and it is not sending e-mails or cold calling. Think of all your friends and have a chat to them, perhaps some of them are architects or interior designers or they might know somebody who is. That is your foot in the door- personal relationships. About 10 years ago my best friend Monica who had an interior design company kept on pestering about going on my own and when i finally did she was my first client. She also had loads of friends and colleagues in the industry and she was kind enough to through couple of dinner parties and introduce me around. That is how i got started and from there on it was all by word of mouth and reference. I had never had any luck with e-mails or flyers nor do i believe in it but that does not mean it would not work, it just was not the way for me. Hopefully that helps... Good luck!

 

Same thing with Arnold. I personally had loads of links from my previous career (academia) so when I came back to start our aust studio, I pulled out the ol email list and started presenting. It will take some hard yards but when the first big one comes in, it will keep rolling. Do good work. News travels fast.

[angiliaduan1]

I think you can post your works on this forum,clients would contact you if they confirm you are skilled.

So,the premise is,you should post your contact information. Good luck.

[bindunarayan]

In my opinion, with the right mix of SEO and SMO techniques, it is a feasible task to attract decent number of clients on consistent basis. But to start with you should have a proper SEO as well as user-friendly website at the first place. As many marketing experts, online marketing is the best marketing approach that one adopt today to remain competitive with the ever-increasing competition.

[Nic H]

can u help me SEO i remain competing online market reach google chrome internet explorer

[angiliaduan1]

I have seen many freelancers posted job requests with heir skills on CG forums,and I wondered whether it's working?You can try to get the answer,it won't take too much of your energy and time.

[marklin]

i think you need to post your portfolia to your clients found by google and attract them. Just keep persistence and you will see hope.

[notamondayfan]

I found this book really useful http://www.amazon.co.uk/Illustration-101-Streetwise-Surviving-Illustrator/dp/095671546X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1368000456&sr=8-2&keywords=illustration+101

 

I still refer to it now, and wish I'd found it before I started freelancing.

 

Dean

[Umesh Raut]

By the way, I am here to announce that I have launched my website - umeshraut.com and am now in the Q for better (read 'better paying') jobs than my regular client network. Like all sites, its dynamic and will be continuously updated with every job I do but the most important part like opening, portfolio (exteriors) and contact pages are in place. All work including modelling done in house. The interior viz page may have some downloaded models to save time, though.

Hope this is enough as an intro. You all are requested to have visits at regular intervals or whenever possible and point out ways to better the outputs, though all that is presented are finished and delivered jobs, I shall still love to tweak things for better experiences and expressions, time permitting.

May be this could or should go as a new thread, too, don't know.

Thanks and wait for brickbats,

Umesh Raut

[Richard Birket]

We have generally concluded that good clients come through word of mouth and recommendation. If we are approached through our website (in other words, via a general Google search), it is rare that this will turn into a live job. This is chiefly because architectural visualisation 'companies' are 10-a-penny these days and its very easy for somebody to find somebody who will do an image for peanuts. You could run one of those web-ads where you can 'have a photorealistic architectural visualisation for only £175!' of course ;-)