It can be really tough getting your foot if your starting out as a freelancer or junior designer.
My advice is just keep trying.
Avoid “bottom of the barrel” platforms like Fiverr, Bark or People per Hour.
Speak to friends and family and so some favour jobs to build experience of working with real clients.
If you have an existing network, check out my automated referral system which can generate a lot of those precious first leads for freelancers.
Get on Upwork and start offering your freelance services.
On Upwork you’ll need to be prepared to work for very little in order to build up reviews and cred first.
My advice on this is quantity over quality.
Do lots of tiny small jobs, be honest in your proposal and say your new and looking for experience and reviews, and in exchange offer a much lower price than the competition.
Trade time for reviews.
Of course to get reviews, you have to offer a great service.
This doesn’t mean being the best designer or developer,
It means being the best communicator, making sure your client has a good experience.
Of course you’ll want to provide a good result too. But experience is as, or more, important.
One thing I like to do is go above and beyond.
If you quote for redesign of a homepage, do some design changes on the about page and let them know you’ve thrown it in as a bonus extra 🙂
Then as your profile and success rate grows, you can start charging your worth and increase over time.
