Ask HN: Freelancers of HN, do you get clients/leads from your websites?

7 points by dotnick 12 years ago | 13 comments

As someone who wants to take freelancing seriously, should I expect to get inquiries from my portfolio website?

Do people land on your website through search engines? If so, would it be wise to invest money for search engine optimisation?

gk1 12 years ago |

Do I get quality inquiries from my site: Yes.

Would I pay for SEO: No.

SEO is not the only way to get traffic to your site. Most of my traffic coming to my site comes from my blog, where I write 1-2 articles per month. I try to make the posts interesting and insightful to the type of crowd that would include my potential clients (startups).

An added benefit of blogging is that your name will start to get recognized as an expert in your field (assuming your articles are good), which will play in your favor when you're talking with prospects.

dotnick 12 years ago | |

Interesting.

All the replies I got so far (both on HN and /r/freelance) seem to be negative.

Do you have an idea what makes a difference in your case? Is it your niche? Maybe, as you said, the fact that you establish yourself as an authority in your field through your blog?

gk1 12 years ago | | |

I guess being a user acquisition consultant gives me a bit of an edge with lead acquisition. ;)

Whenever I talk to a new prospect (potential client), I ask them how they found my site and what caught their attention. The answer to the first question is usually my blog or an HN comment (just like this one!). The answer to the second question varies from "your site tells a good story" to something specific such as my ability to push code.

jil_tko 12 years ago |

I have used a portfolio type website since 2003 for my work and experimented with dozens of designs and several SEO setups/ configurations. In 10 years of business I see about 5 jobs a year come in on average as a result of the website. My biggest jobs in fact were from clients who found me in a search. All in all I would say that over the span of time keeping my site updated (code-wise and content-wise) and SEO "conscious" has been very much worth the effort. Especially comsidering that I have yet to use social media tools as a means to attract potential clientele. I should state here that I am established freelance photographer who relies heavily on direct introductions and occasional bouts of cold calling and knocking on doors of potentials with my portfolio in hand. If I relied solely on the website to grow my client base I would have been out of business long ago.

creature 12 years ago |

I think the thing about freelancing is: you're never going to have one source of leads. There'll never be one thing that makes someone think "Yes, I should get in contact with this person," but it all helps create a good impression. Good portfolio demos, useful & well-written blog articles, an active Twitter following/Github account/Stackoverflow profile, talks & engagement with the community, etc will all help. But there's no magic bullet.

In general, you'll probably find that most work comes from you reaching out to people pro-actively. At that point, they're definitely going to check out your website. If you can link them to your best work and give them some well-written blog articles to read, you'll definitely see the benefit in later conversations.

robert_tweed 12 years ago |

I would say not. I used to have a fairly well ranked site and only ever got a few spammy "please work for nothing" enquiries through the site. The only time I've seen real enquiries come through a site was RFPs, when the site in question was that of a large digital agency on various "top 10 agencies" lists. Even those were usually a waste of time and the traffic did not come from organic search anyway. Rather, because we were in industry lists we regularly got added to RFPs (especially from organisations with statutory tender process requirements).

A portfolio is mainly useful as something you send to qualified prospects, not something you expect people to stumble upon and offer you business (anyone wasting time doing that probably can't afford to pay you anyway).

poseid 11 years ago |

Interesting question. Answer for me right now: "no". Most jobs came via personal network. But I am exploring options to expand my freelance business too, and blogged about it: http://thinkingonthinking.com/Elegance-in-a-software-busines... and http://thinkingonthinking.com/Pitching-for-Jobs/ and http://thinkingonthinking.com/customers-jobs/ - it would be great to share/discuss what makes a good freelance website too.

VeryVito 12 years ago |

In my experience, no. Leads will find you through your online presence, but will rarely, if ever, begin at your site. However, it IS important to maintain a good site (in addition to making yourself known via forums, social networks and job aites) as they will expect to see one before they bother to contact you.

Think of your web site as your business card -- it's how people get in touch with you once they've already been introduced; it seldom works as the introduction itself.

rakeshmenon 12 years ago |

You can use twitter advanced search to search for leads: https://twitter.com/search-advanced

To make your task easier - you can use tools like Leadify http://leadify.in etc.

kull 12 years ago | |

Or http://www.Area301.com for even more lead sources in one place

tptacek 12 years ago |

Not so much, no.

ohashi 12 years ago |

I don't think I've ever got work from my portfolio. It's occasionally been something to show someone later in the process. The vast majority are face to face contacts and networking.

arsalanb 12 years ago |

Depends on how popular your work is, really. If you're a moderately popular freelancer, it is not rare to have most of your work coming in through your portfolio website, and via search engines.