How To Find Freelance Clients – And Fast

Imagine this: You’re a UI/UX designer with 3 years of hands-on experience in a fast-paced SaaS environment. You’ve honed your skills, organized your portfolio, polished your LinkedIn profile, and now — you’re ready to go solo and sell your services. But here’s the big question: how do you find freelance clients fast?

Disclaimer: The links highlighted in this post are for informational purposes only.

Just before I answer that, we need to be certain of a few things:

Are my services needed? And if they are needed, who would need or benefit from my services? Will my service solve a problem in the market? How can they find me? And if they can’t find me, how do I put myself on their path?

Honestly, finding freelance clients, especially as a new freelancer, is like moving into a new unfurnished apartment. Just you, the windows, and the occasional ‘meow’ from the neighborhood cat!

But think of this: if you are a client looking for a freelancer, where would you go? The key to finding freelance clients and bagging them fast is to be where your prospects are or would be.

IN THIS POST:

1. Cold emailing
2. Word-of-mouth
3. Your website
4. Freelance platforms
5. Social networks
6. LinkedIn Boolean search
7. Tech platforms
8. Job boards
9. 10 Tips to find freelance clients fast as a beginner

There is no ONE proven scientific method to find freelance clients fast – in your first month – because it varies individually (yes, it does). You may get your first client from Upwork while Jane gets her first client from the TikTok ‘SEO Tips’ video she created. The methods truly are not the same!

Further reading: 18+ Freelancing Tips From My Experience

But one thing is sure: you will find freelance clients if you implement a variety of methods at the same time. Now that I’m more established, I will tell you that one method of finding client is not enough! But here are proven ways to find freelance clients – and fast:

1. COLD EMAILING

I’ll start with the good old method – cold emailing, or what I call, ‘Notice me’ or ‘knocking on the clients door’.

Honestly, I didn’t like this method in the first place but it has worked for me recently. The good thing about cold emailing is that it puts you in the face of your prospect. It’s like saying, ‘Hey, I’m here now. I can help you’.

The funny thing is some of these clients don’t know that they need you – until you email them. Sometimes, they have a need, but they don’t know what to do until you reach out to them.

Simply create a simple email template with the your details and edit it for each client as you wish. Your cold email template must include:

1. A formal greeting.
2. An brief introduction of yourself and what you do.
3. A personalized presentation of your offering or service and what they stand to gain from your skills.
4. A link to or a presentation of your past creations, portfolio, or reviews.
5. How they can reach you.

Keep it as brief as possible! Infact, I abide by a simple cold email template rule:

it must be read without scrolling.

Don’t worry: as long you insert links or directions to your profile, a CV, and a portfolio, they can get all the information they need.

If you don’t get a response, don’t panic! Set a snooze in your mailbox, a reminder, or use an email service with follow-ups to send out reminders when you don’t get a response from the first email. I use a paid version of Mailmeteor because it allows me to set and send follow-up emails to prospective clients.

Initially, you can start by sending five or six personalized emails per day and build up from there (to avoid being flagged as spam).

Further reading: Best Freelance Websites in France 2025

Search and connect with founders and hiring managers on LinkedIn, and send a connection request (no pitching yet). Use hunter.io to find their emails and send personalized emails about your services.

Keep it simple, direct, and avoid spammy words like ‘Hire me now’. You can follow-up politely with a simple ‘Just checking to see if you had the chance to read my last message’. Most clients tend to respond after the second and third follow-up.

2. WORD-OF-MOUTH

Word-of-mouth has been a great way to find freelance clients fast. I mean, how can you start freelancing without telling your friends, family, former colleagues, and even local businesses in your area?

Tell your friends and family that you are going solo incase a friend-of-a-friend needs a UI/UX designer. The will help you get your message to their respective network and people they know.

Talk to your former colleagues too. If you had a good relationship with them, they will vouch for you and get the word out.

If you can, join a co-work space. They are great to help you meet other freelance colleagues and connect with them. Mozaik and Regus are one of the best co-working spaces in Paris that I recommend. If you are building a product and want to connect with other founders, Station F is the best place to connect. Connecting with other freelancers will not only improve your visibility and get you hired through their referral.

While I am not an advocate of finding clients at networking events, physical or online, you can try it if your ideal clients will be there. I do believe some people don’t want business cards shoved in their pockets at these events.

3. YOUR WEBSITE

If you are a new freelancer who is just starting out with no funds, a one-page website on your social profile is great at the moment. But if you have about $50 set aside for a website and yearly hosting, then a website is a great idea.

If you decide to have a freelance website or a blog, optimize your website with the right keywords so that you can be discovered by search engines. Include keywords that strongly match your niche and tells Google what your site is about.

Further reading: How To Create A One-page Website – Free, No-code

I recommend including your skills in the ‘site title’ so that prospective clients can see your services at a glance. For example, my freelance website has the title, ‘Seer Support | Outsourced Customer Support for Businesses’. This way, clients, and even search engines, can clearly see and understand my service.

If you want to take it up a notch, post client reviews and testimonials on your website. It make potential clients feel confident about hiring you.

But how can you get reviews as a new freelancer? Offer free work – but do it for short or small projects, say for 1 hour. You can help a founder redesign a logo or edit a small portion of CSS on their website. This way, you gather compelling reviews for your website.

4. FREELANCE PLATFORMS

90% of my clients, short and long term, came from freelance platforms, and they are very significant in getting your foot at the door. If you are a new freelancer without an active profile on a freelance platform, what are you doing?

Freelance platforms are one of the best ways to find freelance clients because they do the marketing for you. Recently, I noticed that some platforms have been created for specific skills or niches. For example: Toptal caters to senior level roles and top talents. Jean-Paul (in France) caters to IT and specialized technical skills. Determine your niche and join freelance platforms where your skills and experiences are in demand.

But sometimes, it takes weeks or months to find freelance clients from these platforms quickly. If you have a good bio, publish your accomplishments and projects, and use the right keywords, you will get a freelance client fast in no time.

While most freelancers recommend Upwork, I recommend Fiverr and Malt (for Europe) as the best platforms to find freelance clients fast. If you know your onions, join Toptal, even though the vetting process takes time.

Choose about two or three freelance job sites to be active on and create a compelling optimized profile. Send pitches that offer value and highlights your relevant skills to the client.

If you make your profile stand out, you will land clients in no time. Whatever you do, especially as a new freelancer, give freelance job sites a chance!

5. SOCIAL PLATFORMS

By social platforms, I mean social media and other social networking platforms, like LinkedIn. They are a great way to find freelance clients fast.

If your skills are creative or specialized for the tech industry, social media should be your bestie. Create short-form contents that touch on your skills and how you solve a problem. If you are an SEO specialist, share SEO tips and how keywords can help businesses grow.

Create content with past client work, share their reviews, and behind-the-scene view of your projects – that way potential clients will feel confident hiring you.

Whatever your niche is, find social media platforms where your future clients would be and take advantage of them. Your content should add value to your viewers and not vanity.

For me, it’s LinkedIn. I use LinkedIn to look up founders, co-founders, chief customer or product office, or the hiring team of the company. Then, I use hunter.io to find their emails and send personalized pitches to them. Etsy is also a gold mine for clients if you are graphic designer or Shopify designer.

If you are tech savvy and creative, publish your portfolio on Behance or Dribble to increase your visibility and attract the right clients.

Further reading: 12+ Hard Truths About Freelancing

6. LINKEDIN BOOLEAN SEARCH

If you want to take it up a notch while finding clients on LinkedIn, you can try the Boolean search. The Boolean search is basically using some filters or special instructions to find freelance jobs on LinkedIn. For this search, we use special words like AND, OR, or NOT, as well as quotation marks to tell LinkedIn what you want.

Let me break it down:

Imagine that you are a copywriter looking for your next client on LinkedIn and the ‘Job’ section is not doing much for you. You can try the Boolean search by inputting special words into the search bar. This way, you will see other LinkedIn members who are hiring for a freelance role that could be in your niche.

For example, let’s say you are a content writer in the SaaS field and you need a client asap. On your LinkedIn page, go to the search bar and type in “freelance content writer” AND “hiring”.

To make it even better, filter the search results to the date posted, say Past 24 hours, and you will see a result of hiring managers or founders actively looking for your skills. This way, you have first-hand opportunity to pitch to the client without going through the job section.

Another thing you can do with the LinkedIn Boolean search method is to find freelancers in your niche. Look at the companies and clients they are currently working with and reach out to them. This is because if the company is hiring freelancers, there’s a great chance they’ll hire you too.

In the search bar, type “freelance content writer”, filter by ‘people’ and ‘location’, and you have a list of freelance colleagues you can connect with. Who knows, they could put in a word or two on your behalf!

So, instead of scrolling for hours looking for the right gig, this method is guaranteed to help you find freelance clients in no time.

7. TECH BUSINESS PLATFORMS

One fateful day, I stumbled on Product Hunt and I was mad at myself for not doing this a long time ago. Who knew that tech product platforms like Product Hunt and G2 would help me find freelance clients?

Take a look at the companies on these sites and see their business goals. On Product Hunt, you can even see a list of new companies with their recent updates and news. With these, you have all the information you need to correctly pitch to these companies.

Simply find the founder or talent acquisition team on LinkedIn, find their emails with Hunter.io, and send them a personalized short pitch.

With this, you are sure to get freelance clients in no time!

8. JOB BOARDS

Job boards like Indeed, Wellfound, Remotely, Jobgether have been valuable in helping me find freelance clients.

If you are in France, Indeed France, Welcome to the Jungle, and France Travail are great sources to find freelance clients.

Just filter with the ‘freelance’ option and you will find freelance jobs in any category you desire. Make sure to read through the job descriptions to see if you meet the location criteria.

10 TIPS TO FIND FREELANCE CLIENTS FAST AS A BEGINNER

1. Be clear on your offer and niche down.
2. Don’t forget to offer value.
3. Showcase your value instead of your skills. Instead of saying ‘Video Editor’ or ‘FX Editor’, you can say, ‘I edit YouTube videos for gaming channels’.
4. Choose three freelance job sites and be active on them. One platform will not get you clients fast and using a lot of freelance job sites will make you loose track of your goal.
5. Start small to gather testimonials and reviews, and then build from there.
6. Join Facebook Groups and Slack channels, and occasionally leave a post about your services.
7. Make real connections with other freelancers and tell them about your services. Your next client may come through a referral.
8. Offer short or trial services for free so that they can upgrade to a paid service after seeing your skills.
9. Do what works for you! You don’t have to create content like other freelancers but you can take advantage of freelance platforms available to you.
10. Think of where your clients will be and actively target them there. If you are in the tech field, LinkedIn is a great place to start.

CONCLUSION

Freelancing sounds fancy nowadays – until it’s time to find paying clients and make a sustainable income out of it. And then the excitement dies down because no one one is knocking at your door while your peers are getting booked.

Building a freelance business from scratch is not for the weak. If I was to start over again, I would be active on three freelance platforms of my choice and build a compelling profile on social platforms. These methods are guaranteed to get my foot in the door and help me find freelance clients fast.

Identifying your ideal client is the first step to finding freelance clients. This way, you know where to find them and how to tailor your efforts to meet their business objectives. If you choose cold emailing, do it with intent – offer a solution and ditch lengthy paragraphs.

Finding freelance clients is unique to every freelancer. For some freelancers, the client finds them. For others, an extra effort is needed to land just one client. Whatever category you are, the key is to position yourself where clients can find you, at the right place and the right time.

Of course, you will find the occasional scam gigs on freelance platforms or in your inbox, but remember to do your due diligence and read through any freelance agreement.

Above all, focus on being present and visible, not perfect!

Every point mentioned in this post are the best methods that have helped me find freelance clients in my first few months. We all had to start from somewhere in the beginning but if you try a combination of these methods, you will be landing your first freelance client in no time.

This may be different for each freelancer, but what methods have helped you find freelance clients fast?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments!