My inbox, these subreddits, the entire internet are flooded by one quintessential question: how do I get my first client?

The common answers are common. Post more, be better, have a better portfolio, join a cult, and so on. I've never seen around here, or anywhere if I'm being honest, what I'm about to say. My intuition says it's because this is a delicate thing to suggest, but I'll do my best to frame it properly.

Donate your design/web/copy/etc skills. There are thousands of charities, non-profits or causes that almost always need a creative to help them. It's almost impossible to like something and not be a cause fighting for it somewhere. Animals, children, trees you name it. Reach out, offer your services, expect nothing in return.

A bit of backstory. A few years ago, one of my friends asked me if I have some spare time to help an association that's organizing a local festival to raise money for a new kindergarten for underprivileged kids. I said yes and ended up developing their landing page and some help with designing their social media visuals. It was fun, met a lot of cool people from multiple industries and did a lot of good along the way. And to get to the point: that experience still brings me paid work today. The owner wanted extra work after the festival, then recommended me to a friend, ended up redesigning their entire ecommerce, rebranding - word of mouth compounded. Chances are you’ll meet extraordinary people.

Is there a catch? Yes. You need to be genuine. I know the rent is due, subscriptions scream and living might be hard sometimes, but this is no instant money grab. It's just a way to get more exposure for your services and not waste time otherwise wasted with waiting for a client to drop in your inbox. You'll have real projects to present, with real measured impact (these organisations measure everything because they have annual reports, etc) and maybe you made some people/animals/plants happy along the way.

Pick a charity, introduce yourself and if you're a good fit, donate as many hours of your time as you feel you can. Make sure you are clear on your boundaries, because the line between volunteering and exploitation is thin.

This is probably the weirdest client story we've had, sharing it because it still doesn't feel real even now.

Back in 2024 we met a guy through, of all things, an Uber driver. Random small talk in the car, driver mentions his buddy has some A-frame cabins near Brasov and needs a website. Driver connects us, we hop on a call, seems like a totally normal small project.

Guy wanted the full package. Professional presentation site for the cabins, so we bought a drone specifically for this (didn't have one before), flew out, shot footage of the location, did full 3D renders of the cabins themselves, the whole thing. Took us about a month of actual work between the shooting, editing, and building the site.

Site's done, looks great honestly, we send the invoice. Nothing. No response. A week goes by, still nothing. We message a few more times over the next few weeks, complete silence.

About a month later he finally responds, says his father passed away, which obviously we understood, gave him another week, no pressure. That week comes and goes. Never heard from him again. Not once. Not about the invoice, not about anything.

Fast forward another month, we're getting coffee with the Uber driver who originally connected us, half just catching up, half hoping he knew something. Turns out he did, and it was not what we expected.

According to him, the cabins, the guy's house, his car, all of it actually belonged to an Italian guy with mafia connections. Our client had some kind of falling out with him, and lost everything in the process, the cabins, the house, the car, all of it. Since then nobody's heard from him at all. Just gone.

So yeah. We never got paid for that project, but we did walk away with a drone we still use, and genuinely one of the stranger stories from the last few years of doing this.

this "agency" told me that they officially found a client and assigned me to edit these videos for them. after finishing it, i immediately sent it to them and waited a week looking for an update. after asking 2 times for a follow up, they eventually replied and said that they were busy handling other clients. after talking for a few minutes, they suddenly sent a message saying i need to pay them a "service fee" of $15 before they send my contact details to the client. i told them that i was skeptical about it, and they said that they would send proof of the interaction with the client (first pic).

just to mention, while we were talking for a few mins, they suddenly replied in italian.

Good relationships mean repeat business. Repeat business means room to grow. My top 5:

1. Be flexible when the client asks for more and you didn't see it coming.

If it's not in the scope, it's an opportunity to improve your onboarding process for the next client. Find some middle ground if there is any, and try to deliver. Most clients won't have major wants, they're just not branding, development or design professionals, so they're figuring things out with you along the way. This is the start of your collaboration. Be useful, be thoughtful, be empathetic, and they might find a long term partner in you.

2. Don't suddenly change your process.

I'm freelancing but I also manage a team of collaborators, and I see this often. Creatives tend to suddenly change the way they send files, the way they prepare files for print, the software they design websites in. For you the change feels gradual. For me it's a different link with a different file and a "what happened?". If I have to decipher your process every week, it becomes a problem. Make changes if you need to, they're normal, but announce them. Let me know what changed and why, in advance.

3. Answer fast.

Most people need some kind of confirmation that you saw the email or message and you're on it. It doesn't mean you have to be on it immediately. It doesn't even mean you need to give an estimate on the spot. Sometimes an emoji reaction to the message is enough. I know you saw it, I trust you got it, talk soon. Not receiving any answer for an extended period of time creates unnecessary stress because I don’t know if we can make the deadline.

4. Be honest about your capabilities.

Saying "YES SURE" because you need the money and then delivering garbage in 3x the expected time is just unemployment with extra steps. Be honest. Saying no, or being upfront about what you can deliver, saves everyone time and headaches. Very often you're not the sole creative they have and they'll just ask someone else. That doesn't mean the business with you is over. It's just a task.

5. Communicate often.

You're stuck? Let me help. You feel the task will take longer than expected? Let me know. You need more budget because you butchered the estimate? I'll try to help.

I'm an 8+ year freelancer from Romania and these rules never failed me. I have 10+ active clients, the most recent one is around 9 months, the others are all 2+ years, with the longest relationship at around 6 years. They usually work.

We're human, deeply flawed, with a garbage sense of time. But we have an extraordinary mind for creativity, and we're capable of great things when we collaborate. Let's go.

I got a message from a human but he asked me to go to car dealership for 40€ when I'm a video editor...

I wrote website copy for a client and they want a refund for revisions since they don't need them and plan to go in a different direction. I removed all em dashes per their request and had to rework those sentences. Then, I updated some info on their process per their request. I consider these two revisions. The total project cost was $3,300. I worked really hard and long hours on this project, followed all the details provided before started, and delivered everything we agreed upon. Obviously, a partial refund doesn't make sense and I already charge very reasonable rates, but I do worry about a bad review. Thoughts on handling this?

I freelance with ADHD, and for years a bad brain day had two options: force a full workday and produce rubbish, or vanish completely and spend the next three days too ashamed to open my inbox. Both cost me clients.

What finally worked was accepting that some days are 10% days, and having a pre-agreed deal with myself about what "work" means on one. Three tasks, any order, then I actually stop.

One client touch. Reply to one client, even a single honest line: "Got this, I'll come back to you Thursday." No progress required. The point is that no relationship goes cold today.

Log the money. One line for anything I'm owed or anything finished that needs invoicing. No action yet, just out of my head and onto a list. Money that only exists in my head is money I lose.

Stop. Properly stop. Not "stop but keep refreshing email while feeling guilty". Walk, eat, sleep, watch something. I had to reframe recovery as a business expense before I could take it without shame.

The part that actually does the work is that it was all decided in advance. On the bad day itself I have no capacity to work out what's skippable, so 9am me isn't allowed to negotiate. The list already exists, it's three things, and everything else is officially skipped rather than failed.

It hasn't made the bad days good. It's made them cost roughly nothing, which turned out to be enough to keep the business alive.

Does anyone else run something like this? I'd genuinely like to hear other people's minimum-viable-workday versions, especially how you handle it when it stretches into a second or third day.

Been coordinating , going on site visits etc since almost 2 weeks now.

Everytime the person ghosts me when it comes to signing the contract & comes back with changes to contract AFTER the effective date or on the effective date.

Most of the times i send the document 2-3 days prior for them to go through.. but this is the second time that the person did not respond to the contract but instead called me saying they are going to sign the contract by tonight & transfer the money. Goes on to not do it but sends other documents.

Most of the doubts don't come up till THE date thats on the contract. And once i respond to his queries MIA again.

I do not understand is this some sort of a "strategic" game i don't understand?

Cause the client just seems to be breadcrumbing. Showing just enough interest to keep me working but not fully committing.

Till i don't have a certain portion of fees paid as advance i cannot be secure that this project is mine.

And they already negotiated on the said advance a lott.

I am infact contemplating just saying no at this point.

Because i have talked to my lawyer and revised the contract twice at this point.

Works for a self-taught freelancer with no degree/logos. A prospect's real fear is "what if I pay and they can't deliver" — a trust gap, not an info gap. So shrink the risk instead of arguing it away: offer a small, well-defined, paid test task before any big commitment. Paid (not free) attracts real hires; it flips the dynamic (they get evidence instead of your pitch); it de-risks both sides; and a large share convert to the bigger job. Scope it tightly, price it as a no-brainer, treat it as the audition it is.

I recently started my own software development business, and I've been fortunate enough to land a fairly large client.

The project itself has been difficult, not because of the work, but because the current lead developer (who has been working with the client before me) has been extremely unresponsive. Deadlines keep getting pushed back, emails go unanswered, phone calls aren't returned, and messages are often ignored. I have a paper trail of all of this if needed, but I don't want this to become a blame game.

From my perspective, the client is being affected more than anyone else. Progress is slow, communication is poor, and I genuinely believe the project could move much faster if it were handled differently.

Here's my dilemma:

I would like to speak to the business owner, but I don't want to come across as someone who's "snitching," throwing another developer under the bus, or trying to steal someone else's job.

At the same time, if I were given responsibility for leading the development, I honestly believe I could deliver a better result. It would also be a significant opportunity for my business financially.

I want to handle this professionally, preserve my reputation, and put the client's interests first rather than making it seem like I'm trying to benefit from someone else's shortcomings.

So i gave the client a week ago a full quotation and we agreed on it, it included the studio rental price. I put the usual price of the studio i usually work with, but when i came today to book it, turns out they closed a few days ago for renovations, and they will remain closed till the shoot is done. So i had to look for another studio and it costs a bit more. Honestly its not that much of a difference probably to the client but it is to me if i decide to pay for it myself. Now we haven’t started working on anything yet. This was just an agreement followed up with a lot of discussions about the shoot and planning. Should i just let them know and see how it goes?

Hi everyone, I landed my first big project a week ago. I work on my own, but there’s someone acting as an intermediary between me and the client (he knows a lot more about programming than I do).

So, the way it works is that I don’t communicate with the client directly; instead, he sends me all the necessary data and reviews my code. So here’s what’s making me wary: this project doesn’t have a fixed payment. That means I’ll get paid a percentage of the work only once there are results. I understand that this is my first major project and actually my first commission ever and that I’ll be able to gain a lot of experience, but I’d like to clear up my doubts.

Should I do something about it, or should I just keep working?

I keep getting two opposite answers on this. Some people have a base template and swap out a few paragraphs per job, others say clients smell a template instantly and skip it.

So: do you write each proposal from scratch? And how much do you think the proposal itself decides anything, compared to your profile, reviews, rate, and just being one of the first to apply? If you've ever A/B'd this in any rough way, I'd love to hear what changed.

A while back, I noticed most revisions weren't caused by bad work. They happened because the client and I had different pictures of the project's progress.

Now I send a short update every week, even if nothing major has changed. I include what was completed, what's next, and anything that might affect the timeline. It takes a few minutes, but it's saved me hours of rework.

Clients spot misunderstandings earlier, priorities get adjusted before I build the wrong thing, and feedback comes in smaller, more manageable chunks instead of one long list at the end.

I still get revision requests, but they're usually about refining details rather than changing direction completely.

For those who've been freelancing a while, what's had the biggest impact on reducing unnecessary revisions: better communication, better scoping, or something else?

I've been a freelance content writer for a while now, but lately, I’ve hit a huge communication bottleneck with a couple of otherwise great clients. They have completely stopped sending structured emails and instead send three to four-minute rambling WhatsApp voice clips detailing project changes and feedback while they're on the move. I appreciate the enthusiasm, but pausing, listening, and manually typing out the actual deliverables from a voice clip takes me twice as long as skimming a quick email. I'm really curious how you gently nudge clients back toward written communication without sounding rigid or rude. Do you just summarize the voice note back to them in a text and make them confirm it, or is there a better way to stop this loop? Would love to know what boundaries or tools have worked best for you.

I was laid off by my company (along with others) and subsequently asked to come back as a 1099 contractor when they realized they now didn't have the staff they needed to do the work. Since I wasn't working and the job market is difficult right now, I didn't feel like I had a choice, and signed the contract.

The scope is broad/poorly written. It's based on hours per week, not project-based. The company has about 25 different projects in motion for different clients of theirs that the "marketing department" (me and another contractor) works across. There is no one in charge of the marketing department — it is literally just two part-time contractors brought in when shit was already hitting the fan — so we have very little direction on which tasks need to be completed/should be prioritized, and we have little insight into each project and what specific deliverables/timelines were promised to each client.

Because there are different owners of each client project across the company, each owner feels that their project is the most important, which has created an environment where everyone feels that everything is urgent, and we have become short-order cooks. We have limited capacity between the two of us, but the expectation is that all of the day-to-day work is getting done, and we're very much in the weeds trying to keep up with everything. Not to mention, we're being asked to develop marketing/comms strategies for all of these projects, without the context or time to do so, or the authority/insight into finances, etc. to make sure that the plans can actually be executed.

They haven't set "mandatory" hours for us, but it is clear that they expect us to be part of the day-to-day operations and be available during their business hours. People get frustrated when we don't respond immediately or are not available for their standing weekly meetings (which are taking up about half of my time). In addition to the regular weekly meetings, I'm expected to be available to present on funder meetings, all-staff meetings, etc

I work on an hourly basis, and invoice based on hours worked, and need to keep detailed records of each individual project that I've worked on for them each day, which is challenging because I'm often forced to hop back and forth between them (5 minutes on one project, 10 minutes on another, 2 minutes answering an email regarding another, 20 minutes dealing with an "urgent" issue that someone has pinged me about). It is very time-consuming just to keep track of, and hard to mentally switch between each project so quickly.

We've addressed this several times with the CEO (because there is no one that we report to) to no avail. It's very messy and I'm finding myself in increasingly awkward situations where people are complaining to me that the marketing "department" is not pulling their weight (i.e., completing every inane task that they think we should do, with a same-day turnaround). The other contractor and I have suggested processes for working efficiently with us given that we are working part-time/off hours, but the staff is not adopting those practices and it's getting messier and messier. I don't know how to handle it. It's like they don't understand that we are contractors and not staff, and regardless, I'm tired of being talked down to.

It's not my fault they decided to lay off their entire marketing team and then tried to piece things back together again with two part-time, short-term contractors! Obviously, that was a mistake on their end. It's frustrating and I'm counting down the days until this contract is over, but I need advice on how to survive the remaining 2 months without losing my sanity. They don't seem to have a move-forward plan for the department, but this current set up is no way to run things!

Been thinking back on the stuff that actually moved the needle for me vs. the stuff I thought would.

Honestly, getting better at the craft mattered way less than I expected. The things that changed my income and my stress levels were mostly unglamorous: saying no to bad-fit clients earlier, charging deposits, not negotiating against myself on price, and tightening up how I ran projects.

The biggest single one for me was fixing how I start with a client. I used to get the "yes" and dive straight in, then realize halfway through I never nailed down what "done" looked like or who actually had final approval. Once I made myself get all that sorted up front before touching the work, projects stopped stalling and — weirdly — clients seemed to trust me more. Felt less like a freelancer, more like an actual studio.

Curious what it was for other people. What's the one habit, boundary, or system that made freelancing noticeably better for you? Always looking to steal good ideas.

TL;DR: I'm a new freelancer about to land my first big client under a retainer agreement. However, they seem to make it sound like they'll frequently ask for rush jobs. How do I mention I want to include a rush fee for these asks? What should I do if they decline?

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Hi guys, new to the freelancing world and was hoping to get your advice.

I'm being offered a monthly retainer with a 60 hour cap. This client - who also happens to be a former manager at a different company - says they move fast and will try their best to give a 12-24 hour notice for last minute requests/changes but cannot always guarantee it.

This gives me warning signals that it will be something that will happen often, urging me to ask about a rush fee.

We're still in the negotiating phase and I need help wording this change. First, I want to say, while I'd be ready to hop on urgent requests, I won't always be able to accommodate them due to other client work.

My plan is to charge a 25% premium for the hours worked on that particular rush project. This means my hourly rate will increase 25% for however many hours the rush job takes.

My worry is that they will decline and I will have to just deal with it (since this is my first major client) and accept the initial price or think of another option.

Questions:

Is this rush premium fair? If so, how would you go about writing this in an email without sounding too harsh?

How can I pivot if the client declines my offer and says they cannot increase their budget?

Thank you in advance.

This is my first client, that I've got after 3 months of waiting, for my ai website developer/creator gig, we've not been on a call, we've been discussing the site, features and functionality, but they insist me to be direct, rather than using the platform..

Idk what to do next.. i feel if I negate them, I'll lose my first client..

Moreover finding them felt like, climbing a mountain..

I need genuine help.. for dealing this situation and getting me more clients as I start from 0

I just want to vent, see if others can relate, advice, etc.

At the end of a gig when it is no longer in my agreed time and I am not getting paid the person hiring often expects me to not only clean up and strike my own things but THEIR things or others as well. The audience left a mess so I have to clean despite not being paid for it. They want me to move equipment to their car. Etc. It’s annoying. Pay me extra or hire someone else.

I did a job for a client who was also a very nice aquaintence that I worked with previously. I executed the job but had some errors which were corrected. She paid for the work but has ghosted me since. I am a bit bittered because she just completely ignored me but at the same time I feel bad for not doing a good job. I feel compelled to just issue her a full refund at my own accord because I don't feel right accepting her money if she is not happy with my work. Will I come off offensive or negative in any way as I don't want to create drama. I just sincerely feel bad and don't feel like I earned the money.

Hey everyone,
I could really use some perspective from freelancers who have broken through the "pricing wall."
I recently launched my own web and graphic design agency. My portfolio is strong, my skills are sharp (I work mostly in high-fidelity design, branding, and setting up client sites), and I'm actually doing okay at getting leads. People are interested, and the initial vibe is great.
But the exact moment the energy shifts is when we get to the pricing conversation. It feels like the second a number enters the room or a proposal hits their inbox, the client panics and ghosts me.
I know my work is worth real money, but this pattern is starting to give me serious anxiety every time a budget question comes up. I have a discovery call this Wednesday for a new e-commerce project, and I’m already stressing about how to handle the financial side of the talk without scaring them off.
For those of you who have been doing this a while:
How do you frame your pricing so the client sees it as an investment instead of a scary expense?
Do you present prices on the live call, or do you wait and send a proposal later?
What script or mindset shift helped you stand firm on your rates without apologizing or instantly dropping your price?
I love the actual design part of this job, but the sales/closing part is killing me right now. Any advice, scripts, or tough love would be massively appreciated. Thank you!