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This is a short story about landing my first paying client a few years ago when I was starting my web firm.

I launched the site for my new web business on April 2. It was ready for launch the day before, but I just couldn’t bring myself to launch on April 1 due to that day’s association with foolish endeavors. For the next few months, I continued to play music gigs and do construction work part-time, while I refined my skills as a web site builder and continued to market my web services.

Nearly every week, I attended some sort of consultants’ group meeting or met for coffee with some established web-services provider in my area. I was networking with people as much as I could stand, but it hadn’t paid off for me yet. My new business was nearly six months old and I didn’t have a single paying client signed up for services.

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Good read - “it’s not what you know but who you know”

My first paid site was for the local credit union of the company that I worked for.

My first independent, paying print job was a referral from one of my printers (36-page 6-color brochure). My first paying website (1994-5) was also a referral, an agency for the First Bank Systems (now US Bank), a huge site for the day. Of course, in 94-5, there weren’t many that knew how to do sites commercially. I could probably count them on one hand here in Minneapolis.

I got our first client through what today might be called fax spam. It started simply enough, during my last job, I had created a database of over 4,000 nonprofit organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area. We had a website up ad running, but it attracted mostly individuals and nonprofit technology consultants or other technology consultants, not nonprofits. So I made the decision. In the database we had created for a directory of nonprofits in the Bay Area, about 2/3rds had fax numbers. A one page newsletter, fairly well designed, and with easy opt-out instructions, a scanner to test what shades of greys vs blacks and whites transmitted best, a Mac, and a copy of FaxSTF; I started. Twice a month, a one-page nonprofit technology tip sheet with resources. Very little about our organization was on the fax, just our logo, our tagline, a brief note on how to remove or subscribe, and two lines stating that a wide variety of technology services including website design, database development, user support, system administration, and procurement assistance was available.

The first week, about 20 organizations called and asked to be removed from the fax. After the second delivery, 10 organizations had called and requested to be added. By the third, we had one emergency tech support client. Not much total bill was about $150, for a day spent rebuilding an entire network infected with some virus or another (small network). By week five, someone was impressed with our backend database and wanted us to design a new database for them. The database turned into two integrated databases, which lead to a database to web project with a different client who was introduced through the first. We kept up the fax Tip, Tricks, & Resources page for about two years, before we just didn’t have time for it.

Sometimes giving your knowledge away works well for persuading people to purchase your services.

My first freelance job came to me through the handcoded webdiary on my first minisite. I had written a tiny novel and the publisher Econ had no site back in 1995, so I made my own, when the book got out. One part of the site (on AOL webspace!) was a webdiary, and after a few months two different computer magazine editors found it and asked whether I wanted to write for them. So I wrote girlie fun stuff about the web and got paid for it. That was OK. And later something really great happened: Somebody in the agency mixed authors up and ordered me to write some workshops on webdesign tools. I had some experience teaching computer stuff and jumped on it without saying it was a mix-up. Everybody was quite happy, especially me.

That happened in 1998 and I am today still IT journalist for one of those magazines and other customers, left my “normal” job in 2000 and became freelance author. But since I started to write about CMS and Blogs I began to build my own sites with pmachine to make sure I had the experience I needed. People visiting my blogs and sites started to ask if I wanted to webwork for them and in 2004 someone hired me and my husband (you might know him as Silence 😊 to put a rather complicated CSS-design into his EE software.

We became kind of attached 😊 I shifted to 50% webwork in the next years and to be honest, I still do not really know how to “land” a client on purpose, though I probably could, if somebody gave me a bucket of spare time. 

But I do know that you have to love what you do to be good at it. And if you are good, clients will <s>probably</s> find you.

This was a good read thanks for posting.

My first (and only one so far) paid job was for a colleague - set up a web site for his band. It’s not quite done yet, but the band is happy with it so far.

Interesting topic. First client - indeed, first several clients - seem to come by way of persistence and insistence.  What I have found in the early stage of my career which involves the pursuit of paying clients is that while I am excited about the work I know myself capable, the client is not as engaged as I would like in partnering.  I feel as though I am insisting, or “trying to talk them into” the benefits of a professional website.  I understand that may always be a necessity to some extent - to educate the client of the benefits.  Currently though, I am in an inquiry as to how to better match myself with clients who are already cognizant of the need for their own commitment/engagement/“ownership”.  As example, I recently developed the website for a tour director.  She had great content by way of a newsletter she was producing.  I developed the website based off the newsletter and that is a great start, but any content beyond the facts about each tour was not/has not been forthcoming. The website needs “heart” which should come from the client i.e. personal content, blog entries.  In the end, I wrote the content for the “about” page as well as the tour advantage page - and while only a few paragraphs, it required really getting to know the industry as well as the client in depth to produce meaningful content.  Meaningful content for which an engaged and prepared client would already be prepared by virtue of having been in the business for many years.  I fully know that studying, researching and “really getting to know” the industry/client is also part of my responsibility and I would not be providing a good service if I weren’t making that effort to be very knowledgeable of the industry/client (though in the future I will be aware of the time commitment required in so doing and bill accordingly).  But a client who comes to the table ready and eager to provide content is what I am searching for.  How to open/solicit myself to find those types of client is my inquiry and the path to raised expectations, challenges and growth.  My early suspicion is that focus is needed - choosing an industry and becoming more specialized in relating to it.  By choosing an industry on which to focus, it would alleviate the frustration of the need to research from scratch a whole new industry with each website.  In a sense, moving towards becoming an expert - and capable of “speaking form the heart” - in the chosen industry.