How to search for orders on the Internet outside of freelance exchanges and acquaintances?

Question

Freelance

I'll start with a post of pain and tired indignation. You can skip it, details below.
I am a web designer. Freelancer. I am not looking for orders, they themselves come through acquaintances and through old customers, but their flow is unstable and often the budget sags noticeably. At such moments, I go to the freelance exchange, look at the applications for orders and leave. I have a physical aversion to trying to sell myself. For me, this process is like putting out a three-penny task with a “yesterday” deadline in front of hungry students, 20% of whom will complete it for three kopecks, 50% for one, and 30% for feedback. Moreover, these hungry students (they can be people over 40 with impressive work experience, but the quality of work is like that of a hungry student) throw words like “selling design”, “I will do it professionally”, “100 works in the portfolio”, “10 years of experience” etc. Due to one portfolio, you can’t get an order, you have to “trade the body”, competing with others who will overpraise themselves and do it cheaper and faster. At first I wanted to compare this process with port girls and lifting skirts in front of a sailor, this is a more accurate description for me, but I'm not sure that it would pass censorship :)
This is where the lyrics ended. I tried to look for orders on Vkontakte, it turns out not bad, but they are all cheap. I joined teams, tandems with layout designers, was freelance at a couple of studios. They deceived, broke up, could not work together, just disappeared.
Is there life outside of freelance exchanges for a freelancer? How to get it? I really need advice from the professional community.

Answer 1

There is. Write to web studios, make permanent contacts. Professionals are always appreciated.
Don't dump. Just competently serve the client, ask questions about the design right away. Introduce a person into a dialogue so that he sees that you are interested and that you are a professional.
As a designer, end customers do not need you, customers need to solve their problems (increasing profits, etc.). You will always be the workhorse of web studios, advertising agencies and the like.

Answer 2

Get a job

Answer 3

At first I wanted to compare this process with port girls and lifting skirts in front of a sailor

it's just that now all the sailors are familiar with you :) and they are aware that you have "under the skirt"

They deceived, broke up, could not work together, just disappeared

everything is like everyone else

Is there life outside of freelance exchanges for a freelancer?

there is, but you still need to grow up to it - Artemy Tatyanovich is a living example of this

aversion to trying to sell yourself

here you have to overpower yourself, otherwise you will never get decent money for your work
Enter the community of designers and related to the web and become popular / famous there

Answer 4

1. A good designer will always have orders.
2. Your personal guarantees are professionalism and quality.
3. Create a single page of your portfolio (with a gallery of work in the slider).
Place on the main page - only contacts and that's it. (no PR, etc.)
4. Agree to leave a link at the bottom of your design template to the portfolio page.
5. Keep personal growth analytics and don't "flex" on prices.

Answer 5

To Sergey 's comment , I can advise you to use linkedin.com
There you can find, if not orders, then the development team or you can be found.
If you get into, say, a development team, then you will work remotely on projects.
Let's just say, if your level satisfies the team leader of some team, then you will always be at work.
My team works mainly in the foreign segment, projects usually take from 3 to 12 months.
People from different countries, we communicate in English-Russian-Spanishfin =)) Everyone is happy and full.
If you have the skills, strength and desire - go for it. Look for the right place for you.
By posting a resume on the same hh.ru, specifying the type of work - remote, you will probably receive an offer, and perhaps one that you cannot refuse =)
In fact, there are a lot of opportunities to find yourself an order.
At the beginning of the 2000s, I looked for orders in the catalogs of (paper) construction companies.
You watch an ad, the site is not listed, you call and try to persuade the site. But that was in 2000-2002 =)

Answer 6

And how did you want? Freelancing is first and foremost a scam. By "cool specialist" is meant a selling Indian with zero skills, otherwise this very Indian would have long been sitting at a distance or some other job. And do not forget, skin color, accent, age have a huge implicit meaning. I advise you to score, if you received the norms of salary, then making a career on all sorts of clothes will mean drinking condensed milk from a straw for quite a long time, look for remote work or as the studios said directly.

Answer 7

There are niches on the exchanges, as well as on the market as a whole. Do not be afraid to get out of the niche of "hungry students", ask for a normal price for your skills. Even if it's too high, no big deal. And you will see that the customers there will also be completely different.
True, for this you need to earn some reputation, that is, not all at once.

Answer 8

Create your project, which will be related to web design.
Start developing it a little, because even if you get a lot of answers here, you are unlikely to follow them.
And this proposal is an option for a solution, as it satisfies your needs:
- You can get out of a wide range of freelancing and move to a different level of entrepreneurship (if you separate these 2 concepts)
- Of course, you still have to "lift up your skirts and do all sorts of obscenity", but this will already be for other purposes, not a simple salary, but your offspring, for the sake of which it will already be, sort of, and not ashamed.
- You can give a lot of options, but I will not overload the text.
For example, we are doing a project, which will help freelancers find a team in which they will be useful. This is not an exchange where you have to shout loudest and "beat your chest" in order to stand out, that is, not a recruiting resource.
I hope my answer is helpful to you!

Answer 9

I created sites on the topics I earn money on (parsing and programming in Excel). There I post reference materials, my work, tricks. After some time, the sites were indexed, a small but stable flow of visitors from search engines began. On the sites, of course, my contacts and offers of my services. Orders come through this channel several times a month.

Answer 10

Just get to work. Can be remote. No offense, but after reading your question, I got the impression that freelancing is not for you.

Answer 11

Indeed, get a job. I purposely left freelancing for the office so that I could come back later. Going to the people, so to speak) For freelancing, I still, frankly, lack self-discipline. And work in the office disciplines very well.

Answer 12

The competition has not yet been canceled. If you consider yourself superior to others and compete with the lot of the carrying class, then settle down as a king of some sort; or a dictator of some banana republic; ... Of course, I apologize, but it's a shame when freelancers put us on a par with prostitutes.