Ask HN: How to get projects if you are development company? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to get projects if you are development company?

I see freelancer.com and upwork.com as one of major source for project. But this days there if you see the size of projects are getting small and the no of bidders is going high.

So is there any other way to directly contact companies which wants to outsource their work?

Plus mostly project posters here specify "Only freelancers bid no consultancy or agency bid"

Can we have Job style Agency/Consultancy post every month?

Agency/consultancy looking for work or startups looking for agency.

Like I am running a agency where we help startup to make their MVP with ease (startuppixel.com) but we are not able to find how we can find potential clients for the same.

Thanks

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Know people.

99% of the freelance/consultants I know that are doing ok are doing ok through personal relationships they've cultivated either through their career or through freelancing for a good long while or both. You talk to enough people and you will hear the same story over and over.

How do you get to know people? Get out there and work. Do projects and do them well. Contribute to the community, either online or better still, in person. Have a record of the cool stuff you did so that people can see it.

Expect it to take a long time. Don't jump into freelancing without some of that stuff built already if you're not prepared for a long slog trying to get the pump primed.

The good news is, honestly, good developers are hard as hell to find, and consultants and freelancers who ship are even more so. Lot of dudes out there cashing checks and not delivering. Breaking out of the pack isn't that hard to do. Or shouldn't be, if you're good and can push yourself over the hump.

Promote yourself: focus on solving problems in niches, wrtie a blog, contribute with open source software in github, etc.

It takes pretty high amount of time. And sometimes investing that amount of time is not easy for companies as they need to pay salaries side by side.

I bootstrapped my business in that way and we were only two at that time. There is no shortcut, you should work on stuff that is beyond your core skills: marketing, sales, writing, copywriting, etc.

If you want a shortcut with an small upper bound you can go to places like toptal.

They contact me on LinkedIn every day. I will sometimes try to sell them something. I already have a few specialist teams on call, however, so I am not a good prospect for them.

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