7 Ways for Autistic Freelancers to Find Their First Clients
By: Vanessa Blanchard
This is the 3rd post in the freelancing series, where we help autistic folks start and maintain a freelancing career. We were able to create it thanks to the support of Spectroomz hub members, and therefore it’s available only to members.
Learning how to get freelance clients is both a core part of freelancing and something autistic people find challenging. There are many reasons why networking is hard for us, and it’s pretty overwhelming to navigate new social situations and transitions in general.
Once you find your first clients, the process becomes a lot easier. You develop a system, and a stronger sense of what you’re looking for in a working arrangement. While there’s always variation in how clients are found, the process of looking starts to become part of a routine.
Having freelanced for a number of years, my biggest obstacles now are shutting down at the idea of finding a new client. I’ve learned that there are always clients, though. And they come in many different ways. Sometimes, they even come to you.
It’s important that there are resources that help autistic folks feel empowered in their career development. So, I’ve gathered a collection of approaches that can help you feel out how to find freelance clients.
How to Get Freelance Clients
There are a few approaches you can take to finding your first clients. Some are easier for beginners, some will be easier as you gain experience. There’s no one prescribed way to find clients, though. In fact, it’s possible to set yourself up with multiple useful approaches. Let’s look at 7 options you can start with.
1 - Freelancing Platforms
Many online services exist that can help you find your first clients and freelancing jobs. Platforms like these won’t make you as much money as other options, but they’re fantastic ways to build confidence and experience when you’re starting out. Here are a few popular examples of freelancing platforms you can use:
https://dribbble.com/ - more for designers
https://www.yunojuno.com/ - For in the UK
Freelancing platforms have a couple of downsides: they don’t pay as well as other work will, and there’s a lot of competition. However, you can easily practice the process of proposals, pitches, and applications with freelancing platforms. Many of them let you set up profiles and offer job boards that will help you find clients to reach out to.
2 - Use Spectroomz
Spectrum has two ways that you can find clients:
Check out our job board, where you can find weekly postings of diverse jobs in many different industries, including weekly freelancing opportunities.
You can create a profile through the website. Your profile gives you an online portfolio that you can send to people. It’s also available on the website for people looking to hire you.
With these options, you can proactively look for work and have an online presence that could draw clients to you. Arik is constantly working to draw companies to the site, where your profile is likely to stand out because our platform is a community to autistic folks with diverse interests and skills.
3 - Use Linkedin
A Linkedin profile is basically an online CV, meaning that it encompasses your entire work history. It’s simple to update. It gives you the option to set your profile so it can be found by clients searching the site for specific services or skills. You can search for job opportunities that are posted to the Linkedin’s job board (including freelancing). You can mark on your profile that you’re searching for work and have potential work opportunities emailed to you as well. There are groups and public posting options that allow you to network within the platform.
The major downside to Linkedin is that there’s a lot of competition. However, by optimizing your profile to include search terms relevant to your skills, you have the chance to be found. One of the most energy effective ways to get freelance clients is to have them find you.
My favorite way to use Linkedin, personally, is as my main document for organizing my work experience. It’s an easy reference for when I need to build a resume for a specific client.
4 - Community Outreach and Word of Mouth
Using your personal network is usually the first piece of advice that is given to those learning how to get freelance clients. I put it further down the list because autistic folks don’t always have a pool of people they can turn to when looking for work. That’s totally valid (and an ongoing issue for me as well). It’s still possible that there are local options for you that can help you get some work.
So, here are a couple of tactics you can use, even when you don’t have a network to turn to:
Use message boards or marketplaces online that can help you find work. Places like Facebook Marketplace and Nextdoor.com are great for offering services locally.
Many local businesses have places where you can put business cards or flyers that advertise your services
Reach out to local businesses/organizations and offer your services. For example, if you’re a graphic artist, you could ask some local businesses if they need help designing graphics for a sale. This is a great approach for building your first portfolio as well.
Offering strategic discounts can help encourage word of mouth referrals. There’s also a lot of power in simply asking people to spread the word for you. Remember, people like to feel like they’re helping, especially if it’s easy for them to do.
5 - Build a Portfolio
You may have noticed by now that this topic keeps coming up. Portfolios are an amazing tool for autistic people because they take tons of pressure off of us during the hiring process. We can sell ourselves through work we’ve finished, rather than mind reading our way through an interview.
The key to building a portfolio is simply to ask your clients for permission to feature your work in one. Many will say yes, but there are some instances where a no is also appropriate. For example, ghost writing work is almost never allowed in portfolios because you give up crediting rights as part of the job. However, clients are often happy to help you find more work.
Likewise, many clients won’t serve as references for other work, but will happily give you testimonials that you can add to your website or portfolio. (You also have the option of defining self-promotion policies in your contract.)
Now, as far as how (and where) to set up a portfolio, there are a couple simple options for you. You can use social media profiles to showcase your work. Places like Instagram are great for artists, musicians, and many other types of services. There are also places like Substack and Medium that allow writers to show off their skills. Look for the best options in your industry and use your profile as a shareable link for easy self-promotion.
Building your own business website is another option. There are many ways to set up free and cost effective websites. All you need is a single page that highlights your work, but adding a blog is often helpful. Writing helpful content about a topic you specialize in is a great way to increase your online presence. And it doubles as a kind of portfolio that shows potential clients you know your stuff! Check out our course How to Write Well for a Living for tips on constructing articles that impress (as a member, you have free access to all courses).
Make sure you optimize for SEO so that clients can find you through search engines as well. Take the SEO course through the Spectroomz Hub to learn more!
We’ll discuss setting up a website and online portfolio more in future articles. If you’d like to learn more about building a portfolio (and so much more!), check out our course How To Find a Job When You’re Autistic.
6 - Find Companies or Clients and Reach Out
You won’t learn how to get freelance clients without learning how to reach out first. This can take some courage, but mostly what you’ll also need is organization. It’s not enough to just reach out, you have to demonstrate that your services will meet this client’s specific needs.
For example, most publications and blogs have a niche that they focus on. So, if you want to submit an article to an online magazine, you need to understand their niche first. It wouldn’t be enough to pitch an article to Spectroomz that was only about autism, because Spectroomz’s niche is specifically autism and employment. Research the company enough that you can pitch ideas that are on-topic, helpful, and useful to their branding, mission statements, or niche.
Once you can give specific reasons why a company would benefit from your work, you can reach out in several ways. How you’ll reach out is mostly determined by the type of work you do. Writers might look for submission forms. Many industries will use cold emails or project proposals.
Submit Your Ideas to Spectroomz!
Spectroomz is offering Hub members an opportunity to pitch ideas to guest posts on our blog. This is a great way to practice reaching out to clients and it can jumpstart your portfolios. Check out our submissions guidelines page and form to learn what we’re looking for and how you can pitch us your ideas. Please don’t share this form, it’s open only to Spectroomz hub members.
7 - Offer to Collaborate with Someone
Collaborations are great for finding your first clients and boosting your online presence, your networking, your portfolio, and your appeal to future clients. It shows that you can work in groups, adapt to new challenges, and proactively cultivate opportunities. Here are a couple ways that you can collaborate with others:
Guest posts - Find someone with an established blog or website and offer to contribute to their blog. You don’t even have to be a professional writer for this. In fact, this is a great option for people who want to showcase their talents without having to commit to a whole blog themselves. Just make sure that your ideas are specific to the branding/niche and that they add something to the content that already exists.
Recruit professionals from other fields - One of the more accessible examples I can think of is with YouTube and other content creation. If you illustrate and you have a friend who makes music, you can pool your talents to create content that you both promote. Or you can trade guest spots in each other’s content. There are many ways to collaborate with people outside of creative fields as well.
This does work, even if you’re autistic and struggle with social settings. That definitely describes me, but I have found very good arrangements through this approach. Once I asked to collaborate on a guest post for someone’s blog and they referred me to another organization. I contributed on a volunteer basis to that organization for a while. Soon, I was able to take a couple commissions for one-off articles from people who found the organization. That led to me finding ongoing work with Spectroomz in an environment that values and respects my efforts.
Even being very awkward and uncomfortable with networking and socializing, word of mouth and collaborations have resulted in some of my best, most sustainable contracts.
Diversify Your Approach
Finding your first clients helps set up the building blocks for how to get freelance clients on a regular basis, but there won’t be one specific way that you’ll do this. Like I said before, this can be intimidating. But, finding those early clients in various ways sets up multiple avenues for taking on new clients and will take tons of pressure off of you in the long run.
Things like social media, online resumes (like with Spectroomz or Linkedin) and business websites can help automate the process by allowing clients to find you. Keeping these up to date with your newest and best projects make your work known to potential clients before they ever even talk to you. Having an easy to share display of your experience lets you stand out in your cold emails, idea pitches, project proposals, and in securing word-of-mouth clients. Funnel people towards your work. Use carefully structured communications to grab people’s interest and then show them what you’re made of.
Use finding your first clients as a chance to experiment and develop an approach that works the best for you and your communication styles. Autistic people often have to forge their own path for employment, and freelancing gives you lots of freedom to maneuver around a lot of the obstacles in your way.