Want high-paying clients? Here’s how to find freelance projects through networking and genuine connection
Freelance platforms are locked in a race to the bottom, but premium, high-paying clients are moving behind closed doors. Here is how to bypass the bidding wars, drop the sales pitch and find freelance projects through networking built on genuine relationships. We even offer some no-fail questions to ask people at networking events to break the ice.
Not only are many freelancers not charging enough, but project expectations on the part of clients hiring via platforms are also leading a race to the bottom.
Mine A, Senior SEO & GEO Specialist for Local Businesses, eCommerce & SaaS Brands, echoes this sentiment in a LinkedIn comment:
“I think it is worth mentioning that there’s also the other side of the coin. On freelancing platforms such as Upwork, I have seen job descriptions that ask for every skill and tool expertise on earth, with a range of $5-15/hour (talking about SEO jobs). And it says they are looking for an expert-level freelancer.”
The SEO specialist also admits, “competition is fierce”. Adding:
Many clients on these platforms offer peanuts but expect work worth a few thousand. Some of us can afford to skip these low-quality offers and look for fairly priced projects. But that is not the case for everyone, unfortunately and the system keeps feeding on that sad reality.
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Private connections are pushing recruiters out of the picture
In January, freelancer assignment finder, Shoutt.ai, looked like one of the freelance economy’s good-news stories. Founders Saleem Yaqub and Jonathan Eadie were both freelancers themselves. They raised a £525,000 pre-seed round led by SFC Capital. Their goal was to build an AI agent to end the hours freelancers waste trawling job boards, as The Freelance Informer previously reported.
The pitch was specific and sympathetic. The average freelancer lost six hours a week hunting for work. This cost them roughly £10,000 a year. Shoutt promised to fix this by scanning thousands of gig sources. It surfaced a personalised feed for free or a modest €25.99 monthly subscription.
Five months later, the company has effectively admitted that pitch does not scale. “Gigs” were clustered around too few sources and client demand never reached the scale the founders required.
On 17 June, Shoutt announced the closure of its freelance platform on 17 July. They are rebuilding the product entirely from scratch. This time, the platform will target permanent job seekers instead of freelancers.
“It’s a real shame to see Shoutt step away from freelancers, but I understand the pressures here, and the appetite from freelancers towards paying to find work,” remarked Independent Strategist Matthew Knight.
Shoutt’s change in strategy could also be in reaction to a hiring trend Knight has been witnessing:
Hiring is shifting into private networks over public posts. It’s something freelancers need to recognise too, the majority of hiring is not taking place on LinkedIn or jobs sites.
Why is the chosen talent pool getting smaller?
In my earlier interview with Runar Reistrup, CEO of freelancer platform YunoJuno, he said something significant was happening at the enterprise level that most freelancers do not see.
Large companies are quietly building out their own freelance management infrastructure. These are systems that let them engage, onboard, and pay independent contractors directly, without going through a recruiter every time.
Arguably, the old model for clients with a sizable freelancer workforce was slow and expensive. Reistrup remembers it well from his own corporate career:
“If I needed a contractor, I couldn’t just go to the marketplace and find them, even if I knew who I wanted to work with. There was quite an elaborate process — it could take about six weeks to onboard this person as a vendor.”
Now that same process can happen in hours. Profiles are populated by AI. Right-to-work checks and IR35 assessments are automated. Companies, according to Reistrup, are structuring their freelance engagements through platforms such as Yuno Juno as an intermediary, which handles compliance, contracts, and payment in one place, not necessarily a place to discover new talent.
The practical effect, according to the CEO? The recruiter in the middle is no longer necessary for every hire.
➡️Companies can work directly with contractors they find through their own networks, refer them to the platform, and have everything handled compliantly from there. Yuno Juno grew 50% last year in a flat market, largely because of this change in hiring strategy.
For freelancers, this cuts both ways. The infrastructure is better than it has ever been. But the gatekeeping role of recruiters — who once surfaced new talent to clients — is diminishing. If you are not already in a company’s network, getting discovered is harder.
Networking: get over yourself and do it for your business
This brings up the topic of networking. You just can’t avoid it anymore, according to UK-based freelance videographer Jack Graham.
When I asked Jack earlier this year whether networking is essential for freelancers, he told me,
I literally don’t see how you run your own freelance business without it. Not in any sort of long-term way. Not in a way that you can make a real living out of.
If you’re not a big fan of networking, in my eyes, you’re going to have to learn to like it.
He attends in-person events at least every two weeks — evenings suit him better than early mornings, which he notes were not among the reasons he became a freelancer. But he’s equally an active engager on LinkedIn and specifically shares how most people use it wrong.
If you’re not a big fan of networking, in my eyes, you’re going to have to learn to like it.
“For every post I make, I probably make around ten comments on other people’s things. The thing people really drop the ball on is commenting on other people’s stuff.”
It’s in the social media comment sections, he explains, that real relationships can form. You start to recognise the same faces, develop a sense of someone’s personality and values, and eventually — almost naturally — the message arrives: “Hey, we keep seeing each other in the comments. Do you fancy jumping on a Zoom for half an hour?”
Most of the time, people say yes. Some of his biggest clients have come from exactly that process, conversations that began not with a sales pitch but with a shared rant about the state of the world.
I’m pretty left wing, and I’m not afraid to make that known. I’ve had some of my biggest clients through being quite outspoken, just chatting, because our values aligned outside of business. The initial conversations never even had anything to do with business.
For those who find all of this daunting — and Jack knows many do — his message is: everyone is winging it, even the people who look like they aren’t.
How to start conversations at networking events
All of our childhood, we were told, “not to talk to strangers.” Then in adulthood, you are expected to speak to strangers every day: at the coffee shop, grocery store, business meetings and the penultimate awkward networking event.
Sometimes, the hardest part about starting a conversation with strangers at a networking event is walking up to someone or a group to introduce yourself without feeling like Billy No Mates. So, one of the best ways to break the ice is to show some vulnerability.
Don’t tell them your life story in the first minute or reveal private details of your personal life. Just something that makes people relate to you, or better yet, allows someone to feel they are in the know and can offer a helping hand.
