How to Get Clients as a Freelancer With No Experience (I Figured This Out the Hard Way)
Let me paint you a picture. It's 11 PM. You've just finished setting up your Upwork profile for the third time, tweaked your bio again, and sent out another batch of proposals that you know nobody is going to read. Your portfolio section says "Coming Soon." Your earnings badge says $0. And somewhere in the back of your head, a very unhelpful voice is whispering: why would anyone hire you?
That was me, about four years ago. Fresh out of a marketing degree, zero clients, zero testimonials, and absolutely convinced that I had to somehow already have clients in order to get clients. Classic chicken-and-egg nightmare.
Here's the thing though — I did figure it out. Not overnight, not through some magical "6-figure freelancer blueprint" course, but through a lot of trial and error and a few embarrassingly obvious lessons I should've learned sooner.
If you're sitting in that same stuck place right now, stick with me. This is what I actually did.
The Lie We Tell Ourselves First
Before anything tactical, I want to address the mindset trap, because it kept me frozen for longer than I'd like to admit.
I thought "no experience" meant "nothing to offer." But that's not really true. What clients are actually hiring for is results. They don't care if you've been paid before — they care if you can solve their problem.
The experience gap is real, but it's much smaller than it feels. Most early freelancers have relevant skills from school projects, personal projects, side hobbies, or old jobs that they completely discount. I had written content for a college newspaper, managed a personal blog, and run my friend's small business Instagram page for free. None of that felt like "experience" — but to a client looking for a content writer? It absolutely was.
So step one, before we even talk about platforms or pitches: take stock of what you've actually done, not just what you've been paid to do.
Step 1: Build Something Real (Even If Nobody Asked You To)
This is the fastest way out of the no-portfolio trap, and it works for almost every freelance skill.
Are you a web designer? Build three fake websites — a bakery, a law firm, a fitness coach. Make them genuinely good. Put them on a free domain or even just take polished screenshots.
Are you a copywriter? Rewrite the homepage of a real company you think has bad copy. Write a fake email campaign for a product you use. Show your thinking.
Are you a video editor? Find royalty-free footage on Pexels or Pixabay and edit it into something cool. Post it.
The goal isn't to deceive anyone. When a client asks "have you done this before?" you're not lying when you say yes — you have done it. You just did it on your own terms instead of someone else's deadline.
I did this with blog posts. I picked three niches I was interested in (tech, personal finance, and fitness) and wrote two posts each. Decent ones. Then I had nine writing samples to share, and zero clients had given them to me.
Step 2: Start With Warm Outreach, Not Cold Platforms
Every beginner's instinct is to go straight to Upwork or Fiverr and immediately start competing with freelancers who've been on the platform for years and have 200 five-star reviews.
That's playing the hardest version of the game right from the start.
Instead, the fastest first client almost always comes from someone who already knows you. Not necessarily a professional contact — literally just a person who has seen your face.
Go through your phone contacts. Go through Facebook. Think about local businesses near you. Think about the parents of your friends, old teachers, former coworkers. Ask yourself: does anyone I know, or know of, need something I can do?
My first paying client was my aunt's friend who owned a small bakery and needed help with her Instagram. I charged her $150/month, which was laughably low — but I got a testimonial, a case study, and the confidence that someone would actually hand me money for this.
The goal isn't to build a career from warm contacts. It's to get your first one or two clients so you have something to show the world.
Step 3: When You Do Go to Platforms, Don't Send Generic Proposals
Once you're ready to try Upwork, Freelancer, PeoplePerHour, or wherever — the biggest mistake people make is sending the same templated message to 40 different jobs.
Clients can smell a copy-paste from a mile away.
Read the job post carefully. Actually read it. Find the one detail that most people would skim over — the specific tool they mentioned, the niche they're in, the problem they're really trying to solve — and open your proposal with that.
Something like: "I noticed you're specifically looking for someone familiar with email sequences for SaaS onboarding — I actually rebuilt a similar onboarding flow for a small productivity app last month, and here's what I learned..."
That's not magic. That's just showing the person you read their post. But it stands out because 90% of people don't do it.
Also: keep proposals short. Three to four short paragraphs, max. Nobody has time to read an essay from an unknown freelancer.
Step 4: Offer a Small, Low-Risk Entry Point
One thing that genuinely worked for me early on was offering what I called a "starter project."
Instead of pitching a $2,000 package to someone who's never worked with me, I'd pitch a small, clearly defined piece of work. One landing page. A week of social posts. One blog article. Priced low — sometimes even free for the very first one if I really wanted to work with someone.
The psychology here is simple: it's much easier for a stranger to say yes to something small and cheap (or free) than to commit to a big contract with someone they don't know.
Once you deliver that small thing really well, the conversation about ongoing work opens up naturally. I converted maybe 60% of those starter projects into recurring clients. And those clients then gave me reviews, referrals, and case studies I could actually use.
Step 5: Leverage LinkedIn More Than You Think You Should
I resisted LinkedIn for way too long because it felt stuffy and corporate. But for freelancers, it's genuinely underrated.
Optimize your headline. Don't just write "Freelance Writer" — write something like "Freelance B2B Content Writer | Helping SaaS Brands Grow Organic Traffic." Then start posting. Share your process, share lessons you've learned, share work you're proud of.
You don't need thousands of followers. You need the right five people to see you. And when a potential client Googles your name, a polished LinkedIn profile that shows expertise is incredibly reassuring.
I also started commenting meaningfully on posts from potential clients in my niche. Not "Great post!" garbage — actual thoughts, additions, questions. A handful of my early clients found me this way because they recognized my name from their comments section.
Common Mistakes That Will Slow You Down
Waiting until your portfolio is "perfect." It will never be perfect. Put it out there.
Undercharging to the point of resentment. Charging low to get started is smart. Charging so low that you hate the project is not.
Only focusing on one platform. Spread your surface area. Upwork, LinkedIn, cold email, local businesses, Facebook groups in your niche — try several simultaneously.
Giving up after ten rejections. Ten rejections means almost nothing. I sent over sixty proposals before landing my second client on Upwork. The numbers feel brutal but they're just part of the process.
Neglecting communication skills. Your actual skill matters, but how you communicate with clients matters just as much. Be responsive, be clear, set expectations early. A mediocre designer who communicates well will get more referrals than a brilliant one who goes silent for days.
The Tools That Actually Helped you
Notion — for building a simple client tracker and portfolio page
Canva — for making proposals and case studies look professional without hiring a designer
Hemingway App — for tightening up written work before sending it
Google Drive — for sharing deliverables professionally instead of just emailing attachments
Calendly — so clients could book discovery calls without the back-and-forth
None of these are paid recommendations. They're just things that made me look more put-together than I felt.
One More Thing
Getting your first few clients without experience is mostly a confidence game. The skills are usually already there — the hesitation is in believing anyone would pay for them.
You don't need a massive portfolio. You don't need years of experience. You need one client who takes a chance on you, and you need to knock it out of the park for them.
Everything else builds from that.
Start small, show up genuinely, and don't let the empty portfolio stop you from throwing your name in the ring. The only freelancers who never get clients are the ones who never actually try.
If you found this helpful, save it for later — starting freelancing is a long game and you'll probably come back to this on a rough week. Good luck out there.
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