[Peter Avey]

Since the early days of freelancing, I was working from word of mouth from such websites as talkfreelance and that kinda community. Since generating a bad online name for my self I decided I had to earn a good wage each week.

So I write out my CV and created a offline portfolio, I posted my work to many design agencys and after 2 or 3 weeks I had landed my self a 10 month contract at P&OCruises (pocruises.com)

Since working for P&O my portfolio has grown greatly. I'm responsible for websites such as www.pocruises.com www.virtualventura.co.uk and www.inspectorcruiso.co.uk

Now my skills have developed into .Net technowledgies PHP, I'm now a master at xHTML/CSS and read up on most new javascript libraries such as mootools and jQueries.

My Photoshop skills are second to none and now i take a diffrent view on how to design websites. Such as design a wireframe for the user, and then make it look pretty. In my eyes that makes a good designer ?

Since leaving P&O, B&Q (diy.com) contacted me to work on there website. They found a copy of my offline portfolio and contracted me for 3 months to work on there main site, subsites and there future site.

From word of mouth I've proven my self to clients such as a the national help service, mtv network and the santana group.

My work is getting alot better and my client list is getting alot greated. E-Commerce is where i lay in the design industry.

My new plan is to get my online portfolio up and running, then get it submitted to the css galleries dotted around the website and created some clientele from there.

Now you know how i get my work, what i want to know is how do you get yours ?

Thanks
Pete.

[AaronMoody]

Great story peter, and some big clients you have.

im still a young designer, havnt had the privilige to work with any larger clients yet, but i work the same way you did back in the day, working of word of mouth and design communitys. this month has been my best month to date, due solely to word of mouth, i designed an arcade site for one person, who advertised my service on one of the largest arcade disscusion websites out there, and then it went from there. Im currently trying to stear away from the gaming/ arcade side of designs after a webdesign company from texas wanted to outsource work to me, and i didnt have any clean, and corparate designs in my portfolio, this was a big loss and could of been my breakthrough, much like yours. So now im focusing on more corprate style and stearing away (slightly) from design communitys.

[Sam Asante]

http://wht.us

[Jamie]

I usually get a few clients from Digitalpoint, had a few from webhostingtalk.com as well. I've never really been client based but rather design something and sell it later on.

Jamie

[Peter Avey]

doesn't any one have on going projects with clients ? or do you move on ? even when i was getting work online i had my regular clients.

[AaronMoody]

what exactly do you mean by on going clients? Like regular returning clients? Or on a semi contracted basis. ie; design what they want when they want for a fixed price?

[Christian]

I find a majority of my work on CraigsList, may sound weird, but there is a LOT of work on there, most of which are longer term, big jobs.

C

[Anthony]

I'm honest for a start, and people love my design style. I rarely have to seek out a new project.

[Bryan Le]

If you're good, you're good. The work will come.

[Will Roberts]

I used to advertise but most of it is word of mouth now. I have some contract clients and ongoing work with others so chasing new clients is not as important as looking after my repeat ones.