June 4th, 2009Starting Freelance: Beginning Networking

When you first start freelancing, if you’re like most people I’ve talked to and myself, you feel pretty alone. You may be working at home with your family or in a coffee shop with other patrons, but you’re the only one doing your work. Clients are probably the people you talk to most about work and they’re not good sounding boards for ideas on your business or other projects. So what do you do?

You find like-minded people, of course. You didn’t need me to tell you that, but another voice in the choir never hurts. These people are pretty simple to find, too. You just need to know where to look.

First, I’d recommend finding professional groups in your area and field on Meetup. I’m in the Bay Area doing web development, so I have a lot of choices, thankfully. If you don’t have that luxury (say you’re in Oklahoma where I grew up and all webs have spiders in them), you can start your own group or do it all virtually. For the virtual groups, check out Google Groups for subjects you’re interested in. Some groups are pretty large and have a lot of traffic, so you’ll want to get daily digests in those cases.

Second, using the same places, you’ll want to find service groups. I admit I haven’t done this much myself and need to do it more, but it’s always handy to have a cadre of lawyers or accountants or other professionals that you can ask for advice. I’m also a member of SomethingAwful which has an enormous number of professionals in any field you can imagine, most of whom are more than happy to share their advice.

Third, you just might need a mob. This is where an organization like The Freelancers Union comes in handy. Thousands of other people in, if not the same boat as you, one of the same model, all working for the same goals. They provide things the above groups can’t, like health insurance and a 401k. They’ll also help you with resources on starting a company, getting paid, and other problems that come with being an independent worker.

With a diverse enough network, any problem you have can be researched and answered by the crowd (hey, look, crowdsourcing without any crazy buzzwords) and you can be more confident and comfortable in your new job. I know the first week or two of my freelancing were terrifying until I talked to others that had and were doing it (landing that first gig helped, too, but that’s another article).

If you have any other useful tips for finding support, please leave them in the comments.

tagged: business, freelance, networking