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My Freelancing Workflow, From Cold Leads to Paid Invoices

Sam Tanoak Sycamore on January 31, 2021

In January 2021, I made a sudden transition to freelance web development. I wasn't sure if I was ready to seek work as a developer, but the univers...
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Kiran Iyer

Thank you for taking the time to write this post in the middle of your freelancing and learning schedule. It was a great read, and from your perspective, there's a lot to remember and learn. I love it. I'll have to go back to it a lot of days, haha. Wishing you the absolute best with all your efforts for the future. God bless you! Cheers

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Sam Tanoak Sycamore

Cheers Kieran! I wish you the best as well! Sharing what's working for me is the best way I can find to give back to the online community that has been so incredibly supportive to me through my career change. I owe so much of my success to the people who have been encouraging me to keep going.

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Sheila Gomes

What a great article! Thank you for sharing this, I am sure many people will benefit from the detailed information you provide. One suggestion I would make to schedule phone or video calls (which I personally prefer) is to use an online scheduling service such as youcanbook.me/ or the like. Also, creating short ebooks, videos or articles about common doubts people have when hiring your services could be a way to get content to your site that build trust, and help people without them even having to pay upfront, something that might provide them with the right incentive to hire you in the end.

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Inee Ader 🐌

This is a great blog! I just graduated from a bootcamp for Software Engineering and am looking for work now -- tough game! I hope to someday be a freelancer, so this was a nice glimpse into that world! Thanks for sharing!

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Rosemary Bartolini

Hey Sam - I personally have not tried Stripe, so I don't know what you get along with your payment gateway, but I use FreshBooks for all my accounting stuff, I can create invoices, send them off, and they get paid - even ACH. FreshBooks doesn't take a percentage, but for their total service package I pay $10 a month. Just FYI - I don't know if this would be a better deal for your or not, but I thought it was worth throwing out there. Thanks for the post! Very original :-)

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Maria Belan-Crawford

Thanks for this great info, Sam!! I like the extra emphasis on not giving away work for free (or almost free). Something I struggle quite a lot with. Everything I've learned through #100DEVS so far is really helping me overcome that kind of self-sabotage though.

Thanks so much for taking the time to write all of this out!! It's extremely valuable info & I imagine it will help a ton of people. Looking forward to more posts from your cabin in the woods. Cheers!

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Rey van den Berg

Great, realistic write-up Sam! It's the process I've been following as well and seems to be the best one.

Thanks for the useful links! I dig the Gmass for gmail one..

Good luck with the projects man!

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CrazyBusyCreative

This is a great outline - it's very similar to the process I used when I started as a freelance writer. The #1 takeaway here is the billing strategy. I've always required 50% down, and I've never had a single client (in over 15 years) not pay the full bill. Getting that down payment is the best way I've ever found to weed out the clients you really don't want to work with.

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AdemHodzic

Hey Sam,

Thanks for writing this beutiful piece.

As a freelancer that's specializing in a different niche, it's super-useful to get insights from other areas.

I wish you all the luck in your future endeavours but clearly, you won't need it 😄

Adem Hodzic

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Arber Braja

Really loved the article. Well part of it, what I was able to read since atm cant read it all.

Defnitely is worth putting it in every kind of worthy articles list :)

Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

I have worked as a freelancer on the past. Did not follow the same path as you when I started up but I managed to get some long term clients.

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Angel

Yoo this is so good! Thank you for the write up. I'll need to take notes and apply a lot of what you wrote on my own search. Loved reading about your hard work, which is also inspiring so I keep up the grind. Wish you best on everything going forward. Cheers mate!

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Sam Tanoak Sycamore

Cheers Angel, best of luck on your journey!

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Kingsley Ubah

This post is incredibly informative and detailed.

It's amazing how you were able to set-up this freelance model to be such as success. I hope to learn a lot from this.

Thank you for sharing something so insightful.

I also follow you on Twitter 💙👏

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Sam Tanoak Sycamore

It's my pleasure! Thanks for reading Kingsley! I hope this is helpful!

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Rosemary Bartolini

I'm curious about something, Sam - about your experience. Your whole approach to reaching out to these business owners was through email. I'm curious about your later discussions with the ones who became your clients, when you needed to talk about the progress of your project, or when you explained to them how doing business with you works. Did these discussions take place over the phone? Or did you continue to communicate through email?

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Ayanleh H. Djama • Edited

Thank you big time for taking the time to write this.
What can i say aside from that it was a great read and one of the best articles in web development freelancing.
I'm also interested in Freelancing and this article will help big time.
Congrats 🎉🎉 and wish you the best in your endeavors.

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John Nweke

Sam, Dear Sam. I bookmarked this. This came at the right time.
My "situation" has just been "adjusted" so I have to freelance now. This guide is what I needed.

QQ: What resources did you use in learning Wordpress? Do you use Wordpress+Jamstack? How long did it take? I have all the time this week to work through all the knowledge and work through problems, but from next week I'd need to have paying clients. Open to learning more bro.

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Douglas Fugazi

Damn! This post is very very valuable. Thanks for write those words.

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Kenny Elston

Amazing article! Thanks so much for sharing these great tips;I think I’ll be trying Gmass today.

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Rahul

Reading this amazing post was worth the time.

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heberbr

thank you so much for sharing, the world needs more people like you

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Nuwan Karunarathna

Really good info. Thanks for sharing your journey :)

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André Ferreira

Great information! Thanks for sharing your initial process, really helpful. Wish you all the best as freelance dev. Cheers

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Moad Ghazi

Really loved the article.
Thanks for sharing !

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Eduardo Correa

Thank you! I loved this article, Because help me so much. I'm Brazilian developer and i want growth my career now. Thank you so much!

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Petr Stříbný

Great article!

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Edydeyemi

This is great and quite an eye-opener. Thanks for sharing.

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Ricardo Moreira

You are what I need to find today. Thanks for this. One question : Does the d7leadfinder works good in any country in Europe?