How I Get Freelance Clients (Without Upwork or Fiverr)

I've made $15K freelancing in the past year. Zero of it came from platforms.

Why I Avoid Freelance Platforms

Platform Fee My Experience

Upwork 5-20% + connects fee Race to the bottom, 50+ proposals per job

Fiverr 20% $5 gigs, nightmare clients

Toptal Screened out Elite only, takes months to join

My approach 0% Direct relationships, repeat clients

The math is simple: A $1,000 project on Upwork = $800 to you. The same client direct = $1,000.

Strategy 1: Build in Public

Everything I build, I share:

// I built this rate limiter for a client's API. // Then I wrote about it on Dev.to.…