Somehow, word of mouth never worked for me. I only ever got one repeat customer (he was really really good first time, but second time, mediocre), and one customer through a referral (very good, but just once). Out of 170+ over 25 years.

I see the reason: my customers are people who don't know anyone they could possibly recommend me to, because they are from random industries and random places. Also their projects are one-off: usually first and last software projects of theirs, ever. Working for someone with large networks who can make referrals means losing money because these people also know good coders and can hire well. I never solved this and rely on outbound all my life.

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NicoJuicy 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Do you know those customers personally?

Word of mouth mostly comes from repeat customers as well.

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anovikov 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I never meet with people i work with, it almost always derails even a long-standing relationship.

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Tsarp 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If you were to classify how you landed the 170+ clients into a few buckets what would the top channels be?

	▲	anovikov 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Upwork, majority of them (i'm top ~40 freelancer there and at one point was top ~10). The rest, non-repeatable, non-systematic randos.

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NicoJuicy 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Then it's really hard to get word of mouth.