Make a list of five people who you've worked with previously that you wouldn't mind working with again. Reach out to them. Ask whose firms could use extra help. If they're not in the present position to need extra help, ask if they know anybody who is that they'd be willing to introduce you to.

You'll probably have a client around call #3 or so, in the present environment.

This works even better if you have been good about keeping in touch with them prior to this.

Search HN, there have been a ton of these questions with great advice and feedback.

Some tips though. If you are US based, avoid the elance, odesk etc sites. They are a race to the bottom and most clients on there want the world for $500, which means you get stuck in an unrealistic expectation environment from day 1, regardless of what you communicate to them.

The best clients come from talking to other people and seeing what they have going and then making an offer to help them out. Also, while this is tough mentally to start with, the more specialized you are the better success you will see from the start. Yes, the initial jobs will take longer to get, but specializing keeps you from getting overwhelmed and helps people see you as an expert.

Not having a portfolio isn't an issue if you can communicate and talk with people. Selling is all about being able to identify with a client and finding common ground. Once you do that your chance of sale goes up dramatically. Next would be making sure you are or can portray the expert well enough that people feel confident you are capable of solving their issue.

And for every client you talk to see if there are others they can recommend you to.

I have been meaning to post something here related to this topic recently but this seems like suitable place. When trying to find online freelancing gigs on a place like oDesk I start to quickly get huge amounts of anxiety like I have never experienced before. I do not feel like I am a bad programmer but this is something that is totally impeding me from being able to work and gain experience. Have any of you had issues similar to this? I am not sure what to do. I have a fair amount of experience in hybrid app development but it seems like most of the work is in CMS's like WordPress so I have been exploring that a lot more in recent months.

You can check out sites like https://www.odesk.com https://www.freelancer.com/ https://www.elance.com/

Also, I would say the timing is perfect. Rightnow I am looking for a freelancer who can work on my idea and develop and iOS and Android Application. Do you have any experience in mobile applications??

Portfolios are nice but the real tricks is developing personal relationships with people in a position to give you work or notify you that work is available.

I wrote a post on ways to get more clients: http://clientflow.io/blog/33-ways-to-get-more-clients

If you have no portfolio you'll have to use your past experience as a seller (what you did, how you did it, results, etc) until you start working on personal projects or hack together some products to showcase.

I did this around October of last year out of necessity and started doing it because I wanted to in January. So far it's going quite well. Here's roughly what I did:

First, read everything patio11 and Brennan Dunn have written on the subject.

Start here:

http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/

and here:

http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/

Get yourself a website. Don't spend a lot of time building this, just on the content. It's stupid easy for developers to get sidetracked working on their own site and rebuilding it in Hot New Technology X every two weeks; don't bother. I recommend Squarespace as it makes it easy to setup & change content as well as track some basic metrics. Make sure it's very clear what you do. Separate it out into Articles for SEO, a Portfolio, and a page about working with you. Write articles about things you're very, very good at and at the end plug yourself.

For examples, I have:

http://<domain>/articles/

http://<domain>/portfolio/

http://<domain>/app-development/

Regarding a portfolio, there is no reason you cannot include the programming you did as part of a larger project. Just make sure that you accompany each entry in the portfolio with what your responsibilities were and how you contributed and why it was a success. Link back to other key members of the project, too; they'll appreciate it.

Next, I set up something to drive traffic to my website. Think of something interesting that would make a potential client say, "Oh, that's pretty cool!", or that other developers find useful to increase your clout.

For me that was RunSwift (removed link to avoid looking like another plug).

I plug my Twitter & Website there. It gets several hundred hits a day and drives a small percentage back to my website. It also gets me a few followers on Twitter a week which as been good for building a professional network (albeit slowly).

Finally, I joined a co-working space. These exist out outside of the big tech hubs. And there are people in them who are building technology projects and struggling to find developers. I joined Tigerlabs (https://tigerlabs.co) here in Princeton, New Jersey and just from talking to new people around my desk I had a new client sign a contract within two weeks.

I wouldn't take any of this as set in stone as I believe that being successful in this game involves a lot of trial and error in the beginning. But, this is what worked for me though so hopefully it can be of some use!

Feel free to reach out, email is in the profile.