Where to find first projects: five channels, one message, a table of replies

Dana has reached week 5 of the Start track: she has a case study from her 10,000 ₸ test and an audit of a dental clinic down the street. She set up a profile on a freelance platform, wrote "I'll run your ads and analytics", and has been waiting for two weeks. A client on the platform sees her profile next to profiles full of reviews, while Dana has none, so there is nothing yet to make them pick her.

Until you have reviews, start where trust comes from knowing you, or from work the person can see before money comes up. Below: where to look, what message to send, and how a table tells you what works. Dana and her numbers are made up for the example.

In short

• Start with channels where you can earn trust without reviews: people you know, local businesses with an audit, subcontracting for agencies.
• For the first three months, you need one specialisation: an industry, an ad channel and a city.
• A five-sentence message: who you are, one finding, what you offer, a link to a case study, a simple question.
• Ten messages in one channel and a table where every business has its own finding and its reply is recorded.

Five channels and what each one needs

The channels in the table are ordered by how much trust you have to earn before the first reply. At the top, nobody asks about reviews; at the bottom, you are compared with people who already have them.

Platforms are at the bottom not because there is no work there: without reviews, you have nothing yet to stand out with. If you try one, offer a single narrow service, such as "I'll set up a lead event in GTM and GA4 and send you a screenshot of the check". A client will risk a task like that on a beginner, and you get your first review. Each platform has its own terms and fees, so read them on the platform's own site before you sign up.

Subcontracting is easy to overlook, though it suits a beginner well. Agencies and busy freelancers need extra hands for routine tasks: "set up events on three sites", "make 20 creatives from a brief". It pays less than a direct client, but the tasks repeat, and a senior person looks at your work and tells you what is wrong. A finished task becomes a case study if the agency lets you show it, so ask about that up front.

One specialisation

"Marketer, will run ads for any business" loses to "I set up tracking and Meta ads for dental clinics in Almaty". The second can be checked, matches your case study, and tells a clinic owner straight away that you know their business and won't be learning on it.

For the first three months, pick one industry, one ad channel and a city. Take an industry where you know people or are a customer yourself: the people you know give you your first conversations, and your experience as a customer tells you what matters to the owner. The channel is the one you will run the week 2 test in, and the four questions about the product help you match it to the industry's product. The city is one you can travel to for a client meeting.

Don't confuse the ad channel with the outreach channels in the table above. Those are about where you find clients; this is about which ads you set up for them. Dana looks for clients among local businesses, and what she sells is Meta ads setup. The line in her "profile" note reads: "Dental clinics, Meta, Almaty".

Branch out once you have two case studies in the industry you chose. Then you start the second industry with examples rather than promises.

The five-sentence message

The message has five sentences, and each one has its own job:

1. Who you are: one line with your specialisation.
2. What you noticed about them: one finding from the audit, backed by a fact.
3. What you offer: a one-page review, or fixing the finding by a date you name.
4. How you back it up: a link to a case study.
5. The next step: a question that is easy to answer with "yes".

The case study link comes fourth because by then the person knows what you found on their side and wants to know whether you can fix it. Put the same link in the first line and nobody opens it: at that point the reader has no idea what it is about.

Dana wrote this to the clinic whose booking form sends nothing to Meta:

Hi, I'm Dana, and I set up tracking and Meta ads for dental clinics in Almaty. I looked at your site: the booking form doesn't send a lead event to the Meta pixel, so Meta can't see which of the people who came from your ads booked, and can't look for more people like them. I can send you a one-page review with this and four more findings, or set up the event in two days so your ads look for people who actually book. Here is what my review of another clinic looks like (name hidden): [link]. Shall I send you one for yours?

There is no price in the first message. Until you know the scope, any figure will be wrong, and how to work it out once they ask is covered in an estimate built from hours. There is no file either: the finding goes in as text, and the full page goes when they ask for it. Without a finding, the message is no different from a mass mailing, and there is no reason to answer it.

If there is no reply, send one follow-up a week later with a new detail, for example: "I also noticed that on a phone the booking button is covered by the promo banner." Skip the second follow-up and spend that time on the next business on your list.

The outreach table

Everyone you write to goes into the table. A month later it shows which channel gets replies and which finding opens a conversation, and that is your own marketing, measured the same way you will measure a client's.

Here is Dana's table after the first week. There is one channel, local businesses: she found all ten clinics on 2GIS by searching for "dentistry" in her district and wrote to each by WhatsApp from their listing. That number reaches the front desk, so above the message Dana added a separate line asking the administrator to pass it on to the owner.

Three out of ten replied, and two want to keep talking. Ten messages can't tell you why those particular clinics answered: maybe the finding about the form did it, or maybe someone at clinic 1 just opened WhatsApp at the right moment. In four weeks the table will have forty rows, enough for a rough comparison of findings and, once you add a second outreach channel, of channels. That is what the "Channel" column is for.

First-month mistakes

• Sending everyone the same text with no finding. A message like that says nothing about the recipient's business, so it can't be told apart from spam. Look for a separate finding in each business, even if it takes fifteen minutes.
• Answering a full-time job ad as a freelancer. A company that posted such an ad on hh.kz or in a job channel is looking for a full-time employee, and "I could do it as a contractor" doesn't answer their question. Reply to posts that say "project", "one-off" or "outsourcing" outright.
• Leading with a low price. It attracts people who choose on price, and they will leave for the first person who quotes less, while raising your rate with such a client is hard. Sell the finding and how fast you will fix it, and work out the price from the task list and hours.
• Going quiet after "let me think about it". A week later the person may well have forgotten who you are and what you found. Write once more, with a new detail, and move on to the next business.
• Five channels at once. Two messages in each won't show which channel works, and you have no time to keep five tables. Spend a month on one channel, then add a second.

Questions

How long until the first project? When a project comes is up to clients. How quickly you learn whether your message works is up to you: ten messages a week is forty a month. If forty messages with findings get no replies at all, first change what you can change in an evening: rewrite the second sentence and write to businesses that are running ads right now.

Is it worth working for free to get a case study? Once, for a business run by someone you know, and with an agreement up front: you get to show the numbers in a case study, and the owner gives you a testimonial. After that, only paid work, even if the pay is small: a client used to getting work for free is hard to move onto paying.

What do you say to "do you have experience in our niche?" Show a case study and say it straight: "Not in your niche, but in a similar one. Here is what carries over, and here is what I'll check in the first week."

Exercise: ten outreach messages

This is the week 5 task of the Start track.

• Pick one channel: people you know or local businesses. In both, a finding is a mistake in the business's ads or on its site.
• Find ten businesses in your industry and your city.
• For each, pick one finding using the audit checklist, a different one for each business.
• Write each of them a five-sentence message with the case study link in the fourth sentence.
• Fill in a table with the same columns as Dana's: business, channel, finding, date sent, reply, next step.
• A week later, count the replies and send one follow-up to everyone who stayed silent.

The task is done when the table has ten businesses from one channel, each with its own finding, and all ten got a message by the template. Before sending, go down the "Finding" column. The same finding can come up at several businesses if you actually saw it at each one. But if the rows were copied and you never opened those businesses' sites and ads, you were writing from a list, and those messages need redoing. A finding that needs two sentences is really two findings: keep the one that costs the business more leads.

Summary

• Send the review to anyone who asked for it the same day, as one page following the audit checklist.
• Before the first call, work out the price from the task list and hours, so you don't answer "how much?" with a number off the top of your head.
• After four weeks, find the findings in your table that got replies, and open your next messages with those.
• Add a second outreach channel once the first has forty rows.
• Run your first project on the plan from the lesson on the first month with a client.