First, Best & Wish You Knew: Aaron Campbell

WordPress developer Aaron Campbell is on our team here at iThemes and co-founded the specialty WordPress agency Range. He’s also been a regular contributor to WordPress.

We get quick business advice for freelancers from Aaron in our new series, “First, Best & Wish You Knew.”

How did you find your first client?

My first client was actually my dad’s company. I talk about the experience some in a recent presentation I gave in Miami. Outside of that, my first client was someone off RentACoder.com (which seems to have been acquired by freelancer.com).

How did you find your best client?

My best clients have always seemed to come by referral. Some good ones have come from other clients, but the best probably came from a partnership with WordPress.com VIP. Since they focus on hosting, they try to partner their hosting clients with quality development firms. Other hosts (wpEngine for example) do the same thing.

What do you know now that you wish you knew before you started?

This is a tough one. I feel like there are so many lessons learned that would be extremely valuable to just-starting-out-me.

I think the most important, though, would be that you need to look for ways to build your reputation outside your work. Building your portfolio is great, but you can build your reputation much faster and easier if you build it on multiple fronts: client work, speaking engagements, contributions to open source, local meetups, etc.