I recently made the decision to begin freelancing, so I put together some profiles on oDesk, Elance, etc and started looking for clients. I was relatively lucky to land a client a few days after starting to look at a reasonable rate (was a fixed price, at the end of the project >$20/hr)editing a premium one page WordPress theme for a small business in Australia. I then made some simple web advertisements and a simple personal page for a friend of mine.<p>After finishing that first project (a bit later than I wanted, but the client was happy), I went back to those same sites to continue my search for clients. After researching on my own and spending time on these types of websites, I quickly realized that I was not going to get a steady flow of work at reasonable rates. I turned my attention to friends and acquaintances who either owned businesses or need things done that they didn't have time for themselves; those resources were quickly exhausted.<p>Currently, I have a very minimal portfolio hosted at http://kylechalmers.me, this is the second iteration and was my minimum viable product.<p>I am getting my clients (very) slowly through freelancing sites. I have started to make business to business calls to local businesses who either have a poor web presence, or none at all, however, as expected, I am not getting many clients through this method.<p>I've ordered a stack of business cards to leave around at local bulletin boards (grocery stores, restaurants, etc), and have begun to think about going to small business meetups and similar events to start networking.<p>My question is, as a freelancer looking to expand my business with the intent of moving into more technical projects later on, how do I go about most effectively growing my business and network? And more specifically, how do I start getting a steady flow of client coming to me, rather than me searching them out (which I still expect to have to do, at this point atleast)?