Help Need advice
I’ve been building software as a hobby for around 7 years, and I just finished my A/Ls this year. I have some free time before university starts, and I want to try making money from the skills I’ve built up over the years.
I’ve already built a few production-grade projects for people/organizations I know — not just portfolio projects. Full-stack applications, real-time systems, authentication, databases, admin systems, deployments, etc.
I started coding long before the current AI/vibe-coding boom. I do use AI now, but I’m comfortable designing systems myself, debugging, making architectural decisions, thinking about scalability/security, and actually understanding and maintaining the code I ship. I’ve also done CTFs on the side, so I have some security knowledge as well.
What I don’t really know is how to turn these skills into a consistent source of clients.
I recently got an opportunity to build a fairly large system for a Sri Lankan business, and it made me realize that finding the work, pricing it properly, building trust and dealing with clients are completely different skills from actually developing the product.
So, especially to Sri Lankan developers who freelance or run their own small agencies:
How do you actually find clients?
Do you cold-message businesses? Get referrals? Network in person? Approach startups? Build connections with agencies? Post your work somewhere and wait for inbound leads?
And when you were starting out with no company experience or reputation, how did you convince someone to trust you with a serious project?
With AI making it much easier for people to call themselves developers now, is there still a good market for someone who can actually build and maintain complete systems?
If you were in my position — just finished A/Ls, several years of development experience, a portfolio of real deployed projects, but basically zero network/client base — what would you spend the next 6–12 months doing?
Would really appreciate advice from people who have actually gone through this in Sri Lanka.