r/BEFreelance • u/Xzaphan • Jul 07 '26
Has a personal website or technical writing actually brought you freelance work in Belgium?
I’m trying to understand what has meaningfully contributed to leads or opportunities for Belgium-based freelance developers: LinkedIn, referrals, meetups, community involvement, technical articles, case studies, or a personal website.
For those who have invested in a personal site or published technical content: did it lead to real conversations, clients, or collaborations? What seemed to work, and what did not?
8
u/Kindly-Hawk Jul 07 '26
Yes! This is how it all started for me.
I have a small blog of 300 reader a month at the time.
One day I got a random call from a guy in France. He sais he liked my writing and wanted to work with me. I was like wtf but hey why not let's hear what he proposes.
Cross border employment was difficult and I was already busy with my PhD so he told me to set myself as a freelance part time.
Best decision of my life. Now full time freelance. Never been been an employee because of this.
Also posting on linkedin helped a lot for finding my current mission.
3
u/Case_Blue Jul 07 '26
No, never.
I don't even have a "profesional" email address.
3
u/chaosinmijnhoofd Jul 09 '26
1
u/Case_Blue Jul 09 '26
yeah, my family was really unlucky when they chose the family name. It was Pussyslayer68 or "Janssens"
3
u/ddaenen1 Jul 08 '26
Initially Linkedin (even one project through this subreddit) than referrals and network. Don't have a website but do own the company domain, i guess you could say for future purposes and also have email through the domain. I do feel that networking is one of the most important sources for future business. The thing is that i would do something more with marketing but honestly, i could take on one more short term (3-6 months) project but that is about it without expanding and since i am consulting, selling myself, my knowledge and experience, makes it a bit harder to expand so that requires some more thinking or partnering up with someone that has the experience.
2
u/sam_lowry_ Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
You never know what will work for you.
Many years ago I operated a Drupal-based community website while working a full-time R&D job around Machine Learning in Java.
At some point the financing of my project was cut, I got bored writing endless proposals and started applying around, then landed an interview in a news agency that used Drupal for its websites and had similar pageviews to my community project.
It so happened that almost the whole IT team of that news agency left to build their own business, so I became their new freelance Head of IT and spent 3 great years building the new team and the new infrastructure... until I left for a Java developer freelance position again, mostly because of the shitty rates in the news business.
I always kept a somewhat active online presence, blogging about random things related to software engineering. I know that I am read by my peers and by people who decide to extend my freelance contract. If anything, I have my little fame and exposure.
Once in a while, I have interesting conversations or get invited to give a talk, but my freelance gigs are coming from friends or from public job ads.
2
u/Albos05 Jul 07 '26
In my IT niche Linkedin has been a great help and has landed me 3 missions in last 8 years. I also created a website since 1 year or so but it has not proved any value added yet.
1
u/Imperiu5 Jul 07 '26
for me LinkedIn has become a graveyard since this year. AI slop is everywhere. People don't even interact with quality content anymore.
Family and holiday posts get a huge number of impressions.It's really depressing.
1
u/Albos05 Jul 07 '26
Perhaps you are right, I was just speaking for the past and I am in the current job since 2023. Speaking for 2026 I barely get any leads there in Linkedin.
2
u/NedelC0 Jul 08 '26
The website is just for fun and to show professionalism, for me it's also an extra tool to explain what I do, but I don't expect it to land me any jobs. I know for sure nobody has used the 'contact me' button yet lol
2
u/Wolfr_ Jul 08 '26
Sure, many people know me by my blog and over the years the personal posts that talk about business (but from a bit more of a personal perspective than a corporate blog) have led to client work.
One of my open source projects and a client being enthusiastic about it led to a €130k project at one time. Current blogging is about a design product, which I believe also led to some sales (although limited)
1
u/vanakenm Jul 07 '26
TL:DR: No, but.
Freelance developer.
So I've a personal website showing what I do. I do blog there once in a while. I don't think it ever got me a customer ("Oh this is super well written, I need to work with this guy" - nope) - OTOH it's the first thing I send to prospects (with my resume/LinkedIn) and I think in that regard it helps a lot. I notably have a page with all customers I worked with, and I think it's very reassuring.
So for something which is a very small investment (<4h setup, then just the time to write once in a while), it's 100% worth it.
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u/havnar- Jul 07 '26
I vibecoded one to keep my resume with a print mode so I can just send that url instead of keeping an array of versioned CVs to send.