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My question is quite simple, how to find a company which wants to outsource a long-term project to someone? Maybe there are some special websites for that?

We are a small team of web developers. We work together for many years but all projects we get either from freelance websites or from former clients recommendations. Main our problem is that all our projects are quite small, like 2-3 months of work for 2-3 people. And then we need to search for new project again, this is very exhausting for all team members.

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This isn't a matter of luck!!!

Maybe you should be paying someone to work within your group and find projects as often as your little group would be available to work on them. If you're pricing correctly, then there's no such thing as TOO MUCH work because you can always outsource or get more developers if you're swamped.

Anyways, this person's job would be called "business development"

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    I'm trying to do this job ("business development") right now, but I don't know where to start from from. Since we are quite small we can't hire full-time person without impact on team members earnings. So seems like it is a vicious circle :( We don't have knowledge to find clients willing to pay good hourly rate and offer a long-term contract and we don't have enough money to hire full-time experienced "business development" person. And hiring an inexperienced one is probably makes no sense.
    – Dmytro Zavalkin
    Oct 30, 2014 at 14:48
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You should always have overlapping projects, so you don't sit idle in between. This also gives you flexibility if you run into problems on one project.

It will increase your average delivery time, but it also shows your customer you have other projects going and are not just hobby programming in your garage and jumping from project to project.

Needs more effort for time tracking etc, but you should do that anyway even on single projects to get better estimations.

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  • Sure we overlap projects, but projects are quite small. Unfortunately developers don't like project switches forth and back too much. So it is hard to keep them in our team and motivated, they usually leave in 2-3 years. For designers it is easier, we have one working 5 years already with us.
    – Dmytro Zavalkin
    Oct 30, 2014 at 14:42
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I agree with each of You posted above:
@user5209 ("You should always have overlapping projects"),
@peter-mv ("I have only a few long-term clients but none of them is able to give me continuous work."),
@codenoire ("...you should be paying someone to work within your group and find projects").

However, I wanna add:

  • Money is just one of many things attracting people. The rest could be: the value of the project content, the competence of colleagues, possibilities to become visible, many other. Just google about the motivation. It means You do not have to think about money at first place when asking somebody to help You. However, paying money if person gets You the job (money) sounds to be fair.
  • The person finding You the job could be a company also. I have no idea if there are any companies working on finding new clients for other companies, but I believe such companies should exist somewhere...
  • Keep searching for new big projects throw old big projects. Clients are attracting each other personally, by the business model they use, by the strategy involving other companies (e.g. partnership), etc. Just look around the existing big project and You will see other big projects around. At the end, You will see the companies responsible for managing those big projects. Contact those companies.
  • Keep suggesting. Find companies that could pay You money for big projects and make an idea-offer to them. Keep doing that.
  • Use government resources. There are government institutions offering local or international contests on really big projects. It can be the government of Your country, it can also be the government of other country. Really big government projects tends to be international.
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    "the person finding you a job could be a company also" they exist, but they also take a very large cut of the project's value. In the US they are called "Contract Houses"
    – Voxwoman
    Mar 14, 2015 at 15:17
  • Re "big projects"; The whole point of this question; if he was that size he wouldn't be asking this question..
    – Pacerier
    Feb 7, 2018 at 10:43
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Everyone of us has been asking himself the same question. I've seen people getting long-term good clients after only a couple of projects. Others, are still searching for them.

I have only a few long-term clients but none of them is able to give me continuous work.

So far, I have concluded that it's just a luck. Eventually, you will find a client who is able to give you continues work. In the meantime, do as we all: have multiple projects and try to never work 40hrs on one project. This way, you will always have work. Maybe not full week, but continuous work if nothing.

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  • " try to never work 40hrs " meaning?
    – Pacerier
    Feb 7, 2018 at 10:42
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Are you on LinkedIn? I ask because I have been contacted many times by recruiters looking for freelancers for their clients long term projects. Maybe that is a good place to start.

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    Hey, would really appreciate if you have more projects than you can handle to contact me and see if we can come to agreement! Thank you!
    – Vulovic Vukasin
    May 21, 2017 at 14:49

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