Ask HN: Freelancers of HN, do you get clients/leads from your websites?

Do I get quality inquiries from my site: Yes.

Would I pay for SEO: No.

SEO is not the only way to get traffic to your site. Most of my traffic coming to my site comes from my blog, where I write 1-2 articles per month. I try to make the posts interesting and insightful to the type of crowd that would include my potential clients (startups).

An added benefit of blogging is that your name will start to get recognized as an expert in your field (assuming your articles are good), which will play in your favor when you're talking with prospects.

I have used a portfolio type website since 2003 for my work and experimented with dozens of designs and several SEO setups/ configurations. In 10 years of business I see about 5 jobs a year come in on average as a result of the website. My biggest jobs in fact were from clients who found me in a search. All in all I would say that over the span of time keeping my site updated (code-wise and content-wise) and SEO "conscious" has been very much worth the effort. Especially comsidering that I have yet to use social media tools as a means to attract potential clientele. I should state here that I am established freelance photographer who relies heavily on direct introductions and occasional bouts of cold calling and knocking on doors of potentials with my portfolio in hand. If I relied solely on the website to grow my client base I would have been out of business long ago.

I think the thing about freelancing is: you're never going to have one source of leads. There'll never be one thing that makes someone think "Yes, I should get in contact with this person," but it all helps create a good impression. Good portfolio demos, useful & well-written blog articles, an active Twitter following/Github account/Stackoverflow profile, talks & engagement with the community, etc will all help. But there's no magic bullet.

In general, you'll probably find that most work comes from you reaching out to people pro-actively. At that point, they're definitely going to check out your website. If you can link them to your best work and give them some well-written blog articles to read, you'll definitely see the benefit in later conversations.

I would say not. I used to have a fairly well ranked site and only ever got a few spammy "please work for nothing" enquiries through the site. The only time I've seen real enquiries come through a site was RFPs, when the site in question was that of a large digital agency on various "top 10 agencies" lists. Even those were usually a waste of time and the traffic did not come from organic search anyway. Rather, because we were in industry lists we regularly got added to RFPs (especially from organisations with statutory tender process requirements).

A portfolio is mainly useful as something you send to qualified prospects, not something you expect people to stumble upon and offer you business (anyone wasting time doing that probably can't afford to pay you anyway).

Interesting question. Answer for me right now: "no". Most jobs came via personal network. But I am exploring options to expand my freelance business too, and blogged about it: http://thinkingonthinking.com/Elegance-in-a-software-busines... and http://thinkingonthinking.com/Pitching-for-Jobs/ and http://thinkingonthinking.com/customers-jobs/ - it would be great to share/discuss what makes a good freelance website too.

In my experience, no. Leads will find you through your online presence, but will rarely, if ever, begin at your site. However, it IS important to maintain a good site (in addition to making yourself known via forums, social networks and job aites) as they will expect to see one before they bother to contact you.

Think of your web site as your business card -- it's how people get in touch with you once they've already been introduced; it seldom works as the introduction itself.

You can use twitter advanced search to search for leads: https://twitter.com/search-advanced

To make your task easier - you can use tools like Leadify http://leadify.in etc.

Not so much, no.

I don't think I've ever got work from my portfolio. It's occasionally been something to show someone later in the process. The vast majority are face to face contacts and networking.

Depends on how popular your work is, really. If you're a moderately popular freelancer, it is not rare to have most of your work coming in through your portfolio website, and via search engines.