No case studies, no past clients, no problem: what to build before you pitch anyone, where to actually look, and what to say when you have zero client history to point to.
Short answer: build one real, business-specific preview before you pitch anyone — that becomes your portfolio, no past clients required. Then look for local businesses with no working website: the pitch is simple and there's nothing existing to compete with. Discount steeply for a genuinely first client rather than working for free, and use that one paid job as your reference for the next pitch.
"I'd hire you, but I need to see your work first" is the wall almost everyone starting out hits, and it feels circular: you can't get work without a portfolio, and you can't build a portfolio without work. It isn't actually circular. The fix is to stop waiting for a client to give you your first project and build one yourself, aimed at a real business, before you ever pitch anyone.
A business owner asking to see past work isn't really asking about your CV. They're asking "can you actually do this, for a business like mine, and will it look right." A single strong, specific example answers that question completely — it doesn't matter whether it's your first project or your fiftieth. Three template sites with placeholder text don't answer it at all, no matter how many of them you show. Depth beats quantity here, by a wide margin.
Pick one real local business — ideally one that visibly has no website, or a genuinely bad one — and build them a proper, honest preview using only their real public facts: their actual name, trade, location, and whatever is publicly known about them. Don't invent services, prices, or testimonials they haven't actually got; a fabricated detail is the kind of thing that gets noticed and undermines the one thing you're trying to prove, which is that you can be trusted with someone's business. This single piece does two jobs at once: it's the concrete thing you show a stranger instead of describing your skills, and it's very often also your actual first pitch, since the business it was built for is a live prospect the moment it's finished.
Local businesses with no working website are the easiest realistic starting point, for a simple reason: there's no existing site to compete with or talk someone out of, and the gap is visible to the owner too, so the pitch doesn't need much convincing. Manually, that means going through Google Maps or Google Business Profile listings for a trade and area, checking which ones have no website field, a dead link, or only a Facebook page standing in for one. It's slow by hand but genuinely effective, especially for the first handful of businesses you approach. A tool that automates the same search — Scoutline included — exists specifically to skip the slow part once you've validated the approach works.
It's tempting to stay generic — "I build websites for any small business" — so as not to turn anyone away. In practice a narrower focus (one trade, or a small cluster of related ones) makes the first pitch easier, not harder: your one example is directly relevant to the next business you approach in the same trade, the language in your pitch can be specific rather than generic, and word of mouth inside one trade travels faster than it does across unrelated ones. You can always widen out once you have a handful of paid projects behind you.
Lead with the example, not your background. "Here's a website I built for [a business like theirs] — I built one for your business too, take a look" gets further than any explanation of why you're qualified despite being new. If asked directly how long you've been doing this, answer honestly; a business owner who likes what they see in front of them rarely cares that it's your first paid project, and pretending otherwise is a risk with no real upside. For the mechanics of the pitch itself — showing, not describing, and a sensible follow-up cadence — see the dedicated guides on pitching a website to a local business and how many times to follow up.
Generally, no. A steep discount for a genuinely first client is reasonable and common — it's honest about where you are and still treats the work as real, paid work. Free tends to do the opposite of what it's meant to: it attracts people who don't value the outcome, makes it harder to name a normal price to the next client, and a paid job, even a small one, is a stronger reference than an unpaid one when you're pitching whoever comes after. See what to charge for a website for a realistic starting number.
Scoutline finds local businesses with no working website in the UK or the US, scores which are worth approaching, and generates an honest, fact-only preview site from each business's real public listing — the exact kind of specific, business-real example this guide is about, without the manual search. See how the pipeline works, or find businesses with no website near you now.
Build one real example first, for a specific local business rather than a generic template, then use that as your portfolio. A finished, business-specific preview is more convincing to a stranger than a description of your skills, and it replaces the need for past client work entirely.
Local businesses with no working website, found on Google Maps or a tool that automates the same search, are the easiest first clients: the pitch is simple (you're offering something they visibly don't have yet) and there's no existing site to compete with or replace.
Not recommended. A steep discount for your genuinely first paying client is reasonable and common; working for free tends to attract people who don't value the work, makes it harder to raise your price later, and a paid client — even a small one — is a stronger reference than an unpaid one.