One of favourite advice I frequently give to those who ask “how do i start my career” especially if the the one who ask want to work in creative field:

Make good freebies (item / product / tool / assets / craft that people can use), then share it for free

I did this this many times in my career in frontend and WordPress theme / plugin development and it seem to work so far. More detailed steps:

Make good freebies

Don’t stop at make one freebie. Make as many as possible + feasible you can, and make it good. An indication that your freebies is good, imo: you’re satisfied making it and other people use it voluntarily.

Share it for free

The goal is to make as many people use it as possible; hopefully one (or more) people who use your stuff want to build things and figured out that since you are capable of making this good stuff and share it for free, you probably can be hired to help them building the stuff they want to build.

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These two steps which literally landed me my first client ever. It was almost a decade ago. I was a university student who like making WordPress theme for my own blog for fun when i suddenly received an email containing an offer which basically said “I have this design for my site; can i hire you to turn it into a WordPress theme for me?“

The rest is history.