New Freelance Web Designer!

[nick-harper]

Hi Guys,

Just started out doing freelance web design and am here for any tips and tricks I can find to get customers

Thanks

Nick

[TWD-Tony]

Hi - Welcome to teneric!

I'm in the hosting business (with a bit of design on the side) and to be honest you are trying to break into a very overcrowded business as a web designer!

I'm not saying that all is lost though - you need the following:

A> A "Simple" yet eye-catching website (nothing to flashy or load intensive)

B> Contacts in the "business" - I sometimes use freelance designers for clients site's, if you want you can put some good screenshots / links of website's you have designed on my site and I would be happy to pass the odd client along if they are interested (for a commision of course ) PM me if you are interested.

C> Pricing - This is one business that is very weird in how people percieve the price, on one hand being to expensive and you will get very little work - be to cheap and people presume that you are a total amature

Good Luck!

[nick-harper]

I totally agree with you!

My site address is [url]http://www.nick-harper.co.uk[/url]

Started off wanting to make it valid HTML and accessible and now I am working on the actual design

I understand that it is a very packed market online and I am hopefully going to target the "not as hip" audience locally and show them their competitor's sites and what could be done for them if they did get an online presence!

Yeah I would be happy with a bit on your site and would pay commision!

I will PM you in a sec

[MikeH]

Hi Nick and welcome to the forum.

Whilst I do not know loads about the deisgn side of websites I think that you may be on the right track by starting of locally. It will help build your protfolio and keep your market focused. Hoping to get to the top of the SE's for web design would be a very long road.

I wish you success and hope to see you around the forums, which by the way are quite useful for building up contacts and recommendations.

Mike.

[wornout]

Hi Nick-big welcome, and good luck with your venture.Im sure you will find all the help and encouragement you need on this site

[LDW]

First of all good luck!

I spent 3 months looking for someone to design my website. Initially I contacted 9 companies/people.

3 never replied to either my phone message or my email.

3 took over a week to reply and

3 replied the same day.

I met with that 3 and explained the concept, narrowing it down to 2, as 1 said it was impossble.

The other 2 quoted and I had decided on the one which was more expensive because of his location. But, possibly through no fault of his own he took forever to reply or give me definite time spans and final costs, (all a bit wishy washy)

So basically I went with the one who gave me the best customer service. So the only advise I would give is take every customer seriously. The company which did mine has now had 3 referals in the past 6 months from me which will have equated to approx 20k worth of business for them. (I wish I was on commission!)

Recommendation will be most important for you. Make every call/enquiry count! You will need an impressive website of your own as well!

All the best!

[LDW]

Sorry, I had not taken a look at your site before I posted my first reply. It looks good - so dont think that I meant that your site wasn't impressive, I had simply just not looked at it. Best regards.