I had wasted three years of my life in finding a freelance client
It was 2018 when I heard about website design and how can we make money by designing websites.
So, I spent one year learning it, and when the time arrived to earn some money by freelancing, I got the block because I could not find anyone who needed a website.
Maybe I don't have good networking, or I am from India, where people are not so techy.
Then the real struggle started because I started to chase the extensive shiny course which could help me land my freelance client. So, In finding the client,** I tried out content marketing, cold email, revamping of website, hiring a copywriter to write persuasive words, branding even done positioning, but nothing worked for me.**
Doing all these has wasted three years of my life!
Recently, I learned that client doesn't need a website at all.
They need a solution. Why am I saying this?
Because the agency where I am working as a website designer is only one year old, they don't have blogs on their website, no sales team and guess when they don't even have a proper website.
But, they have the projects of tops Indian companies; seeing these things made me realise that clients don't need a website.
They need results, and we can offer our service in my case (website design) to achieve that result.
Working at an agency bluecodeinfinity.com. This has opened my mind and changed my perspective.
How does it change your perspective?
How I will be approaching marketing and reaching clients.
How did they managed to get the clients? i am not sure if it is replicable by other freelancers.
It is replicable I am working on it!
good but how did they got the clients? networking?
Yes!
Just think in terms how you're going to make more money for your clients, that's it.
They don't care about tech stack, serverless and other geek stuff.
I knew that, but where will I find my clients? And How will I ask them about their problems so I can solve them because they don't know me!
I started back in 2013. on Elance things were different back then.
I was working day and night for about 2 years, every week my output was doubling in terms of money and rank there. At one point right before they merged with Odesk to build UpWork my global rank was 41 ouf of 400K developers on the platform.
You can find my profile here http://ivanradunovic.com/ (refresh page, UpWork is testing something so it breaks)
If you don't have specific skills/knowledge you should start with general projects there, like some html/css, php stuff. You will compete on price at first, but after you get 5-6 positive reviews you can modify your approach.
Never leave a client or close a job if he's not 100% satisfied. If that means you'll need to refund entire amount, do that. You have entire lifetime to work on other jobs but if you get bad review it will cripple your efforts there.
Create GitHub profile put related projects there, make your profile look up to date.
Have a LinkedIn profile, because clients usually google shortlisted candidates.
If your idea is to create your own startup/project you first need know-how from some specific niche. You won't get that experience anywhere else unless you work for some company in that niche. So target projects from certain niches on UpWork and other platforms.
It could be possible that you don't have a portfolio of related project, go create it. Pick something that they request on UpWork very often and create it.
There are many more strategies you could use, but that would require 10s of pages :)
Seriously, web design agencies should stop creating websites that are not going to achieve anything for their clients.
They need to start thinking of long-term strategies which in return will help the client (and ultimately the website).
However, what we see nowadays is a race to create the coolest designs without asking ourselves if that's actually what our clients are expecting from us.
This is it. Many agencies only care about the design thats it.
Agree but not completely!
It's not agencies mistake. It's a client's mistake because I have seen too many clients still choose only beautiful websites over functional websites!
For that, they hire agencies who design beautiful websites.
True! It's both ways :D
I often tell startuppers that comes to me to developer they crazy-ground-breaking apps that the MVP for a networking platform is a cellphone and a contact list.
One thing that worked well for me is answering client demands on platforms (so the reverse of trying to get them to come to my website). It got me enough demand to work for 5 years and now I got enough experience to find clients more easily.
Wish you the best I think at least you learnt a lot there
One of my biggest mistakes so far in my life was focusing too much on learning a different skill rather than making money from skills I already have.
I realized that selling your skill is more important than learning a new one!
Thanks for your comment. I appreciate it!
How do they have projects from top Indian companies without a sales team?
Maybe due to having a network with top people or because they know how to sell.
They don't have a sales team, but they have one sales guy!
Awasome! I'm starting nwebdesign.com.br and it made me understand better how this world of web development works. Thanks!
Glad to hear that you found this valuable!