Freelancers often neglect the need for a personal professional website, and that’s a mistake. While one could be fine without it, a site will make lots of things way easier. It will take just a couple of hours to create and a bit of your time every once in a while to keep it updated. And without needing much effort and money, a professional website could boost your freelance career significantly.
How could a website help you and what are the steps you need to take to build a really cool one? In this guide, we will provide you with all the answers you want to know.
How can you benefit from a personal freelance website?
Any potential new client will want to take a look at your work before actually deciding to collaborate with you. Sure, a good old resume and a selection of your projects will work. But a website will make you look way more convincing, and here is why.
Present yourself in the way you want
Resumes usually are very dry when it comes to describing yourself and your approach to work. When a client is looking for a freelance professional, they would want to know as much as possible about this person. There is much prejudice about freelancers — a lot of employers think they’re unreliable and not as skilled as those specialists who work in offices. With a personal website, you can shatter those false beliefs by telling a bit about yourself and showing off your best work.
Additionally, a personal website has a psychological impact — it makes employers see you as a true professional who has set aside some time and money to create a site. It also shows that you care about your clients’ time since you made an effort to pack all the required information about yourself into a website.
Work on your brand
Just like a business, you as a freelancer need to have your own brand. It means that you need to have a set of data that could define you as a professional. While this section might seem similar to the previous one, it’s quite a bit different.
To build your brand you need to provide a prospective client with more proof than examples of your work. It could be testimonials from your previous clients, your social work, and so on. You could also add more information about yourself — maybe, list things you’re passionate about or tell about your pet. Even though it’s not about your work, it will help you catch those clients who really care about the personalities of people they collaborate with.
Control over lead generation
This is something a Linkedin account or a profile on some websites for freelancers don’t have. Once you have your own website, you can work on SEO, content, and social media marketing to push it up the social engine ladder. Then your site will work not just as a quick way to give a potential client all the information about you, but as a lead generator, too. If you put effort into promoting your website, you’ll start receiving organic and relevant traffic that will bring you new cool projects. So over time, you will forget about trying to scrape new clients. Instead, you’ll have a chance to just do your work and earn fair money without stressing out.
Always a chance to get featured
If you create a website with a really cool user experience, you have high chances to get featured by different media that write about web design. And to improve your chances to get featured, you can offer your website to these media. Once you become a part of a selection of the coolest portfolio sites, you can expect your traffic to grow significantly.
Website builder VS. Wordpress
Should you use a website builder or Wordpress for your site? Since these are the two most popular options, let’s talk about them.
If you have skills in building websites on Wordpress, creating a personal site isn’t an issue. But if you are a professional in another area, this choice stands before you.
It’s not difficult to create a website on Wordpress considering a plethora of ready-to-use templates and plugins. And with a bit of research and a couple of Youtube videos, you will feel rather confident about building your website. However, it still requires more time and effort than just using a website builder.
Builders are made for people who want to create a new site quickly and easily. Such tools offer ready-to-use templates and drag-and-drop interfaces that allow you to build a design without issues. But the problem with website builders is that all sites created with their use look very similar since the functions are very limited. So if your goal is to create a truly visually outstanding site, builders are not your choice. However, if you just use a Wordpress template, your website won’t be visually outstanding, too.
Although, there is Tilda that offers much-needed flexibility and allows you to create cool effects and impressive designs. If you know how to do that, of course.
So if you are willing to create a site that will impress with its user experience, but you’re not a web designer, a good solution would be to hire a professional who will help you with it. Of course, it’s not a must for a freelance website to be visually impressive. But that could help to make prospective clients remember you.
6 things a freelance site needs to have
The coolest design won’t help you attract new clients if your site doesn’t provide all the necessary information. So here is a checklist of things to include when creating a freelance website.
A bit about yourself
Telling about yourself doesn’t mean listing your accomplishments. Let the projects you’ve done showcase your skills. Better focus on telling who you are as a person, your approach to work and clients’ needs.
The “about” section is a good place to give prospective customers an understanding of the way you handle projects, your values, and things you’re focused on currently. This will not just improve your chances to be picked by an employer but also help make sure that you’re compatible with a new client. Then, once you start working, you will face fewer misunderstandings.
A list of your services
Make it easy for prospective clients to understand what services exactly you offer by listing them. You can do that as a separate list, or you could divide your projects into sections to showcase both the services and examples of your work at once.
If you decide to just list services, take your time to elaborate on each one of them. Write what’s included in a specific offer, and how long does it take for you to deliver this service. This will once again help a potential customer to understand if you’re the right fit for them. But also, it will speed up the beginning of your collaboration since you won’t need to explain the process to a client.
Your portfolio
Of course, your freelance website needs to show prospective clients examples of your work. Pick out your best projects and put them on your website with the explanation of a project itself and the needs of a client. Make sure to showcase different works that exemplify your various skills.
Testimonials
It would be nice if you could get reviews of your work from your previous clients. Ask them to tell their opinion about the projects you did for them and the cooperation you had. Testimonials are very convincing. Often employers are afraid to work with freelancers exactly because they can’t contact a previous employer to ask for a testimonial about a worker like they usually do when it comes to hiring in-house specialists. Do this job for your prospective clients and provide them with former clients’ thoughts about your work.
Contacts
Don’t forget to include different ways to contact you. Add your email, messengers, a phone number if you want, and accounts on social media platforms. However, you should be careful with the latter, especially if you are used to sharing your opinions on social media. If your view of a certain situation conflicts with one a prospective client has, you might lose a project despite the fact that most likely you won’t even talk about the subject you disagree on.
Call-to-actions
Finally, pack your professional site with call-to-action buttons. Portfolio and the list of services are nice places for this function. Also, you could add a button below testimonials to catch potential clients who finally got convinced while reading the opinions of your previous customers.
Final thoughts
A professional website can turn your freelance career around by allowing you to focus on your work instead of hunting for new clients. It will also bring you more projects that fit your desires and clients you enjoy working with.
The last thing we want to mention is that it’s important for a professional site to always be available. Check out King Servers VPS hostings to choose a truly reliable solution for your website. We offer different plans that will let you have your site always up and running for a very affordable price.
