How to become a freelance web designer - Part I

Going into web design as a professional, even as a part timer, requires a certain amount of planning and preparation. Here are a few tips to get you started

1. Your Own Freelance Site

It is your shop front and must be looked upon as such. At a minimum it should be free of errors in both the code and the copy, cross-browser compatible, easy to use and read and professional looking. If you have tacked on the fact that you do web design to a personal site it may be a good idea to separate the two and build a new site at a different domain purely to promote your services as a designer.

2. Your Web Design Portfolio

People will choose you because they like your work; they will only know that if they can see some. Offer your services free to any voluntary groups you can find who do not already have a site, build sites for friends and family, perhaps build a separate site for your hobby.

Do everything you can to build up your portfolio. Aside from the fact that it is a showcase it is also very valuable experience, every site will teach you something new and will be better than the last one you built.

3. Limited Profits - at least at the beginning

Even your first few paying sites are quite unlikely to make you a profit, at least in the short term. You are not in a position as a relatively inexperienced designer to charge top dollar and are likely to take longer to carry out some tasks than a more experienced person would.

There is also the possibility that you will confidently tell your clients that you can include some feature that you have no idea how to implement. Researching and learning how to make it happen is time consuming but it is not time for which the client will, or should, pay. While training and development is something that should be included as part of your overhead, when you are starting out you should look on the early sites as a part of this, the lower price your early clients may be offered is possible because you are using them to learn.

4. Keep the day job

It may mean late nights and long days but it would be a mistake to pack in the day job as soon as you get a paying client.

Freelance work is, of its nature, unpredictable and giving up a regular pay check is a move not to be taken lightly. If you do develop a steady stream of income from part-time design work you may reach a point where this becomes an option. Ideally when, or if, you make the final leap into full time web development work it will be important to have a financial war chest to call on when work is slow or waiting for that check in the post is painful. Use your early payments for design work to build a defense against possible future lean times.