Building a website to get freelance work?

[Cromulent]

I've been considering building a simple website to show my skills and get some freelance work, but I was wondering what people look for when it comes to hiring a freelancer? I've never freelanced before, but I have been building websites for a year or so.

What I want to concentrate on is frontend development so HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I want to make the website look amazing using all of the latest browser technologies. Of course, this would mean the site wouldn't work in older browsers, but I think that is fine for a portfolio website.

What do you have on your website to try and get freelance work?

 

[AHarvey]

Freelancing has nothing to do with how pretty your website is.

It's about marketing and selling yourself. For the market you'll be targetting doing front end only it's going to about prices and aftercare.

Get a nice clean website set up, one that is easy to navigate, prices and testimonials are important. All singing and dancing sites are completely worthless if 80% of the visitors can't see the site properly, you're also only going to be getting smaller businesses that are after small sites because you're not touching any backend stuff. Static sites only by the sounds of it.

You're going to want to sell the initial website design at a lower cost and then break even on web hosting space, domain name management, website maintenance, backing up and more importantly, future changes required. That's where the money is.

 

[Cromulent]

Freelancing has nothing to do with how pretty your website is.

It's about marketing and selling yourself. For the market you'll be targetting doing front end only it's going to about prices and aftercare.

Get a nice clean website set up, one that is easy to navigate, prices and testimonials are important. All singing and dancing sites are completely worthless if 80% of the visitors can't see the site properly, you're also only going to be getting smaller businesses that are after small sites because you're not touching any backend stuff. Static sites only by the sounds of it.

You're going to want to sell the initial website design at a lower cost and then break even on web hosting space, domain name management, website maintenance, backing up and more importantly, future changes required. That's where the money is.

Thanks for the reply. I can also do backend stuff using Python, Node.js and PostgreSQL but I wanted to show my frontend skills and thought that doing a simple site for that would be useful. I'll see what I can up with in regards to the site and see if it looks reasonable.

 

[Tom B]

Just a word of warning about freelancing web development stuff, it's a difficult game if you just join freelancing sites. I did it for a while while I was at university. There are hundreds of people who live in countries where things are a lot cheaper who will put in lower bids than you can afford to. You reach the point where you'd be better off serving coffee in a cafe for minimum wage. The hard part is finding decent clients who understand they get what they pay for.

Having a site with your portfolio definitely helps and gives you something to show prospective clients.

Good luck, let us know how you get on.

 

[Hades]

Just a word of warning about freelancing web development stuff, it's a difficult game if you just join freelancing sites. I did it for a while while I was at university. There are hundreds of people who live in countries where things are a lot cheaper who will put in lower bids than you can afford to. You reach the point where you'd be better off serving coffee in a cafe for minimum wage. The hard part is finding decent clients who understand they get what they pay for.

Having a site with your portfolio definitely helps and gives you something to show prospective clients.

Good luck, let us know how you get on.

I'd agree with this. I posted an advert on freelancer.com for a website and within 48 hours had over 50 people from India, China and Eastern Europe offering to build the site (presumably in Wordpress) for as low as £200. I just don't see how you can compete with that. Conversely I got a high level quote from a UK based agency and they quoted £5k+.

 

[d_brennen]

I'd agree with this. I posted an advert on freelancer.com for a website and within 48 hours had over 50 people from India, China and Eastern Europe offering to build the site (presumably in Wordpress) for as low as £200. I just don't see how you can compete with that. Conversely I got a high level quote from a UK based agency and they quoted £5k+.

I know, from experience, lots of UK companies will take your £5k, subcontract it out to someone in India for a tenth or less...

 

[Hades]

I know, from experience, lots of UK companies will take your £5k, subcontract it out to someone in India for a tenth or less...

Yes. I'd be surprised if they didn't. It just makes a lot of sense. But in those cases what you're still paying for is a UK contact to discuss your exact requirements to, during your own timezone, with probably better communication than you'd get dealing with an offshore team yourself. I'm not a web developer but one of the main reasons my job exists is to sit between the business and offshore teams. There's money to be made in providing that interface.