What is the best freelance website?
I'm trying to build my network as a freelancer slowly while I'm still in school. Looking for advice on best practice to build my credibility.
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Answers ( 1 )
If you haven’t already, immediately build a website to showcase your work thus far and continuously improve it. There are two ways that I advise students to build their paid work. Note that digging up graphic design opportunities are much easier than coding tasks.
The first way is to network amongst your family and friends to get your feet wet. This means that you look for small opportunities, even manufacture them. Being able to showcase paid work instead of just assignments and practice pieces is important early on.
There are many graphic design tasks that people can benefit from. Design business cards, create logos, fliers, websites (one of the easiest ways that you can find coding work), simplified black and white logo/brandmark for reproducing small on promotional giveaways/swag, print ads, etc.
Be upfront about what you are doing, let people know that you need to build up a list of paying customers and that instead of charging them $500 or a thousand dollars, they’ll be paying you five or ten dollars in exchange for a good “satisfied customer” quote, being able to show it off as paid work, and possibly for them to provide a verbal reference if they are comfortable with it.
Your uncle may not think he needs a logo (or a refresh) for his cattle ranch, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt. People that you know who have Etsy stores, YouTube channels, or any kind of small business could easily make use of some kind of graphic or web services. When anyone else asks them about you, they relay how happy they were with your work, (they omit that they know you) and if asked, they don’t recall exactly what their company paid but that it was a reasonable fee in line with what those services go for. They are telling the truth, but they are leaving out the details of how this work came to be. This step is simply to build a backlog of paid work to showcase on your website and is to be abandoned as soon as you start generating traditional paid gigs.
The second approach is to leverage your other interests and activities to serve a narrow market. I did this by creating my own promotional materials as a magician. When other people in magic asked where I’d had any of it done (and I’d bring it up if they didn’t), I’d tell them that also did graphic and web work. The advantage of finding work within a subculture that you belong to is that you know their specialized language and their unique needs. They are dealing with “one of their own” instead of trying to communicate with a digital services person who knows little or nothing about their idiosyncratic world.
If you design shirts for your bowling team, church choir, or chess club (informing them of market rates are even if you are outright donating your services) and everyone lets others know about it, you can easily find yourself “the graphics guy/gal” in that arena. While it is possible to end up specializing in serving a narrow market, it isn’t hard to branch out by letting clients know to keep you in mind for all of their digital needs, to network beyond your original niche. This way, someone who hires you through your shared interest that also happens to be a plumber might then ask you about new business cards.
Of course you’ll give them your “New Customer discount” which is a reasonable cut on current area market rates for that first piece if work. When you bill them list your standard rate, then subtract your New Customer Discount to underscore what your actual rate is. When you are brand new it is harder to justify charging as much as someone with experience, but charging too little hurts you and everyone else in the business.
You don’t want to be caught up in significantly undercutting market rates, since you’ll end up working a lot for very little, working your tail off without being able to pay your bills. Their is always a ghetto in any service industry, make sure to keep clear of it. There are no shortage of people who do barely adequate/wholly inadequate, highly derivative, use outright stolen IP, and do rote, uninspired work. Customers can come to expect people with superior skills, work ethic and experience to work for these unrealistic, unsustainable rates, or they may naively not understand what such work costs in the first place. Don’t add to the problem.
With the above in mind, I’d advise you to avoid Fiverr if at all possible and build the ability to be listed on curated job sites that require actual ability in order to participate. One example as Toptotal which requires coders to pass a test in order to be listed.
Conversely, don’t forget the people who gave you a chance by hiring you when you were unknown and unexperienced. Always give those people a “Family and Friends” deal, or do a little work in exchange for them taking you out for a nice dinner for old times sake.