How To Start Your Freelance Website
Are you ready to get off of sites like Freelancer and Upwork and on to a site of your own? Check out today’s podcast for a full guide to starting your freelance website.
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Creating a freelance website is crucial if you want to stand out, get leads, and stop using sites like Upwork to get all your income.
Get Your Essentials
A domain name, I use Namecheap.
Hosting, I use Squarespace for my freelance website. My host of choice for Wordpress is SiteGround.
Pick a fun but professional theme. Squarespace has themes built-in. Creative Market is excellent for WordPress themes.
Define The Pages You Want And Create Content
Let’s check out the different pages you can create.
Home Page
What they land on. They need to know who you are right away.
Add some proof like company logos and testimonials.
Give an overview of your services and share a bit about you.
Add in elements like videos, etc. You may even want to include a contact form.
Related Reading: The Ultimate Guide To Your Freelance Website Homepage
About Page
A full-fledged page devoted to learning more about you and the services you can offer them. Start with them and include a few things about you. For example, I even created a playlist for people because music is so important to me.
The Hire Me Stuff
Hire Me: A page filled with your predetermined packages and other ways to work with you. Include prices if you can, at least starting at prices.
Portfolio: List your best work in your niche. Don’t try to overload people with all the samples. Make it relevant and enjoyable, so people click on the best of the best.
Testimonials: You may decide to have a page devoted to testimonials, or not. I am thinking about getting rid of mine and just posting testimonials on relevant pages.
Contact Page
You may want a contact page, or you may want to include contact forms on relevant pages. I do both because I never want anyone to have to fight or search hard to find a way to contact me.
Blog
You don’t need a blog, but you might want to include one if you think you can update it regularly.
How To Get Your Website Out There
Focus on SEO. Add your site to Google Search Console and create content that resonates on Google and pulls audience members in. Use sites like Ubersuggest and Answer The Public to come up with ideas for keywords or posts to create to grab attention.
Share your website on your LinkedIn page. LinkedIn is a phenomenal way to connect with professionals in many niches. Use it to your advantage by sharing your website on your timeline and using hashtags, posting it in groups, etc.
Build an email list. Once your email list is built, you can continue to create content and share it with your audience on your list. Plus, an email list turns one time visitors into people who frequent your brand.
Don’t worry about traffic; worry about connections. Traffic is fantastic. Traffic builds our pipeline, but you can have small traffic, and still make a lot of money with your website.
Here’s The Most Important Advice You’ll Ever Receive About Your Website
Your website is a work in progress.
My site didn’t look like it does now when I first started.
It was bare-bones, and it needed a lot of work.
I am continually updating and changing my website now. I am proud of how far my site has come, but it wasn’t always like this.
You Need A Website
But don’t get all up in arms about how fantastic it is right away. You can and should take your time to build it up and make it work for you.