Are you thinking of becoming a freelance web developer and you’re, not quite sure how to start? Are you looking for a proven system to do so? Well, I’m gonna give you exactly that in this video I’m gonna teach you exactly what to sell, how to figure out what to sell cuz there’s, so many choices and how to price it And then what to do to find clients how to get them to pay you, and I’m gonna deal with the perceived low budgets that clients have and how to charge them good amounts of money for your work.
So you’re, actually making probably more money than someone has a job as a web developer. So why am I qualified to talk about this? Why should you listen to me for advice that’s just this? Well, I’ve, been freelancing myself since 2008 2009 and I’ve helped over 700 people start their freelancing and agency businesses since 2014.
So let’s, dive right into the content, but before that hit the subscribe button and the bail notification icon, if you like, more free content such as this, so the first thing is many people start freelancing and they try getting clients through referrals, friends, Family and so on, and it’s really really hard to get started like that, because you don’t, really know what you’re gonna get, and there’s, not that much choice there’s, not that many people that you know and there’s, not that many people that they know not many companies that people run.
So it usually is a way to get one or two sales but long-term. You need a consistent way to get clients every single month and to keep clients and deliver great results for them. To do this, I recommend starting on freelancing platforms, because they take a lot of the guesswork out of this and they turn cold audiences into warm buyers that are already interested in buying web development services and it’s.
A lot easier to sell to them it’s, a lot easier to close a contract when they already know that they want to do that certain type of project. It takes away a lot of the guesswork, a lot of testing and months or potentially, even years of guesswork and testing from your plate, and it replaces, with you know, some small fees that you pay to the platforms.
The main platform that I like to use is upward comm. It used to be called oDesk and many people talk about it as if it’s, not the best place in the world, but it is fantastic to get started. This is the absolute best place to start as a freelancer because of the over abundance of projects that are available in jobs that are available for web developers onto platform.
In fact, here’s, my secret internal market research document screenshot. That shows that, in fact, this is the number one niche on the entire platform. So you basically want to avoid having to build your own website and drive your own traffic and try to convince people to buy your stuff from you.
Instead, go on to platform and play the game that the platform wants you to play to get those clients early on that way, yours can spend more time doing what you actually want and less time figuring out all the complicated ins and outs of marketing, because, ultimately You want to be a freelance web developer or a tech agency owner software agency owner or something along those lines right.
So let’s just avoid the complicated marketing and focus on getting those first few clients so that you can do this full-time. So you can become a freelancer full-time or a tech agency owner full-time.
So if you go to up work, which is the number one platform for this type of thing, what do you sell? Because there’s, so many options there and if you go? Look at the upper top 100 list, which I have an another video of mine.
You’ll, see that there’s, actually a hundred current growing skills that are in demand and many of those are related to development and web development. However, I’m gonna give you a few ideas to get started with so most people they look at the biggest one, and that is a wordpress web development.
So there’s, advantages and disadvantages to becoming a wordpress web developer. As a freelancer or agency owner and the advantages are there’s, so many thousands of job posts there’s, so much demand it’s almost inevitable that you’re gonna get some work from someone.
Even if you’re, not very advanced as a wordpress developer, or even if you’ve learned it over the last two weeks because it’s, not very complicated. Let’s be honest here. So what you want to be doing is, if you want to go into WordPress web development, you want to focus on projects that are thousand dollars and above on up work and get started like that now.
The second thing you can do is even simpler than WordPress, because we all know WordPress is quite simple. Even I’m, I even I can do it very easily, so what you can do other than WordPress is landing page web development.
Now, with that, you can use tools like clickfunnels and also work press or any other platform, or do custom HTML work, and you can deliver work like that. So these projects they’re a little bit cheaper, usually so for landing pages.
I recommend also charging a thousand dollars and above just ignore. Anyone who won’t pay that and go for 1,000 above projects, because those people actually know what they want and they are ready to pay it because they understand it’s.
An important part of their business that they need in the short term, so they don’t. Look they don’t, look at it as I’m one of website built six months from now, but I wanted the landing page to be done now and I wanted to convert, and I wanted to load fast and I’m willing to pay premium dollar for this.
Those are the right types of leads for landing pages. Certainly, you’ll, find many that don’t qualify for this, and you’re. Welcome to refer them to your friends or whoever, but for you for your freelance, secure your business, you will want to work with.
Clients want to pay a thousand dollars and above for landing pages, on up work. So the third service that I currently recommend on up work for web developers is Shopify now Shopify. These are projects.
There are a thousand to three thousand, and sometimes even seven thousand dollars on up work. This is a more tricky platform to work with and the requirements are steeper, but the supply is lower because anyone these days can do landing pages and WordPress the competition is higher, but for Shopify there is best practices.
You need to go through the documentation or find someone another freelancer to help you with it. Who has more experience. It is a little bit more complicated with that and that’s, why the projects are so much more expensive there’s.
Also more money on the line, usually because EECOM websites, they generate quite a bit of money, usually before someone wants to do ëcome, they will have usually a budget or they already have a business which definitely means they have a budget.
So how do you get your first clients on up work as a freelance web developer or agency owner? So you need to create a profile that is like a landing page that gets people on a call with you, and I know it may be a little bit scary and I’m, just kind of just kind of throwing you in the deep end.
Here, but you will want to talk to someone on the phone. You need to check that their normal same people and they have the ability to pay you a good amount of money for the project. You need to interview them.
You’re, not like a freelancer gets interviewed for a job. You’re, a business owner, and you want to interview clients to make sure you actually want to work with them and is the right choice for them, and you can deliver a lot of value to them, which of course means that you can charge Them a good amount of money because that’s, valuable that’s, value that you provide as a professional.
So you get five reviews on up work. Just look at my other videos how to get your first client on up work, and you want to get five reviews and you want to make sure that your profile looks very legitimate, with lots of proof.
If you don’t have to proof, make sure you get to proof, build some websites or take on some clients cheaper outside of up work and then bring them to pay you enough work and leave you positive reviews to make sure you have five Reviews as soon as possible, so you can get top rated as soon as possible.
Just go read through upwork Help section and it’ll. Tell you how to get top-rated and with five reviews and top rated your profile will look really really good. Then you want to make sure you’re, sending ten proposals per day, highly customized, even video proposals.
If you’re, you know if you’re into that kind of thing and make sure you’re. Getting people on calls on skype to interview them and make sure they’re ideal clients, as I said so, if you choose to go without work and if you choose to get clients on there, I recommend getting clients to pay you up front because Up work will want you to get paid through their platform, which has some fees, and the fee, of course, is included in a price to the client.
Ultimately, pays for the fee, so it’s, not a big deal for you at least. So what you want to be doing is you want to get clients that are highly qualified to pay you through the platform? Even if you get the clients from outside of the platform and the fee is the fee, don’t worry about that, because the client is paying it.
And then you want to make sure that you get five reviews and your profile looks super amazing to future clients, because of what you’re really doing is not just getting those five reviews and five clients what you’re really doing Is building a funnel a way to consistently get clients for the next five to ten years in your business? If you do things right and that’s, why it’s worthwhile, because upwork is a 1.
7 billion or so dollar company. They have an unlimited amount of leads and unlimited amount of sales that you’ll, be able to close over the next few years. So I highly recommend taking it seriously and really building out that platform and building out you were ability to get clients on there.
It’s, extremely valuable, medium, even short-term, and definitely long-term. So you’ll want to get the client also to commit on how they will contribute to the project when the deadlines are for you and for them, and how you guys will communicate.
I recommend one weekly call with an update on the project where both parties discuss what they need to deliver and what has been delivered and what has been created so far and the clay needs to approve every week.
What has been done and if they don’t, they still should pay you, because if they’re late same as what you’re late, like you still need to get paid because things happen and that’S, okay and they have busy schedules, but they need to stay committed to delivering feedback to you, and this needs to be in the agreement on up work.
Make sure that is mentioned, how the communication happens and how soon after someone says a message, I reply. Error is expected from both sides, because that way, the project doesn’t, get stuck and dragged on for months and months and months, and they should also have to pay you even if they don’t reply and the project gets stuck.
They should still have to pay you, because if they stop the project by not replying, you still deserve to be paid for your work. So for a contract you can go to a website like LegalZoom or Loch Rocket Lawyer, and you can use one of those contracts on there.
There’s templates. They’re, almost free. You can also Google templates for web design or web development, and you’ll, find a bunch of templates to use it’s, not very complicated or hire a lawyer. This is, of course, not legal advice, but you know Rock allure and Legal Zoom.
They have lawyers working for them and their templates then to be good in my opinion, so most freelancers, especially in YouTube, they’ll, say: oh, the budgets are so low and the competition so high and the prices are being driven low.
Well, it depends with you sell to. If you sell to the people that are just starting a business, they have no idea of how much things cost. They have no budget. They have no idea that it’s worthwhile, investing in web development.
Then, of course, you’re gonna get in trouble and of course, you’re gonna have to charge less money because you’re competing with everyone else who sells to those people. But if you have a great portfolio that you get and your team has, of course as well, then you can get based on your track.
Record pay a lot more and it’s perfectly fine to ask for more money than you’re comfortable with in the discover, wood and then saying. No, that is perfectly fine. It’s better to for them to say no than for you to work on a very, very small, cheap project and get in trouble with your account and get in trouble just wasting your time.
So it’s better. To wait for the right client than to take on anyone and everyone who wants a little website done. So, as you’ll see when you start to specialize and perfect your craft and focus on things that truly matter to people with budgets, to people that are entrepreneurs and want to spend real money on web development.
You’ll, soon realize that these are great people to work with. As long as you manage the client properly and you have the right contract and charge enough money, these problems tend to go away and you’ll drift away from the crowd of people that is complaining about bad clients and bad days and bad.