If you're a Web designer, do you offer your services as a freelancer (on a personal domain) or as a design agency (on a business domain)? Has anyone switched from one to the other?
If you are a Web Designer you set up a website on a business domain and get that going. Then you start off in places like Scriptlance, Getafreelancer, etc and do some small jobs to get established and makes some money while you work on your website. Once your site starts getting some good organic traffic, you should be able to make considerably more per project. TIP: Try theming your web design site on your main keywords, but loosely put some regional keywords in there so that you might be able to compete more quickly in a smaller market. It will be tough to compete for awhile globally. BR
From what I have seen, many web designers set up a website about their services, clients and what not and start to get work though freelance, on websites like "GetAFreeLancer" and what not. As they build up a client list and also obviously work on their own website SEO-wise, they start to get clients themselves, without going though websites like get a freelancer. Although if you are serious about getting into web design, I would suggest you create a website which offers your services, your past clients, reviews on your services and what not and then you go to freelance websites to get a few clients to start off with. I wouldn't suggest going though a design agency, your better off working freelance with your own website.
I'm also thinking on same lines. It is always better to set up your own websites for development and get decent projects slowly.
Working as a freelancer is becoming tough day by day because of this economic downturn, doing web design business on your own website , you will be at mercy of google adwords off late it has very low conversion .
Its a Slow and constant process. I have made a business online portfolio. Planning to register it as Local web design studio, to make it a proper company. on the other side, I get assignments from freelancing sites, and from Website portfolio as well.
The difference will be the brand awareness and the identity respect, if you say yourself as freelancer you are standing in a crowd of more than millions, if you work under a company name you stand out of that. But there are lot of limitations if you work in name of a company, as a freelancer, you decide everything including rates, working time, product delivery etc, if you run the same as company you are bound to many protocols
If you are a Web designer, then you can do web designing jobs at freelance sites. There are hundreds of such jobs posted at freelance sites every day. Starting your own business is hard work. At freelance sites, you can get web designing work without investing any money.