Hi, I've been freelancing for the last 6-7 years, I have be come very experience at web design and have had many clients, albeit these have usually been small-scale projects. Mainly of the gaming variety. I now feel, that it is time to actually establish myself within the business world, having finished college I think it's time to give this a proper shot. I understand all the basic's, getting my site up and running, good portfolio etc. What I'm more interested in is the marketing aspect of the whole idea. This is mainly for people who have come across the same path as me, what did you find the best way to advertise & get clients? Flyers, Google Ads, etc? I'm very pro-active and willing to put a lot of work into this, so any help is really appreciated! Thanks, Matt.
Word of mouth is a cheap and can be an effective method. Your previous clients can refer new customers to you.
Here is a few ideas off the top of my head: 1.You can do free work to get yourself in the door with big clients. For more on this, look up Charlie Hoehn's TED talk on you tube. 2. Cold calling businesses. Make sure that you ask around some sales forums for tips on telemarketing/ cold sales techniques and scripts. 3. Make sure that you are pricing yourself competitively for the market your in. Don't undercharge. You have to eat plus pay benefits and insurance too right? If people won't pay you competitively, that means that you might not be communicating the value you can bring to their business. 4. Stay away from mean spirited clients. They can make you hate life, which can drop your service level for other good clients. Hope these helped.
I've not yet found the magic bullet for marketing my web services but I can certainly tell you that Craigslist is a waste of time. All I've gotten from there were high-maintenance clients who constantly asked for more and tried to haggle on the price. I've done some work through elance and was happy with the experience. The people who buy design services through elance are generally more professional and are willing to pay market rates for your services. If you give them a try be sure to buy a premium membership upgrade as the free account doesn't include enough bids (for me at least). Also, if you're willing to wait it out you can clean up submitting designs on Crowdspring. The issue is that you may do a bunch of work and not have your design selected. Crowdspring has minimum pricing on jobs and from what I've seen you can make some solid cash working on there.
I would also suggest that you put up a very nice and creative portfolio of the past 6-7 years of work that you have been doing. A lot of people who come to you would want to see that. If you want to promote your design skills then let it reflect on your own website.