Becoming a successful freelance web designer doesn’t just happen overnight; it takes a lot of hard work, skill and determination.
Sure, you can learn the ins and outs of what it takes to be freelance web designer who’s successful, but there are also a few key personal skills that you need to finely tune to truly make it in the industry.
Below, you’ll find 7 key habits of successful freelance web designers and how to become one yourself.
Be passionate about what you do
The first, and arguably most important habit you need to develop as a freelancer, is to be immensely passionate about what you do. You’ve already taken the leap from full-time employment to go out on your own into the world of freelancing, but passion is the number one key to being successful.
Passion is the thing that will set you apart from the rest of the competition. Anyone can learn the skills of web designing; but having the drive and determination and truly loving what you do will make you stand out from the crowd.
Passion isn’t necessarily something that can be learned; it’s what’s already inside you that sets you on fire when it comes to the work you’re creating. There’s the age-old saying of “if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life” and as cheesy and cliché as that might be, it really rings true when you’re working for yourself.
No one else is going to make you get up and work every day; only you and you alone are responsible for the success of your business and if you’re not passionate about the work you’re creating, you’re going to struggle to find the motivation to get up every morning and work on your projects.
Passion is what will inevitably make you successful in the long run. It’s what keeps you focused, motivated and driven, even when you feel like giving up. And there’s really nothing more rewarding than seeing that hard work eventually pay off.
Have excellent communication skills
As a freelance web designer, you’re not going to have a huge team around you (at least not at first), who can take the reins if you don’t feel like being particularly talkative to a certain client.
As there’s no one else to carry out the small talk for you, it’s a skill and eventual habit that you need to learn for yourself. Having excellent communication skills is an integral part of any successful freelancing career as it shows willingness to engage in an active working relationship with your clients.
Whether you love or hate small talk, you’re going to have to develop at least a basic level of tolerance for it in order to build great relationships with the people you’re working with. Communicating with your clients will likely come in many forms; from constant back-and-forth emails, to long phone conversations and Skype calls with potential clients, to in-person networking events where you’ll have to sell yourself and your skills to complete strangers.
Being equipped with excellent communication skills is not only an incredibly important part of helping your clients but it will also make you much more personable too.
Perfect your skills
Of course, no successful freelance web designer ever got anywhere just by wanting to do well and being able to charm potential clients; it takes a whole lot of skill too.
Going through the rigmarole of the basic training to become a web designer is great, but you also need something that makes you stand apart from your competitors and will make clients want to hire you instead of the average web designer.
Perfecting your skills is one way to ensure your success as a freelance web designer. You need to be able to show potential and existing clients exactly why they should hire you and why you’d be the perfect fit for the job.
Working on your skills shouldn’t stop once you’ve become a designer either, you should always show willingness to develop your skillset and you should never stop learning. Even when you think you’ve learned everything there is to know, there will always be someone who’s got a slight edge on you because they’ve perfected that certain skill ever so slightly better than you.
That’s not to say that you must spend all your time learning and growing, but you should always be willing to constantly develop and change in order to keep up with your competitors.
Have a clear goal in mind
Now that you’re well equipped with passion, the necessary skills and excellent communicative abilities, you need to develop the habit of knowing exactly why you want to become a freelance web designer.
Is it because you want to work for yourself and don’t want to be held accountable to your employer? Do you want to be able to work on your own time schedule and have flexible working hours? Do you want a job that allows you to get creative every day and enables you to combine your hobbies and passions with an income?
Having a clear goal in mind and knowing exactly why it’s so important to you to have a successful freelance career is an imperative habit to develop. It’s also a good idea to be aware that your goals will change and develop as you change and grow as a web designer too.
The original goal that you started out with when you first became a freelancer might not ring true five years down the line and it’s important to recognise that it’s OK to change your mind and realign your goals to fit where you are in your career at any given point.
Showcase your work
A successful freelance web designer will always have a place to showcase their work. Whether that’s in the form of a website showcasing all your past clients and projects, or through written testimonials that you can send out to potential clients.
As a freelancer, you need to be able to showcase your work, otherwise no one will ever see your full potential. If you’re just starting out, it can be a little trickier to showcase your work if you haven’t worked on any big projects quite yet.
One way to combat this, however, is to offer to build websites for friends and family in order to build up an excellent portfolio that you can then show off to perspective customers. You don’t necessarily need to do the work for free, but by offering to build a website for your friend’s bakery for a “discounted” price, you’re getting the chance to show off your skills and your friend gets a brand-new website; everyone wins!
You could also showcase your work by creating your own blog and writing articles showing your expertise. This can then be tied into sharing your work across social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and particularly LinkedIn where you’ll then have the potential to attract even more clients and customers.
Many freelancers can be reluctant to build a social media presence at first as it seems like a pointless exercise and may seem like it’s taking time away from doing the actual web designing. However, once you get over the initial reluctance, you’ll soon realise that being active on social media can open you up to a wealth of opportunities.
Be great at time management
One of the biggest perks of being a freelancer and working for yourself is that you get to work on your own time scale. The only downside to this is if you’re not great at managing your own time; this is when it can get a little tricky and you might start heading down a slippery slope of long lie-ins and late nights in order to finish a project for a particular deadline.
In order to become a successful freelance web designer, you really need to hone your time management skills right from the beginning. If you’ve had experience of working in traditional employment such as a 9-5 job before you ventured out into the self-employed world of work, then you should have some basic understanding and accountability skills of ensuring you complete certain projects to a specific timescale.
Once you become a freelancer however, there’s no one else around who can hold you accountable to your working schedule; it’s all up to you. You really need to develop a working schedule that works for you; not for other people.
If you work better after lunch until late into the evening, then go for it. In order to be good at time management, you don’t necessarily have to stick to the societal norms and traditional working hours, but you do have to develop a working schedule that works for you.
Don’t be afraid to sell yourself
One final habit that will help make you a successful freelance web designer is having the ability to sell yourself. Now that you’ve built up an excellent portfolio to show off your skills to potential clients, you now must be confident enough to sell yourself to those people.
It’s no good having a killer profile sat on a website just waiting to attract clients; you must actively seek them out yourself and sell your skills to potential customers.
Having confidence in your abilities is a huge part of being able to sell yourself and it shows that you really know what you’re talking about and that you’re worth investing in. Building your reputation and obtaining referrals is a great way to attract more clients, but it’s also imperative for you to be able to sell yourself too so that people know exactly what they can expect from working with you.
So, there you have it; 7 habits of a successful freelance web designer. As we mentioned above, becoming successful doesn’t just happen overnight and it takes a lot of hard work and determination to make it as a freelancer. Having the willingness and passion to succeed will prove to be very beneficial in your quest to becoming a successful freelancer.
