Let's talk work and where to find it. 1
There are many ways for a freelance web designer to find work. 2
The very first and obvious option which is online platforms like freelancer.com and obviously 3
Upwork.com. Or locally in the city where you live and networking with people in the industry, or 4
networking with the startups, going to the tech conferences. Making friends with other successful web 5
designers, who can send work towards your way. Because what often happens with web designers is 6
that they get fully booked. Because, you know, one designer can only do one website at a time, right? 7
You cannot do 10, 20 websites simultaneously. 8
So good designers very easily get booked. And what happens is then they send work to their friends or some 9
other people that they would recommend to their clients and so on. 10
Also LinkedIn and regular job boards, like ZipRecruiter. There are more than enough ways to 11
find work. And if you Google this, you'll find more and more options. 12
The question is which one of these options is the perfect place for you to look work. Things like your 13
current skill, your personality or experience, where you live, the city that you live. 14
All of those things will determine which one of these options is going to be the perfect fit for you, 15
at this stage. 16
I can't tell you which one is going to work the best for you, 17
no one can. But the best approach is to just pick one at a time and just go through the list. 18
In this video, I'm going to talk about the online platforms and finding work on online platforms. 19
I'll give you a general overview of the biggest ones. 20
There are many of these. 21
There is Upwork. 22
There is Fiverr, there is freelancer.com, PeoplePerHour, Toptal and so on. 23
The list is endless. 24
And if you google it, you're gonna find more and more. 25
And every year obviously more and more of these platforms will pop up, as competition changes. As some 26
of them fall out of their top place, anotherone will replace them, or new ones come up. 27
First Upwork. 28
This is where I found my success. I found enough work on Upwork to be busy full time. Upwork is huge. 29
It's a public company, meaning it's trading on stock exchange. 30
I think it's the first freelancing platform to go public. 31
It was created out of the merger of Elance and oDesk. 32
Jobs are plentiful here, which means competition is rampant. 33
I have a dedicated video on Upwork and how to be successful on it. 34
So, we will cover it in detail there. I'll teach you some strategies on how to be successful and some common 35
mistakes to avoid. 36
Another big place for freelance jobs is freelancer.com. 37
I haven't worked on freelancer, but I have used it to hire freelancers. 38
I have a feeling that Upwork clients pay a bit more than freelancer clients and that might be because 39
of the way these two platforms target their clients. 40
As you can see on the home page they have these examples of mobile app design and website design and their 41
prices. 42
Those are very low prices, so it seems like they want to excite clients how cheap they can get something. 43
Which is bad news for freelancers. 44
But don't worry about this. 45
As the saying goes, if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. 46
Soon enough clients will learn this and they will intentionally choose higher prices. Because low price 47
will get them low quality result. 48
This list gets updated constantly. 49
It shows open jobs. 50
These are jobs that you can still bid on. 51
This is already pretty good, but you'll see that it's lower number than Upwork. 52
Which at this moment has more than 70 000 open jobs. To search for web design jobs, you can search with 53
keywords, which I think searches through the title and the description of the job. 54
But a better way to search is to select a skill from the filters. 55
That's much better. 56
Of course, not all of this is going to be a fit for you. 57
These keywords and skills are all selected by clients. What they consider website design is not 58
always going to be correct. 59
So that's a short overview of freelancer. Then we have Fiverr, which is slightly different than the first 60
two. On Upwork and Freelancer clients post jobs and freelancers bid. But on Fiverr freelancers post services 61
and clients buy them directly. 62
For example, this freelancer here says he will design a responsive Webflow website for 200$. 63
And he offers 3 different packages: basic, standard and premium. 64
I quite like this service based approach and Fiverr. 65
I've actually done my first freelancing on Fiverr. 66
This was a while ago, I did resume designs for 5$. Back then on Fiverr, that's the price you could 67
only charge - five bucks. And offer some upgrades. But as a base price for every service that was listed 68
there, was five bucks. 69
Hence the name Fiverr. 70
They've changed their approach since then and now you can price your services whatever you want. 71
I've often hired freelancers on Fiverr to do a quick and small jobs of translation and video editing 72
and things like that. As a client, 73
it's great to just buy a service that is like a complete finished product. 74
No negotiations and all that buy, send details, 75
wait a couple of days for results and done. To be successful on Fiverr, 76
you have to make money on volume. 77
The whole thing is arranged for that. 78
There aren't much meetings with clients or negotiations. 79
You get the details. 80
Deliver a result. 81
Done. 82
Next job. 83
Even sets specific delivery dates, which you have to meet, 84
after you have all of the info and assets from the client. 85
So if I were to create a web design service here. 86
Here is probably what I would do 87
personally. I would say I'll build a website for a specific type of business. For example, a website for 88
freelancers, or a portfolio website or accountants etc. I'd create many such gigs. 89
That's what it's called here. 90
The gig. Then I'd create a couple of templates or just use templates from Webflow's marketplace. 91
There are a lot of beautiful templates sold on Webflow and there are even pretty great free templates. 92
I would count the template cost in the total price. 93
Maybe use free templates for basic pricing and then have payed templates under premium pricing. 94
And then, when people would buy my gig, I would have them choose which template they want. And offer 95
color, type or other customizations based on their brand. 96
This way, clients know upfront what they are getting. No discussion on designs. And I don't have to design 97
and build an entire website from scratch. 98
I'm grossly simplifying the process here, of course, I could make an entire course just on this. 99
Keep in mind, that you'd be creating a complete readymade service for your clients. 100
You'll need to put a lot of thought into it, to create a really nice package. And will take some trial 101
and error until you get it right. 102
As a matter of fact, this is exactly what I was doing with resume designs. 103
I was giving them about 5 resume templates to choose from, they would choose it, then I would fill in 104
their details and done. 105
No one ever had any complaint about the design. Because they knew what they were getting upfront. 106
Peopleperhour is sort of a mix between Fiverr and Upwork. 107
Clients can find freelancers directly by searching for specific skills, and then reviewing profiles of 108
freelancers, and getting in touch directly. 109
Also, they can post projects just like Upwork and Freelancer and get proposals from freelancers. And just 110
like Fiverr, you can post services here. 111
They call it offers, on Fiverr it's called a gig. 112
I have used Peopleperhour both as a freelancer and as a client. 113
I did some resume designs here, back in those days. And I've hired web designers and web developers several 114
times in here. 115
Toptal is a freelancing site that has quite a different approach than others. 116
This site is going to be a bit early for you in your career, but I'm still going to throw in here, so 117
you know what's out there. 118
Toptal has a very rigorous selection process for freelancers. 119
They do interviews, challenges, portfolio reviews, before they accept you on the platform. 120
They want a top talent in there. Hence the name Toptal. As they claim only 3% of applicants 121
are selected. 122
So consider Toptal, 123
once you have excelled in your skills. 124
This, of course, means that clients who look for freelancers on this site are looking for a premium service 125
and they are not afraid to pay accordingly. 126
So, as you can see, even on online platforms there are places to find high paid work. 127
If you want more sites, Forbes has listed 79 sites to get freelance jobs. 128
Go get your head spinning. Link in the resources. Overall, 129
possibilities are endless online, but competition is fierce as well. Because there are a lot of web designers 130
out there, it's the entire world competing for their services. But don't get discouraged. 131
In reality, most of the web designers and most of the talent that is applying for jobs and that are on 132
these platforms they are terrible. 133
They are not even mediocre. 134
They are below mediocre. Clients actually struggle finding good talent as well. 135
Often my clients, when they come to me and I'm busy and I'm no maybe fully booked and I don't have any 136
capacity to take new projects. 137
They ask me, "Okay, 138
then do you know anybody else that you could recommend, because you know we went on this site and we 139
couldn't find anybody". Because there is just so much competition and there is just so much kind of noise 140
going on out there, that finding the talent for them is a bit difficult. 141
And the thing with this platform is that, because anybody can join, and it's open to the world, and world 142
is frickin big. 143
You have so many people join in without even having any skill at all. Like people will claim that they 144
are web designers and they will do anything, even before they took a web design course. 145
Alright. If you can imagine, like any kid or anybody comes here and they think, you know, " Oh I'm gonna make 146
a lot of money online". And they started like, "Well I'll do web design, I just install a square space site 147
for somebody, or I just learn how to install a WordPress theme and now I'm a web designer or a web developer". 148
Right? 149
For someone like you, who has put so much work into it and let's be honest this course was quite huge. 150
So, if you put work and if you are working on it, if you are taking this seriously, then you will be unstoppable. 151
And if you provide good service, and you deliver good service, and with polish and process that you have 152
already set. Having a great website, showing portfolios and some other tips and tricks, that I'm gonna 153
teach you later on in this part of the course, you're gonna be miles ahead of the competition who are 154
just messing around there, not knowing what they are doing in reality. And they are just random people 155
around the world.