10 Ways you can diversify your income as a freelance web designer or developer

As a freelance web designer there are a number of different methods for creating income than just making websites. Some of those are more passive than others and there are quite a few that won’t generate income immediately but could easily lead to more business. Understanding these methods and their benefits for your business can help in slow periods of web design work or even completely change your business model depending on the profitability.
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Freelance Web Designer’s toolbox: Managing your business

There are a lot of tools out there for the freelancer that can help you to run your business more smoothly and excel at not only get the projects completed but also managing your projects. I have compiled a list of all of the tools I currently use to keep my freelance web design business running smoothly as well as a few alternatives that may better suit others.
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The art of great customer service as a freelance web designer

Giving good customer service as a freelance web designer is paramount to the lively hood involved with being your own business. Providing that invaluable level of intimacy with your clients is what distinguishes you from the larger ad agencies. The bigger some companies get the more attractive a freelance web designer can be. In order to be good at what you do, it takes more than great design or meticulous CSS abilities, or even explaining to the client why web standards are so important.

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Freelance web designer tools and productivity management

There are a lot of benefits to being a freelance web designer. The freedom to work your own hours (all of them) and the ability to choose what web projects you take on (how much you charge) and which you decline. However, with as much responsibility that a freelance web designer takes on there is a need for a lot of tools to manage it all. Being a freelance web designer is a lot of being an entire design firm, you have to take control of the sales, customer service, project management, design layout, web development and programming. There are a lot of these tasks that we can outsource but for the most part, a lot of our projects can consist of all of the above and so choosing the right tools for the job is a task that we don’t take lightly.

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Top 10 job boards for freelance web designers

There are a lot of job boards out there that can help freelance web designers find work, a lot of them aren’t very good and you can find some clients that expect to pay pennies for hours worth of potential work. The problem you will mostly find is that a lot of people that post jobs on job boards aren’t expecting to pay much. I have compiled a list of freelance job boards for web developers that will allow you, the freelance web designer, to find work that actually pays good enough to be worth your time. Contact me, however, if you are looking for a freelance web designer.

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CSS Image replacement technique

There are a lot of reasons that you would want to replace simple text with an image. One of the biggest reasons is the benefit of getting the text that is within the image for search engines. This method is used mostly for site headings. Say you were making a site about “Freelance Oklahoma Web Design” you would want to be sure to include that in your first H1 but you don’t want to use plain text to do it. So you would be creative and ensure that you are getting the same information that is within your fancy image into your heading tag. This way you can ensure that your site topic is best read by search engines without losing any of your design benefits of creating custom imagery for your design comp.

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Self-motivation and finding clients as a freelance designer

There are only a few types of people that can ultimately do freelance, and I don’t just mean freelance as the only source of income- even freelance as a part time source of income can be a difficult task for some people. The biggest problem is being self motivated and finding clients, these two are the life and soul of freelance though and they have to be done otherwise you aren’t going to make any money. Read more »

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About Dustin Brewer

Dustin Brewer

Dustin Brewer is a freelance web designer based out of Oklahoma City, OK passionate about web standards, and beautiful web design. Dustin Brewer has been in the web design industry for over 8 years through freelance and professional experience. If you are interested in hiring Dustin Brewer please visit the web design services page to find out more information. You can also checkout the web design portfolio.

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