There are so many different shades to choose from. Blue, Ocean Blue, Light Blue, Dark blue, it can take hours to decide. Heck, I’m a designer and even I get confused how blue is cerulean blue, turquoise blue or sapphire blue ?

Fortunately, over the years through experience and a few years in college, I’ve realized there are other ways to get the right color for your website or any design work. Colors that not only look great but something that your clients will love which suits the products and services they are trying to promote.

Common Sense

Usually, figuring out what color to use for a website is common sense. For instance, if I’m designing a website that is related to preschool kids education, then I would use lots of bright colors. If I were to design website for a vegetable store, then naturally I would use green.

Getting ideas from the client

Some clients will tell you right away what colors they want. Then its up to you get the right shade. So if they tell you they want lime green and violet, you better use those colors. You can give them a few combinations e.g. maybe a darker shade of green or a lighter shade of purple etc. It would also be helpful if the client tells me what colors they don’t want. For instance I had a client who told me she doesn’t want the design to be too pink. I also had a client who wanted her website to match her office. She hired an interior designer so she already had a color palette of mostly browns and beige. Plus I had to match the website with her blue and yellow logo. Fortunately, browns and beige actually looks quite good with blue and yellow. You’ll never know until you start designing in Photoshop and experimenting with the colors.

Getting ideas from the customer’s office interior and customer outfit

Some clients don’t know what colors they want and leave it to me to decide. That’s when I have to pay attention other things like, the color of their office furniture, in order to judge what kind of colors the client would like. I had a client who had a nice office in Kuala Lumpur. They had a nice reception area, with nice spotlights and a big vase of orchids against a beige backdrop. The cubicles and chairs was green. So I figured if they hired an interior designer to design the office I should use back the same colors because its sort of like the corporate color, even though there’s no green or beige on their name card. The logo was purple color. So, its just the right combination, green, beige and purple. Of course I also offered other color combinations like light blue but they ended up choosing the green and purple design.
Sometimes I also observe the colors of the clothes that my client wears when we meet up, especially if she has a nice outfit on. One of my clients wore something like a white top with pastel orange thingy in front and a light green skirt. She wanted to make a website for her wedding cake business. So, naturally I used a white background for the website with some very light pastel colors for the logo, masthead and navigation bar. So, as a freelance web designer, you have to pay attention to your surroundings when you meet up with a client so that you can get clues and ideas on what they like. In fact, that’s one of the advantage of working with a freelance web designer, no middle man or salesperson to get in the way. If the sales person is the one meeting up with the client, not the designer, then a lot of information may be lost along the way.

Getting color codes from other websites

Getting colors codes from other websites is another quick way to get a nice color combination for your site. Before starting on a project, I usually do some ‘research’ like browsing through other websites that have a similar business nature to the one I have to design. If I see something I like, then I’ll save the page or ‘print screen’ the page and save it in Photoshop as a jpeg. Then I use the ‘eye dropper’ tool to sample the color on the image. It’s a quick way to get the exact hexadecimal color code e.g. #EFEFEF. In Photoshop and Dreamweaver color palette (if you select only web colors), the lightest grey you can get is #CCCCCC. For years I thought that is the lightest grey that I can use and I must strictly follow the web colors. But actually you don’t have to follow the color palette in Dreamweaver or the ‘web only’ colors in Photoshop, you can insert your own color codes. So by observing and learning from other websites, it will expose you to new possibilities.

Another way to ‘copy’ colors from another site is to save the page. Usually when you save a web page using Internet Explorer it will save not only the html file but an image folder will also be generated. There will usually be a CSS file embedded in that folder so you can open up the file in Textpad to look at the code, and extract some color codes from there.

Sometimes it is necessary to follow the color combination from another website, for example, if the company has a parent company which already has a website and the client requests that they want to use back the same colors. Its just to make the website consistent with the corporate image.

Sampling color from a photograph

Another common method to get a color reference is from books and photographs. When I was studying at design school we used a lot of reference material to create our artwork. Students would get ideas from magazine ads, ideas from reference books at the library and concept art by other artists. For instance, in one class, we would be shown a photograph on a projector, usually it will be a sunset scene or something with a lot of ‘light and mood’. So we had to memorize the image and then the projector would be turned off and we had to spend the next few hours drawing and try to recreate the same mood and feel of the original image. I guess this exercise was to train us to know what colors to use for different situations. Anyway, my point is, if you have no way of meeting up the client and you are just communicating through email, you can always ask the client to send you some photos. You can also refer to photographs of nature e.g. orchids and colorful birds and insects to get inspiration for that perfect color combination.

Color is an important part of the visual arts. Even though the client doesn’t have a professional training in design, they are humans and have a natural appreciation for the color. People make choices about colors every day from what color clothes to wear to what color to paint their house, what color fonts to use in their email etc. Therefore its only natural that the client give as much attention when deciding what colors to use for their website and its up to you, as a designer to give them a suitable range of colors to choose from.

Well, that’s true. I do save on parking and petrol. I also save on traveling time. No need to get stuck in traffic jams or drive one hour to get to the office. Also as a result of not going out so often, I also save money by eating at home most of the time.

But every month I do have to take care of my cash flow and balance things out with my personal expenditure. Working at home also means I have more free time and will spend money on other activities like travelling, compared to last time when I was working full time, I didn’t have time to exercise or travel, so I managed to save a lot. So, actually working at home, if you don’t have the discipline, you will end up spending more money than when you are working full time.

Below is a summary on what I spend on to run my home-based freelance web design service:

• Time – Multimedia and web design work takes up a lot of time. No raw materials, no cost. Just takes time to do some research, come up with ideas, drafts and make changes, and coding and editing the content. Also, since it is a service and I have to deal with clients, there will also be some consultancy work involved, like meeting up with clients and replying emails and answering customer enquiries. Its part of the job. Not all potential customers that I talk to will give me business. Not all quotations that I spend time to draft out will become a sale. So time is money. Quite often, I waste time creating a quote or doing work that will get rejected and helping a client do something that I won’t get paid for e.g. technical support and troubleshooting. Therefore I consider my time to be part of the cost.
• Hardware – Currently using a Dell Desktop computer, which I have been using for about 4 years. Recently spent a few hundred to upgrade the RAM and add a new hard disk for more disk space. Other equipment include scanner, digital camera, printer and fax machine. Also had to buy CD’s and DVDs to backup files. In the future probably need to buy a new laptop.
• Software, Plugin, Fonts, Templates and Stock Photos – These days I have to purchase original software license from the internet. E.g. I had to spend a few hundred to buy the latest Corel VideoStudio video editing software. I also bought the a plugin to get the Flash ‘squares’ effects. Sometimes is better to invest in good software that can get the job done fast. Makes life easier. I also buy fonts and ecommerce template. Some fonts I just can’t find it in the Free Fonts websites, and having a ready made template makes things easier to get started. I also buy stock photos, especially if the client needs high resolution photos for printing. Most of the time I will charge the client for the stock photos.
• Internet, electricity and ‘rent’ – I’m working at home, and I do have to pay for the broadband internet connection, the electricity and contribute to the household expenses. Also I have to pay my mobile phone bill.
• Petrol, toll, parking and car maintenance – Sometimes I have to drive all the way to Shah Alam to visit a client. Also have to pay for parking and toll. The Phileo Damansara parking is RM3 per hour. At one time I had to meet up a client in Bangsar several times in a day. These days, I try to do all the interaction online and my clients come to visit me nearby my house so that its more convenient.
• Staff salary & freelancer fees – My biggest expense is paying my staff salary. Well, so far I only have one person working for me on a part time basis, and I pay her a fixed salary every month. Occasionally, I also hire other freelancers for cartoon illustration and programming. You gotta be careful who you hire. Sometimes the results they produce are not what my client wants, but I pay them anyway for the effort that they already put in. So that’s an expense.
• Web hosting and domain name registration – Need to pay the hosting for my website jamiesoon.com. Sometimes I also have to pay in advance the hosting fees on behalf of my clients. Later on I will get reimbursed.
• Stationery and marketing materials – In the beginning, had to print name cards. I also have to spend time to maintain my website. I consider it an asset. My website is an essential tool in my business and is crucial in marketing my services. It also helps me to get connected with my friends. The cost is more of spending time to update it and once in a while redesign the website.
• Advertising – So far I’ve only spent money to advertise in a printed home-business newsletter. I got some response and got a 2 clients from there. Otherwise I try to look for free ways to advertise my services, e.g. in free forums and free online classifieds. So I don’t spend much on advertising, currently its through word of mouth and recommendations as well providing services to my regular clients.
• Education and Research Materials – Last time I bought a few design reference books. Also have to spend time to research and keep up to date with the latest web tools. Sometimes spending time to guide my assistant. And don’t forget the thousands of dollars and years spent to obtain a Computer Science Degree and a Design Diploma.
• Entertaining clients – Occasionally, someone gives me a referral and I buy them lunch. E.g. my uncle recommended me to his friend to design his website, so took them out for a Japanese lunch when I got my paycheck. It was fun. Normally, my clients buy me drinks / food when I have to meet up with them at a restaurant or café.
• Other costs – Sometimes, I do websites for free or at low cost for friends and non profit organizations. All these discounts I give can be considered as a cost because it takes up my time. Other costs include bank transfer fees, paypal transfer fees, exchange rates e.g. when customers pay me from overseas. In addition, I have to consider customers who don’t pay up on time or decide not to pay up at all. That is also consider a loss and expense.

Therefore, you can see, not all my income is profit. There are quite a few expenses involved and I have to keep my expenses in check every month and this is only my business expenses. Although there are no ‘raw materials’ to create this product, it is considered a service, and will take up my time. Time is money. So that’s the cost of running my business.

Make sure people like working with you

If you are good, you can get the job done, and the client likes working with you, then most likely they will come back to you for more projects. Sometimes the first job they give you is a small job, but the next project might be more challenging, after they get to know you and they have confidence to give you a bigger task. They will even suggest to work with you on a long term basis, like be their personal assistant to handle all the graphics related stuff for the company.

Caring attitude

In my case, my clients like working with me because I am nice and will do small things for them with no extra cost. Also I take the initiative to recommend them things that they are not aware about, e.g. installing a spam plugin for the blog, or helping them set up their emails. Of course, they also like my designs. Its all about having a good attitude, not a ‘Tidak Apa’ or ‘I don’t care’ attitude.

Building relationships

You have to love what you do and you have to enjoy working with the client. Business is all about building relationships and your client is like a friend. Sometimes they even buy you lunch, give you free gifts and chat with you. Its like a hairdresser that chats with the customers, and that’s why the customer keeps coming back. In my case, my clients will usually ask me about where I’m travelling next or how was my trip etc. (You don’t have to talk to much, mostly just listen to them)

Of course you have to be selective and trust your instincts. When you first encounter the client you can judge whether you like the person and whether you want to work with them on a long term basis. That’s why being self employed is better than working for someone. If you don’t like your boss or don’t like the job that they give you, you still have to do the work. But as a freelancer, you can choose who you like to work with and what projects to accept (of course depends whether you have enough projects or not otherwise you should grab any opportunity).

Be Informal

So, be nice. Actually, just be yourself. No need to pretend to be some professional and be too formal. Its like TGF Friday restaurant waiters, they sit next to you to take your order, smile, recommend food etc. When you write emails, be more human, be informal with the language that you use, like you are talking with the client e.g. say Hi! Or just say a short ‘Thank you’. No need to write a long formal email.

Excellent Service

People come back because they like you and they like your service. Simple things like, answering emails promptly, and picking up the phone, even after office hours or during weekends. All these small things will make some customers so impressed. Also take the initiative to complete the project fast and give some design options for the customer to choose. Also be willing to make changes for them. Some of my clients are just so happy and thankful that they managed to find a designer like me. They give me good testimonials and work with me for years. Makes me wonder how bad are the other freelancers or web design companies?

There are thousands of freelancers and web design companies out there and one way to compete and stand out from them is to provide excellent service.

Get your client to be your business development executive

Here’s how to save money on advertising. Let your clients promote your work.

You don’t have to purposely ask your client to help you to promote your business. If you are good they will automatically recommend you to their friends or clients. In my case, one of my clients who is in the aquarium business recommended me to his supplier and his overseas partner. He is sort of like a Business Development Executive for the company, so he will be meeting a lot of people etc. So if anyone needs a website he will most likely recommend me. I just stay at home and let my clients do the networking.

So you just get a few of these types of clients who love talking and meeting people and you can some free promotion. No need to waste money hiring people.

Say Yes !

I just saw the Jim Carrey movie, ‘Yes Man’. It’s a good movie about having a more positive outlook and taking a chance. Saying yes will lead you to more great things! So, from the freelance business point of view, accepting a project will lead you to another project. For me, even though it’s a small or low budget project I might still accept the job if I think I will enjoy doing the work and if I think it will lead to more contacts in the future. E.g. One of the cake business recommend me to a woman who recommended me to do the Pinglian.com website. And the Pinglian.com website leads me to do The Art Commune website. From one client it can lead to more and more business.

On a more personal note, saying yes and going for the Pakistan trip 3 years ago was a good decision. I didn’t know anyone on the trip but from there I have made new friends and I have gone on even more and more trips with them. One thing leads to another ! Take the chance !

Brand yourself

Instead of having a corporate sounding name e.g. Freelance Website Solutions Sdn Bhd, promote yourself. I use my own name. It gives more confidence to people and slowly builds up your reputation. Its like all the fashion designers like Zang Toi and Versace using their own names on their labels and celebrities like Britney Spears and Donald Trump are marketing themselves as a brand. I think names are easier to remember and you can relate a personality to the name. For instance, I’m using my name Jamie Soon to promote myself, on my website, the domain name, the invoice … everywhere is Jamie Soon. Something that people remember and when people ask who designs your website, they will say Jamie Soon.

Trust

Be honest, be trustworthy. Don’t cheat your customers. They won’t like it if they have been cheated. Again, business is all about building relationships. So like in relationships, you have to honour your commitments. Give quality work, not just making the design look nice. The backend html coding make sure it is according to the latest web standards. Don’t want the customer to find out later that you did a lousy job or give substandard work. Strive to provide the best to your customers e.g. get a good hosting service for them.

Who are you working with

I got my assistant, Lai Meng, who as been working with me for years. Some of my clients like her a lot and say she is nice. So I think we make a great team. In a small business, you and your employees (or freelancers that you sub out the work) will be in contact with the client. So not only you have to be good, the client also has to feel comfortable with working with the other team members.

The hosting company also has to be good. Imagine if the client likes your work and you provide excellent service. But if their emails go down and website is slow, it will also affect you. Your reputation could also be destroyed because of other people’s mistakes because you should also take the responsibility. So choose carefully who you work with. E.g. for me I have been hosting with Hostpro2u for many years because Helen, one of the consultants that deals with me provides good service. I can feel that she cares and tries her best. And just recently I found a new web hosting company that also provides good service and a good price.

So in conclusion, the people around you has to be supportive and be in sync with your style of doing business. You can’t do everything on your own. Also if you have someone to back you up if you are not available, then your customers will be more confident about doing business with you on a long term basis. Not like someone who is there one day but next week goes out of business and decides to do something else.

Master the language

Being good in English helps. Or if you are good in other languages like Bahasa or Chinese you can cater to your target market. Most of my clients like to work with me because my English is good. Because you are dealing with information. The website or any brochures has text and provides information. I sometimes check for spelling and grammar mistakes for my clients or recommend some words to use for the headlines. And I can grab a paragraph from the company profile and insert the website title and description and keywords for the website. All these small things matter, because if there is a big spelling mistake and it will affect the company image. After all, you are the designer and you are dealing with the public image of the company, and if your English is good (or any other language that you are designing your website in) then you can provide an extra service to your customers, and its less burden for them, then you can do the checking, or come up with some good titles e.g. for the banner or advertisement.

What else can you do for the client ?

Think beyond what is required. Think about your clients needs in the future. What other services can you provide. After I complete a website, my clients will ask what else can I do for them, brochure design, banner designs, leaflets and more recently, video editing! The more useful you are, the more people will want to continue using your service. After all, its easier to deal with just one person, who already has all the materials and knows the corporate style. So, learn a new skill and provide other services to your clients besides web design. Propose more services to sell to your clients.

Conclusion

To get repeat business and more customers, you gotta provide excellent service, small things like answering your phone and replying emails quickly, can make a big difference in how the client decides whether to come back to you for more projects or not. Other factors include, making sure the client enjoys working with you by being yourself and not too formal, be nice, be honest, and brand yourself in a way that clients will remember. Let your customers help you to promote your work. Give the client the confidence and the joy of continuing to do business with you.

1. Create a sitemap

You might want to start of by creating a sitemap. Using a pen and paper, list down the pages that you need e.g. home, resume, portfolio, contact. The portfolio section can have different categories e.g. pencil sketch, web design, graphic design, illustration, or animation. If you don’t have a lot of work to put up, then a single page for portfolio should be good enough. Otherwise you can separate the categories into different pages, just in case you want to add in more artwork in the future, then things would look more organized.

2. Prepare the content : Building up your portfolio

Next, prepare your artwork, photos and text. Scan your work. Take photos. Compile your best work in digital format. Then you have to resize it and optimize it in Photoshop. You can ‘save for web’ so that the file size is not too big. Usually I will resize my artwork to about 500px width and height and save it as jpeg. You can also do small touch ups like improve the brightness and contrast, crop and if you are paranoid, you can add in ‘Copyright 2008 Your Name’, so that nobody can steal your work.

Put up not only your college work and final projects, but other stuff like your personal projects, rough drafts, unfinished work e.g. if you have done any sketches during your free time for fun. Just finish it up and do some touch ups. You can also put up freelance work. At least it will make your website look more interesting, like there are lots of things to see.

You might also want the user to click a small thumbnail image before viewing the larger image of your work, so you have to prepare the small thumbnails e.g. it could be 100px width and height.

Next you can write a short welcome message for the homepage and prepare your Resume / CV. The resume doesn’t have to be too detailed. One A4 size page should be enough. Its not necessary to put your complete home address on the web for security reasons. If a potential client or employer wants more information they can always call or email you. Make sure you add in your contact number and email address. You could also prepare a pdf version of your resume for people to download and print.

3.  Design

After that you can start designing your website in Photoshop. Actually before you start you can decide whether you want to create your website using a blog or you want to design your website from scratch. If you are using a blog (e.g. from wordpress.com) then you only need to select an existing blog template and design the blog image header. The advantage of using a blog is that its free and you can set it up almost immediately whereas designing the whole website yourself will take a longer time.

Let’s just assume you are going to design the website yourself, since your lecturer will most likely want you to apply what you have learnt in your web design class.
Usually, how I start is go to Photoshop and create a canvas with 770px or 880px width (just to make sure it fits nicely in the browser).

3 things you can keep in mind when designing your website :

a) Keep it simple – You wouldn’t want to have a headache later when you transfer your design to html. Over designing your website template might also take attention away from the important stuff, your portfolio. Since most of your content will be images of your work, the content itself would be part of the design. Keeping the design simple also makes it easier to make changes in the future, for instance, if you want to add an extra button or page. Make room for expansion.

b) Usability – Make the navigation bar look clickable. Make the links look like links. Make fonts large enough to read. Be consistent. Don’t sacrifice usability for the sake of making your website look ‘nice’. For instance, you may think that blue underlined links look ugly, but its the standard you see when you use the Yahoo and Google search engines and even Facebook. The user should know immediately where to click to go to a certain page. You could still do a creative looking main navigation bar with icons etc but have an additional normal text navigation bar at the bottom just in case. Give options to the user. One way to make sure your website is user friendly is to ask your friend to test it out and observe her when she views your website for the first time. Also, you have to make sure your website works in different browsers e.g. Internet Explorer and Firefox.

c) Personality – Well, since its your personal website, and you are trying to market yourself, you should design your website so that it shows of your personality or preferred design style. Every artist has their own style. For instance, in American Idol, some singers you can tell straight away that they are country singers, some are rockers and some are good at singing slow romantic songs. Then Randy would say, “I know exactly the kind of album you should make and this style suits you …etc”. So, you as a designer should know what kind of design style you are good at e.g. for my style can be cute very pink girly style or clean and simple corporate look. So I try to reflect that in my personal website. Create something that you can be excited and passionate about. The actual design and look of your portfolio is one of the most important examples of your work. You could also create a logo or branding for yourself.

4. HTML and CSS template

So after you’ve designed your website in Photoshop, try to convert it into a html template. You can use Dreamweaver or Textpad if you are good at coding. I won’t cover in detail because you probably already learnt this in your web design course. Basically, the process involves alternating between Photoshop and Dreamweaver (or textpad) e.g. slicing the images in Photoshop or sampling the colour using eye dropper tool and entering the colour code in Dreamweaver.

When you are done with the template you can add in the content for all the pages, including your artwork and resume. So that’s it. By planning your website and preparing your content, you’ve already done 50% of the work. For me, the difficult part is designing and creating the HTML and CSS template. Once you’ve done that everything will be smooth and you just need to add in your content. Don’t forget to make your website user friendly and show of your personality and design style.

Additional touch-ups and frills to add to your site include adding a page counter, favicon and adding meta tag keywords and description. If you are just planning to show the website to your lecturer to be graded, you can just burn it to a CD.

1. Provide your website requirements

At the initial stage when requesting a quote from the designer, it would be helpful if the client knows the number pages required for the project and the type of design that they require. They should also show the designer some sample designs that they like so that the designer knows their expectation. For instance, the client may require a very polished and impressive looking website, like an advertising agency standard. Or the client may want something really creative and colourful.

At this point the web designer can also meet up with the client, and the client can tell their story or their vision for the company business, target market, purpose for creating the website and any other expectations they have for their business / website. This will give the web designer more details about the business, thus will design the website to cater to that purpose.

2. Provide content for your website

Writeups for your website can be prepared in MS word and you can put all your photos or scanned articles in a CD for the designer. You can also pass your logo and other existing marketing materials you have to the designer e.g. if you already have some old advertisements, banners or brochures and you want to use back the design you can pass it to the designer. You can also specify the details you want to put in the online forms e.g. if you want an online order form or reservation form. If you need web hosting you can also decide on a domain name for your website.

It would be great if the client has decided on what pages they need in the site. If you have many pages in your website, you might want to spend some time finalizing the content in house with your managers etc before you hand the content to the designer. As an outside contractor I would not be able to prepare and write the content for you because only you are familiar with your own company and can decide what content to put in. It would be like your corporate profile and normally you can just recycle the information from your corporate profile. If you have any organization chart or any other charts and graphics to put in you can also pass it to the designer.

3. Provide feedback

Usually, communication will be through email so please check your email regularly. Give feedback on designs sent by the designer and make decisions on what designs to use. After website is almost completed, it would be great if the client checks the content for any mistakes or ask their friends / team to provide feedback and ideas on how to improve the site. The client can also continue to give the designer additional info they want to put in the website or any corrections to the website content.

4. Lastly, pay the contractor.

We would appreciate if the client can pay us on time. It would be even better if the client can bank in the money for me.

In conclusion, clients have to play their part in the web design process. This includes providing information for the designer to get the job done and providing timely feedback to that things can keep moving along and the project can be completed on time.

Don’t forget your overheads

You can’t just charge the customer based on what you will normally earn when you are working full time for other people. That’s because if you are working for a company, they will provide you with everything you need to do the job. On top of that, the company will provide you with EPF, insurance and other perks. There are also other support staff available like the salesman and accounts clerk, so you only need to concentrate on your design work. So the monthly salary that they pay you is only for the work that you are doing.

On the other hand, as a person running your own business, you have to charge more. Firstly, it’s to cover your overheads like your computer equipment, scanner, printer, internet bill, electricity bill, rental etc. Then you also need to pay for your own web hosting service especially since having my own website is crucial in my line of work. Next you also have to consider your car and petrol, because now you will be your own salesperson and you will have to drive out to meet clients. As a designer you will also need to purchase software licenses, fonts and stock photos.

Earn back the money spent on education
Don’t forget the tens of thousands of dollars spent on your education, and all those years spent at design school or computer graphics courses. You have to earn back the money. For me, I must have spent at least Rm50,000 for my design and animation diploma and thousands more to obtain a Computer Science degree. Imagine how many websites I need to design to earn back the money if I’m only charging RM2000 per website. It’s not enough but some clients still say it’s too expensive and they can’t afford it. Anyway, just make sure you take this into consideration when pricing your services. Don’t charge your clients too cheap.

Risk Management : backup and retirement
Another cost of doing business is investing in extra equipment for backup purposes. For example I have an extra modem and extra internet connection line just in case one line gets cut off. You could also have more than one computer at home, just in case your computer breaks down. I also buy DVDs to backup files. So, all this requires money.

You also need to save up for retirement and for any down time. You can’t expect to keep working forever, non stop. Sometimes you need a break, to go on a vacation or to learn a new skill. Or there might be a recession coming up so you have to make sure you have enough savings to protect yourself.

Staff salaries and Research & Development
You also have to invest some time for research and development, to learn new software and programming languages so that you can be more productive and offer more services to your clients. Most of all, if you are running your own business, you also have to take care of your staff. You have to pay them their monthly salaries and occasionally reward them with a bonus. Actually the largest expenditure is staff salary.

Profit
Finally, what’s the point of doing the work if you are not earning a decent profit. The reward has to be worthwhile, unless of course you have other reasons for taking up the job.

In conclusion, make sure you take all these factors into account when you quote your client. That’s why it always seems like freelancers earn more than people who are working full time. The cost has to include your overheads, education, research and development, staff salary and savings for retirement.

That’s just the overheads, what about the cost of doing the work?

Creating a website involves a lot of things. It’s not like designing a leaflet. Designing a leaflet is just one page and at most you only need to design it and send it to the printer that’s it. On the other hand, web design requires some technical skills and planning.

Besides designing, web designers have to code the website in HTML, CSS and add in functionality like navigation bar and feedback forms. After the website template is done, there might be some data entry work. We could also add in other stuff like counter, content management system, flash and other frills. So, you really have to charge more if you are giving all these value added services.

Another consideration is to anticipate what the client wants. You have to quote them in advance, the services that they would most likely request for, but initially they don’t know they might need it. A good example is charging for maintenance / future updates. If you don’t include maintenance in your original quote, the client might feel offended or surprised when they want to add a small thing to the website and you want to charge them for it. For me, I help them make the small changes for free, because it has already been included in the package. So, the client will be happy. Thus, that’s another reason why you have to charge your clients more, so you can offer them better service.

So, how much to price your services?

• Do your research – Go to other websites offering similar services and find out how much they are charging. They might have standard packages or a page for pricing.
• Learn more about the company background – Is it a famous company or popular brand? Is it a big company or just a small home based business. Can they afford it? I charge more for corporate websites. You can charge based on how much value the website gives to the company rather than how much it costs to design it. If the company is running a million dollar business, then the company website is important for the company image, therefore its worth more to the company. On the other hand, the value of a website for a home business selling cakes is less. So make sure you charge based on how much value the website gives to the company.
• Find out the clients requirement and expectations – Will the client be happy with any design you come up with or does he or she require more control of the outcome? Have they finalized everything or would there be more changes later on? How often do you have to meet up with the client face to face ? Do they require scanning services or a content management system. How long will they take to pay you ? Are they nice people or are they difficult to work with ? By communicating with the client, you will be able to find out how much work is required, thus charge the client accordingly.
• Come up with your own packages – this serves as a pricing guide. For instance you could have a budget package for less than 10 pages, and a corporate package for more than 20 pages. So anything that comes in between you can roughly adjust the price.
• Everything times two – I use to do some work for an online flower delivery company. They have an online store. The way they determine the price is to charge everything double the cost. E.g. if the cost of the product is RM40 then they will sell it at RM80. So, it’s a guaranteed profit. No need to take all the trouble to calculate all the overheads one by one. For example, lets say the effort that you put in to design your website costs you RM1000. So RM1000 x 2 = RM2000. So that should be enough for your profit and to cover your overheads etc.

Discounts or no discount

Everybody wants a discount, whether they are driving a Mercedes or live in a big house, they will still ask for a discount. Its something automatic that people say in response to your quotation and most of the time people are just joking or trying their luck. Actually if they don’t ask for a discount and quickly agree to the price, you are probably charging too low.

I have made the mistake of giving discounts too many times. One mistake was giving a RM500 discount. Well, I was young and naïve then so I just said ok to everything. But later I was thinking it was really dumb and the boss was just trying to take advantage of my stupidity.

The second big mistake was to give discounts to a big company. This company was a well known engineering company and was part of a large corporation. So when the client asked me to give a reasonable price and give a discount, I quoted them a normal small business website price – RM2500. So, in the end I undercharged them when I should have asked for more. The client said my price was very very reasonable and the boss who recommended me the job asked me why I charged so little. Well, it’s a big mistake, but I’ve learn my lesson. When large corporations ask for a discount it means you can still charge them a lot. Because usually advertising agencies will charge them tens of thousands of dollars for a website, so charging them around RM5000 is still peanuts.

I still give small discounts to clients, especially to my regular clients. Its to keep them happy, and they are also polite, buy me dinner and give me more work. At this point in my career I’ve learnt to trust my instincts, whether the client really genuine or not.

More reasons to charge more:

People who are willing to pay more are nicer to work with
From my experience I find that people who are willing to pay more make better clients. Yes, logically, if they pay me more I will be happier, but its not all about the money. Clients who are willing to pay are more generous at heart and they appreciate your work. It also means they also care about your needs and treat you as a friend. It also means that their business is doing well and they have the funds, so you don’t have to worry that they run away and not pay you. They also tend to pay on time, and refer you more work. Clients that are willing to pay more are also more professional and make sure you have all the information you need to start the project. They make very good long term clients.
It’s a fact that 20% of my clients contribute 80% of my income.
Take up interesting non-profit projects
If you can charge your clients more and become financially stable then you will have the flexibility to take up more interesting work. Then your choice of clients won’t be purely based on profits. You can do some charity work or work for clients that have a low budget, but who provide interesting projects that allow more creative freedom. It’s something like Robin Hood, take from the rich and give to the poor. So, that’s why its good to charge your clients more.

In conclusion, don’t be afraid of asking for the price that you want. Asking for more money is not a bad thing. After all, you need to cover your overheads, make a profit, and you need to know the value of your own work. Generous clients are also nicer to work with. So I wish you good luck and hope you will learn from your own experiences.

1. Select a good website title

Selecting the words to use in your website title is important to make sure that users will be able to find your site. The page title will show up whenever your website is listed in a search engine (e.g. Google or Yahoo). The title should immediately tell users what your website is about. For instance, my website title is ‘Jamie Soon – Freelance Web Design Services, Malaysia’. So anyone searching in Google using the keywords ‘Jamie Soon’ or ‘Freelance Web Design’ and ‘Malaysia’ would most likely see my website listed at the top of the list. Similarly, if your target audience is people who are looking for homemade cakes or wedding cakes, then it would be best to have ‘homemade wedding cakes’ in your title. And if your target audience is in Malaysia, might as well narrow it down some more and add the word Malaysia in your title. Of course, you could have different titles for different pages in your website. Think of it as a title for a classified advertisement. Something short and sweet that will immediately tell users what your website is about. What you can do is use your company name, accompanied by a short phrase or tagline and also add in your location/country (unless you have a worldwide target market).

It also helps to have a somewhat unique phrase or keyword combination for your website title. There are millions of websites on the internet and if you are just using a common title e.g. ‘Web Design’ then there may be hundreds of thousands of other sites using the same name. But if you add another keyword in your title e.g. ‘Damansara Web Designer’ then it won’t be so common and your website might be listed somewhere at the top of the search engine listing. You can also use unique words with unusual spellings e.g. aquact, dreamz, cellsafe … or you can use other languages like malay words e.g. mutiara, yasmeen, azdaman. The unique keyword is usually your company name.

Therefore, using a good web page title will help users find your website on the search engine.

2. Add description and keywords into your website (meta tags)

Inserting ‘meta tags’ into your html code is also important. If you don’t have meta tags in your website, chances are, your website might not even appear in the search engines. Someone emailed me about this and they wondered why their website has not been listed. So I checked the html code and it turns out one of the reasons was the website didn’t have any meta tags. What are meta tags ? You can go to Google and search for tutorials and examples. Its something like this <META>

The description would be a short description of your website, usually less than 30 words. This will be the short paragraph that appears under the website title in a search engine listing. Usually, what I do is copy the first few lines from the clients corporate profile or about us section to put it as a description.
The keywords are a list of keywords related to your website. The more keywords, the better. I usually put about 10-20 keywords for my clients. If you are a freelance web designer you could ask your client to provide some ideas for the keywords.

3. Use <H1> and <H2> tags for your page titles and subtitles.

Nowadays, I prefer to use plain text for page titles and subtitles because it’s better for search engines. Once in a while, the search engine crawlers will search for websites and store it in the search engine database. Using header tags for your content titles and subtitles will help the search engine scan your page and determine whether your website content is relevant to the topic that people are searching for. For example, with the <H1> tag wrapped around the title, search engines will know, this is the title and this page is all about wedding cakes.

<H1> Wedding Cakes </H1>

For pages where you don’t have a title, for instance, a homepage or splash page with just an image with no text, you could still insert the H1 tag and make it hidden by using CSS.
<H1 style=”display:none;”>Wedding Cakes </H1>
In conclusion, start using just plain text as a page title instead of using images. Its easier to utilize the Header tags thus making your website more search engine friendly.

4. Use more text and fewer graphics.

As I mentioned earlier, having more text in your website will help to improve search engine listings. Text content makes it easier for a search engine to pick out keywords from your content and perhaps make it part of a search result if the topic is relevant to what a user is searching for. If your website consists of product photos with not much text involved, you could just add a short paragraph as an introduction to the page. You could also label all your product photos e.g. add a short description under each product. Other ways you could add more text to your website is create a page for your ‘Company profile’ or ‘About Us’ section.

Writing useful articles is also a great way to attract more users to your website. If it is a unique article that people enjoy reading and if you are sharing ideas that people can learn from, your article might become popular as more people are referred to your website, thus generating more traffic. Then these people who just happened to read your articles might explore other pages in your website. You might consider writing on topics of your expertise, e.g. if you are good at baking cakes you can write articles on various types of cakes. This is sort of like a way to add more value to your website. The more value your website offers, the more visitors will be attracted to your website. In conclusion, adding more text content will make your website more search engine friendly and attract more traffic.

5. Put a copyright info at the bottom of the page, with your company name.

For example you could put Copyright 2008 Jamie Soon Designs. It’s a great way to have your company name on every page. Since usually when people look for a particular website, they will key in the company name. Most of the time, you usually have your company logo on every page, but only mention the name of your company in the Homepage and Corporate Profile page. Your company name is a unique keyword. Therefore, having your company name on every page is sort of like an extra precaution to make sure users get to your website if they are searching for your company.

6. Add a counter (sitemeter or statcounter)

Adding a counter like Statcounter will help you find out your website statistics. Features include finding out common keywords that people use to get to your website. So based on this information you can add in more keywords and tweak your website further for search engine optimization.

Of course there are more things you can do like getting more people to link to your website or hire a professional to do your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). One of my clients hired someone in the US to do SEO for her website and now her website is number one on the search engine listing. Apparently, they do much more than adding keywords and other stuff that I’ve listed here.

In conclusion, these are a few basic things that I do to make a website more search engine friendly. You have to select a good website title, use meta tags to embed keywords and a short website description, use html header tags for your page titles, use more text instead of graphics and add a counter to your page. By doing this, hopefully you will be able to attract more traffic to your website.

In fact, websites allows more flexibility in making amendments compared with other media. There are no advertisements deadlines to meet, an unlike brochures, that can’t be changed once it has been printed, you can easily make changes to the website content e.g. changing phone numbers or company profile, even after launching the website.

Warming up the Brain

Usually the end result of what you see in a website is the result of many drafts and changes. First, you have to warm up. In the creative line, you warm up your brain to get your creative juices flowing. Even before writing this article, I had to jot down my points on paper first. So warming up is sort of a universal thing that you can apply not only in web design but in other things you do.

How I work is, first I will just come up with any design in Photoshop. Usually the first few designs sucks, especially if I’m not in the mood to design. The purpose is to warm up the brain, to start brainstorming for ideas and to get the momentum going. This goes on for a few hours until I suddenly come up with something that looks nice. The design can be further developed by combining all the nice elements from all the design samples into a new design. Sometimes I start designing one day, then come back a few days later. It helps me see things from a different perspective. Otherwise if I am designing in front of the computer for many hours, I can’t judge whether the design looks good or bad. So its like, after a few days, you open up the file and view it, then say to yourself, “What the heck was I thinking ? This design is awful, it would look better if ….”. Therefore, you can see what can be improved and make further changes to the design.

Most of the time, you can just send the first few drafts you come up with to the client, even though you may think its not that perfect yet. At least the client can give some feedback and ideas on the type of design they had in mind. Then you can make more changes. These changes would only make the site look better. Giving drafts to the client is more productive than completing one perfect design only to be rejected by the client. At least you can find what they want early on. After a few years, the designer will be more experienced in judging what clients like and therefore changes will be minimal.

Clients freak out after looking at first draft

When the client makes a lot of complaints after viewing your design, then you know its just not what they are looking for. It’s as simple as that. Nobody can read minds. After all, designers need feedback. Changes are to be expected.

As a client, just tell the designer that “you were expecting something else” or “the design needs more work” and give some examples and ideas. The client acts like a Creative Director or Art Director for the freelance web designer,  directing the designer what kind of look  they want to achieve. The client knows best about their own company, marketing strategy and the kind of corporate image they want to project.

Please don’t freak out and make a big deal out of it like giving a long lecture or sarcastic remarks. Its as if it’s the end of the world. I really hate it when the client does that (it must be my designer ego getting hurt). Unless you are paying me big bucks then I won’t mind and you can say whatever you like. Clients who say “Even I can design something like that…” really get on my nerves. Well not now, a few years ago maybe. Now I’m more ‘matured’ I understand what the client is going through.

Then there was another client, I submitted the first web design draft to him. The first draft looked very plain with a simple blue masthead. So at night around 9pm, he called me up to lecture me, “This is not what I want ! .. etc etc” I was really upset after that. Finally he gave me a sample site that he liked so I designed the site based on the sample that he gave me. He was very happy with the design and said he received compliments. So, moral of the story is, one of the easiest way to communicate what you want to the designer is to show them a sample design that you like, and that this is exactly what you want. No need to give long lecture.

Therefore, most of the time, the first draft is not the final draft. So please don’t freak out if its not what you expected.

Exceptions to this rule would be clients who will accept anything that the designer comes up with, like a reiki master or meditation guru type of client who believes in energy fields, karma etc and believes that whatever that comes to him is what he’s suppose to receive. I had a client like that, so I was rather surprised that he liked the first draft and didn’t require anymore changes. Well, its good because I got paid immediately. Makes me a bit guilty though, like a nagging thought that I should have designed a better one for him. But if he likes it the way it is then so be it.

Attention to details

Don’t be shy to ask for changes. Just write it out in the email or give me a call. No change is too small. Its all about attention to details. Its very normal in this line of work. Of course I do get frustrated a little when clients request a lot of changes but that’s part of the job.

I used to think it was absurd to request for changes many times until I worked in an animation studio. We were working on a TV series called Higglytown Heroes, a children’s cartoon series for Playhouse Disney Channel. Being sort of a Disney production, the Overseas Supervisor and Animation Director had to be very picky to maintain the quality of work. So, there I was, starting my first job as a 3d character animator, and I had to quickly learn up the controls in the software, filenames and the animation process. My first scene, was just a few seconds, and I had to make changes more than 30 times. That’s right. More that 30 changes, for a scene that is shorter than 10 seconds. Submit for approval, then animation gets sent back for retakes. Took me over a month to make the scene good enough. I was starting to get worried. Then the Studio Manager called me in and asked if everything was ok and suggested that they transferred me to another department! I got really upset after that and said no I would like to stay on the Animation Team.

Well, that got me really motivated to work harder and catch up. Eventually the scene was approved. The next episode was better. I got most of the easy scenes and since I was starting to get the hang of it, things were getting better. I already had an idea of what they wanted. I was very happy when the Animation Director said I improved a lot.

Anyway, back to the topic of paying attention to details. Working at the animation studio made me notice a lot of things on how they work with the client. The client was in US and they would request for changes in the animation. Line by line of comments for each scene. We get comments like, objects in the background not overlapping properly, or using the wrong mouth shapes, or … oh I can’t think of anything else. Well, its a lot. That shows how much detail goes into an animated TV series Imagine animating for a PIXAR movie, the level of detail and quality control must be even more thorough. But they are not picky for no reason. They have a good reason to be picky. If it is a mistake that people will notice when they watch the animation, then corrections definitely have to be made.

So yeah, that job stint, got me conditioned to be patient and keep cool when handling customer comments and changes. So, go ahead, whatever you want to change just let me know.

Perfection: Time and Budget factor

Of course, being a perfectionist is counter productive. We are not aiming to make the website perfect. Even in the animation studio, we had time constraints, so the Overseas supervisor would say, this animation is not quite right yet, but just make it good enough to show the client, and then we would enhance it later when the client requests for retakes. For websites, I’ll just hand in whatever I can come up that is decent enough during that period of time.

Maintaining a long term relationship with the Client

When you help your customer maintain and update their website, it is an opportunity to forge a long term working relationship with the customer. You can keep in touch and may still be working for them after a few years! In fact, I have a few clients whom I have known for at least 3 years and I’m still updating their website for them and doing some graphic design work that crops up from time to time. Of course you have to be selective of who you work with. Usually if the client is nice to work with and I enjoy doing design work for them then I will keep the client. Likewise, if you are a client, you can decide whether to continue to work with the designer on a long term basis.

Its good to grow with the company, even though I am a freelancer and not really employed on a full time basis. There would be new projects coming in and more work, so its like getting a regular income. Its also good for the client because they don’t have to waste time finding another designer every time there’s a new project. After all, the designer would have all the files, company logo, photos and other materials required, from the previous project. Also, the designer would know the client’s preferences.

Conclusion

Therefore, making changes is a good thing. It’s a way to ‘warm up the brain’ and generate more creative ideas. Each new design would be better than the first few designs. It is also a process of communicating your needs to the designer, and a form of quality control. Finally, maintaining a website for a company is a good opportunity to work with a client on a long term basis and grow with the company.

I’m talking about online services like www.flickr.com, www.blogger.com, www.wordpress.com and www.youtube.com. There may be other new sites that offer similar services but I’ll just list these few for now.

Creating a product catalog

You can post up your product photos on Flickr.com and it would be like an online catalog. Instead of uploading pictures of yourself and your pets and your vacation photos, you can put up photos of your products. For instance, you could take photos of your handicraft work with a digital camera and then put it up on the website together with a product name and product description. Then you can email your friends and potential customers the link to that page so that they can see what products you have to offer and if they are interested they will order from you.

This is good especially for people who are just starting a new business. Perhaps you are thinking of baking cookies or selling handicraft work as a part time business to supplement your income while still holding on to that full time job. Maybe you are a housewife starting a home business or a high school student or a retired uncle thinking of ways of getting side income by selling stuff.

Cost is always a concern when you are just starting a new business, especially if you are not sure if this business is going to make money. So the best option would be to create something like a temporary or draft website that you can set up very quickly by yourself for free. That way you don’t have to decide on a business name or think of a domain name. Also, you can just take down the website whenever you want without worrying about wasting hundreds of dollars spent just to set up a website.

I find that people who are willing to pay me to design a website for them are those who are already somewhat established in the business. I have designed three websites for women who make cakes for a living. They bake and decorate cakes for children’s birthdays and other celebrations. These ladies are so creative they can make cakes with Barbie dolls and popular cartoon characters. When they approached me to help them set up a website, I found that they have already been doing this cake decorating business for quite some time and they had many photos of the cakes that they have done to put up on the website. One of them had more than a hundred photos that she wanted me to scan from her photo album. Another client had already set up a basic webpage to put up her photos using a free web hosting service and wanted me to set up a proper website for her. So, since they already had a lot of materials and content, its easy to set up a website with at least ten pages with lots of photos to look at.

Take a look at this link : http://www.flickr.com/photos/specialcakes

I actually got the idea that Flickr.com can be used as a catalog from one of my clients Tracey from SpecialCakes.net. After designing specialcakes.net website for her, I helped her to update her website every month, to put up new cake photos. After a few months, I couldn’t continue updating her site so she decided to put up her cake photos in Flickr.com. She had a link in her website pointing to her Flickr.com website. By the looks of it, she’s doing very well because now she has over 300 cake photos. Its working well for her because she has more control of her site and she’s saving a lot because if I were to update the website for her I would have to charge her to upload all those photos into her website. So, be creative and resourceful like Tracey. In fact, I already recommended this idea to another cake client, Chloe. She has started her own Flickr.com account and has several photos uploaded.

You too can start uploading your photos and make your Flickr.com account into an online catalog. Its free. I’m not trying to promote Flickr.com. Just giving you some ideas on how to save money. You may be wondering why am I telling you all this, then no one would hire me to design a website. It actually makes my work easier if you already have a website because, I can see the scope of work when you show me the stuff that you already have, and I can cut and paste information from that website instead of starting from scratch, so, saves me a lot of effort and it will usually cost less to redesign a website, rather than starting from nothing.

Blogging

For those who are not selling a product and do not intend to put up a lot of photos, you can set up a free blog at Blogger or WordPress. Just cut and paste all your text e.g. your company profile in one blog post, your list of services in one post, your past projects and track record in another post, and most importantly, your contact info and email address. There are many blog templates to choose from so you can select a design that suits your corporate image. You can even get stock photos at a low price from istockphoto.com or any stock photo websites.

You could even combine all these elements together to get a somewhat complete website. For instance, set up your catalog at flickr.com and then put a link in your blog. Then visitors who want to view your catalog or photo gallery can click on that link. Its all about being creative and resourceful. With a little effort, creativity and basic internet skills, you can set up a website by yourself, for free or at a very low cost. This site would be just good enough to showcase your products and services to friends and family members who may be your first few customers. It may be just a temporary site and you can always hire a professional web designer to design a real website for you once your business starts making money.

But how do you get clients when you are just starting out ? Below I’ve compiled a few tips based on my experience:

Start now

Wherever you are in life now, whether you are still studying in school, college or working full time, try to find a way to apply your skills. If you love doing graphic design and designing posters, you could volunteer to design posters and flyers for a school event or any social events organized at your office or a party. You might be doing the work for free but at least everyone will know that you designed that poster and if you are good they might give you more work in the future. Doing free work will also give you a chance to practice, not only your skills but by getting more experience in dealing with people. For example, you would have to talk to the organizer of the event or party to gather more information so that you can do your work. This is basically the kind of interaction you would expect when you are dealing with a customer. So that person you are dealing with would be sort of like your client. Back in school, I was quite active in extra co-curricular activities. I was also a librarian at high school and was part of the library committee in charge of decorating the library. Of course back then, I didn’t use computers. I had to buy color paper and draw with oil pastels and markers. I also used some poster color to create patterns and had to cut out flowers to decorate the notice board. At one time I was so engrossed with the work that I remember my friend, who was the head of the library committee, laughed and told me it was good enough and go home. So, in conclusion, start now, start with the people around you, they will be your first clients. Tell your friends, family members and co-workers about the work that you are doing and they might have some work for you. When more work comes in, then you might consider charging for your services.

Get a website

Your website will be your most important tool to promote your business. Its very low cost, especially if you are using a free hosting service and designing it yourself, and it’s a very convenient way to show your work to potential clients. In your website you should display your portfolio or pictures of your work, and provide your contact information (especially your phone number). It doesn’t need to be a fancy or complete website. Just make it simple and have it up as quickly as possible. My first website was just one page and I used a free web hosting service, Geocities. In fact you could go on yahoo and search for ‘free web hosting’. I listed out my past work that I did for my previous company like banners and flash animation. I also included a short description of the artwork. After posting my work on the website, I just included the website link on my resume when I apply for any jobs. Sometimes, it’s a good idea to copy the website onto a CD for the interviewer. This is helpful especially if they don’t have an internet connection or they might want to keep the CD as a reference. In conclusion, get a website, fast. It doesn’t have to be fancy or well designed. The important thing is to get your portfolio and contact details up on the internet so that everyone can look at it. You can always upgrade your website later.

Get a job

Getting a full time job in the area of your expertise is a great way to build up your skills and get to know people who might refer some work to you in the future . It also exposes you to a corporate environment and you get the chance to meet people and make new friends, and learn how people do business. Most of all, it teaches you how to be an employee and by observing your managers/ supervisors, you will also learn how to be a boss. So, when you are working, don’t just do your work. You have to move around and observe people. I started of as a freelance web designer by working part time for a small web hosting company. They paid me 30% of what they charged the customer. For instance, if the customer paid RM1800 for the website, I would get RM540. It was great because I got to earn some money while studying for my diploma in design. The boss took me around to meet his clients so I can get feedback directly from the client. Throughout the few months, I managed to finish about three websites and these websites would later serve as my portfolio to get more freelance work. Therefore, getting a job would provide you a steady flow of work thus build up your portfolio more quickly before you start venturing out on your own.

Advertise online

Another way to find new clients is to advertise online on free classifieds sections and forums. This doesn’t just apply to freelance web designers. You could be running a home business selling cookies or running a travel agency. Find a local forum or classified section or online notice board and just post something like “Hi I’m a freelance web designer, please check out my website www.jamiesoon.com”. Some of the website where I have posted include kakiseni.com, www.alloexpat.com , webmastermalaysia.com and www.ehomemakers.net. You can also post in web design or graphic design forums, but competition is tough because there will be so many other designers posting their work there. The idea is to find a website where entrepreneurs or business people go to. These are the people who will be interested in setting up a website. There are many new businesses sprouting out everyday so if you are lucky, someone might notice your work and contact you. Besides that, I also advertise in ehomemakers printed newsletter. For RM150 you get a small space in the classified section.

Other methods of finding new clients is randomly emailing people. This doesn’t work very well for me because usually I don’t get a response. For instance, I get flyers in my mailbox and if the company looks interesting but they didn’t list out a web address on the flyer, I would email them to offer my services. I didn’t get any replies. I have never gone door-to-door or do cold calls to get work.

The best way is still by referrals and word of mouth advertising. You don’t have to find clients but clients will come and look for you. Therefore, it is very important that your customers are happy with the work that you do for them so that they will refer you more work. Good luck !