- Hey y'all, my name is Kori Ashton
in beautiful San Antonio Texas,
and today we are gonna talk about
how to actually become a web design freelancer.
So many of you out there that watch my channel
are either trying to figure out
how to build your own website,
or maybe you are trying to be a freelancer,
and you're trying to learn how to get money
from other people to build their websites for them,
whether it's their personal website,
their business website, their community website,
whatever that looks like, you're trying
to become a freelancer, how do you do that?
I'm gonna give you some great examples today
on not only how to get started,
where to find some first few clients,
and how to find some great resources, let's talk about it.
(upbeat music)
Hey for those of you interested in
knowing about my health journey
as I combat cervical cancer, stick around
at the end of this video, I'll give you an update to that,
but let's get right to this you guys,
we are talking about how to become a freelancer,
which is super exciting to me,
because that is my heart, that is absolutely
how I started my company, I was freelancing
from my couch, and in coffee shops,
hanging out with my dad, working with him
as he had clients, and I would help him,
and then we started networking around
in the community, that's exactly
how I got started, so I wanna walk you through today
some ideas on how you can get started as well,
and not feel so totally alone or helpless
or feel like all you can do for resource is YouTube search.
Come on y'all, we can get more creative than that,
I'm gonna give you some ideas starting right now.
So it's true, my story started on my couch,
that's exactly how I started working,
networking, with potential clients,
I would meet them, maybe out in the community,
I would go to their restaurant,
and while I was sitting in the restaurant
I would do a search on my phone
and figure out, wow, their website is horrible rotten,
just wonky looking, and I'll call over the manager
and say hey, who handles your digital marketing,
I'd love to help improve this, I'd even do a trade.
Right, especially as you're starting to grow your portfolio.
I did a lot of trades in the beginning,
I ended up getting a brand new kayak,
I ended up getting a trailer for our band,
I got landscaping done for my house,
I got granite countertops for my kitchen,
I got a roof on one of my houses,
you guys, this is how you do it,
you start in just kind of that trade attitude,
and tell somebody, hey, if you're willing to let me
test and build your website, and kinda learn
from your experience, let's do a trade,
you can give me an exchange of goods.
That's one way to start, another way to start
is to just set a very basic fee,
a very simple fee, something like 2,500 bucks,
and that gets you, what, 2,500 bucks gets you
customized WordPress theme, so you're gonna go out
and you're gonna either use a free theme
or a purchased theme, and you would customize it for them,
match their colors, match their logo,
embed their logo in it, match their fonts
as best as you can with that customized WordPress theme.
You'll go ahead and build out five pages for them,
that could include their home page,
their about us page, their contact page,
and maybe two service pages, and then you'll go ahead
and agree to do their home page onsite SEO,
so their top page is typically their home page,
so you would do onsite SEO for that one particular page,
and then you could link in maybe up to three
social networks, so their Facebook, their Twitter,
and their YouTube channel, or their Instagram,
something like that, you would add the links
to the bottom of their website,
very very simple, very straightforward, 2,500 bucks.
Then after that you can always add onto the project,
if they say, well I have four services.
Okay, well that's gonna be an additional $250 per page,
that makes our project now worth three grand.
You see how it adds up y'all, it can add up
actually very quickly, and if you'd like to know more
about adding up, I just did a video about
how to add to your scope, I'll put that link
in the description box below, and I give you
a lot of different ideas of how you can add
different things to a simple scope like this,
where all of a sudden you're not just charging
$2,500, you're now charging nearly five grand,
six grand, 10 grand, you can really go big
with these things, it really depends
on how hungry you are to learn,
and how hungry you are to educate your clients,
because the more they're educated and knowledgeable
about what it is that they're buying from you,
the more trust you gain, the more recurring revenue
you gain, and you get them coming back
asking you for more help and more help,
and you're able to add more invoices and build more revenue,
that's the way you start as freelancer.
Okay so what about those of you wondering
how to even find clients or customers, how do you get them?
That's one of the most frustrating things,
is you're spending a lot of time learning everything,
but you just aren't having anybody
knock at your door or email you off your website.
How do you actually find customers?
I have an entire video dedicated to that topic
right here, I'll put the link in the description box below
so you can go check that out, how to find customers,
I give you ideas beyond just going and doing a cold call.
I give you a lot of different ideas,
where you can go to different communities,
how you can engage with your community,
how you can maybe hold an event
that is inexpensive to do, and grow your network.
Alright, so we've talked about how to actually start
and price things, right, we've talked about now
how to find clients, and be sure to watch
that other video, 'cause I'm gonna give you
a lot of cool ideas there, but there's also the fact
of where do you go whenever you just
need help, you need resources?
I'm gonna give you a list right now
that's gonna help you, and I've got other videos as well.
So first and foremost, you need to invest
in a partnership with a really great hosting company
that can provide really awesome hosting packages,
and security for every single website that you build.
Here's why, you'll want to bring your clients
into your hosting environment,
so that one, you know there's backups running,
you know if something breaks, you know how to get to it,
and two, you can charge them that
recurring revenue every month.
I've got a video down below that talks about
recurring revenue, this is the all out key
for being a successful freelancer,
you guys need to wrap your heads around
the different steps you need to take
in order to be successful at this.
A lot of you are gonna pick up
maybe one or two or three websites a year,
just kind of talking to your friends.
You don't want that, if this is something
that you wanna have your full time career,
this is supposed to be providing six figures a year,
providing for your family, providing for you
to have a travel life, whatever that looks like,
you can do it, I'm testament to that,
you can do it, it just takes understanding
how the model works, so what I did
was I went out a found a great hosting company
that I can actually resell their packages, basically,
and have great security, so I highly recommend
Liquid Web, if y'all are familiar with them,
they're the most helpful humans in hosting,
and I just adore them, they're incredible, huge help
when it comes to WordPress, specific WordPress hosting.
You also wanna find a great community,
and we have that inside the world of WordPress.
You have something called WordCamps
that you can attend literally all around the world,
these are being held every single month,
and you can go to them for the horribly expensive price
of like 20 bucks, it's amazing.
You can go, maybe if it's a two day event
it might a $40 fee, that includes typically
some sort of really cool swag,
and all of your food while you're there,
and amazing workshops all day long,
so be sure to check out WordCamps,
you can do a search for WordCamp.org,
I'll put the link in the description box as well,
and there's also amazing meetup groups.
Again the WordPress community is extremely active,
and if they're not particularly active
in your specific area, why don't you engage that?
Go ahead and start a meetup group in your area,
start reaching out, ask WordCamp central
to help you create that meetup group,
they'll pay for the expense of meetup.com,
they want you to build and grow the community,
as long as you're hosting events,
they'll be a part of that, and they'll support that,
and they might even find you a sponsor
to help pay for pizza once a month,
or something like that, so that you can really
spoil the audience, and get them engaged
and get them communicating there
as a really great resource for you
inside the world of WordPress.
Another thing you wanna do is find great support,
so again, Liquid Web has just been amazing to us,
because they understand WordPress.
There's nothing more frustrating than calling up
your hosting company and they tell you,
oh, sorry, that's a WordPress issue,
we only handle server issues, or we only handle
security issues, we don't know
how to help you with your plugin break.
Well, that won't happen, liquid web
can absolutely help you with that
because they are WordPress experts.
PressTribe is another community
that I was blessed to start, it's a free Slack community
where you come in, and once a week,
we're doing live chats, where you're able to engage
with other freelancers, and build that community,
build that resource, maybe you're not a very good designer,
but you're a great developer, and you need to connect
with a designer, this is one place you can go to do that.
WP Elevation is another really cool resource,
that I'm gonna suggest to you, especially
if you're ready to take your freelance process
to the next level, let's say you've been trying this
for six months, a year already,
and you're kind of wondering, should I stay in this
or should I try something else?
Well, I'm gonna tell you right now,
get a hold of WP Elevation, Troy Dean,
his entire community over there
is gonna help you understand how to take
your freelance game to that next level,
to punch it up a notch, and to figure out
how to actually make it be profitable for you.
There's a lot that he offers, a lot of different courses,
so check that out.
And you need to have really great resources
so that you aren't just Googling, or coming over to YouTube,
and trying to struggle on my channel,
so WP101 is a really great starter site,
WP Beginner.com actually has a lot
of beginning information, as well as
advanced topics, so take a look at that.
Did you know that WordPress itself
over on WordPress.org has an actual support forum
where you can go in and ask your question,
and people literally from around the world
come in within minutes typically
and respond back to you, and you can get that
type of instant help, if it's not instant
it might take a couple hours, but you're more than likely
to get a response, especially if it's a broad topic.
If it's related specifically to a theme
or to a plugin, you might need to reach out
to those specific developers, but I'm telling you right now,
if it's a broad question like hey,
I got locked out of my WordPress site
and I don't know how to get back in,
there's gonna be somebody there to help you.
Or hey, I broke my entire menu,
and everything's frozen up, and I don't know
how to fix that, there's an entire community
there to help you, you just post that question
and you're gonna have people responding to you,
and in multiple languages.
And I mentioned earlier WordCamps and meetup groups,
those are really great places for resources
to network, not only to find potential clients,
but also to find people who can resource with you,
maybe you'll find a photographer
who's ready to go to work for you,
and you guys can start growing your package deals.
Maybe you can find a designer or a copywriter.
Again, you can kinda grow your scopes
and increase your offering and your value
to your clients, that's gonna increase
your profit margin at the end of the day.
All you would do is outsource to them
the task that they can do, and you handle
the rest of it, it all goes under your scope,
your contract, of course you're liable to do the work,
but if you find some trustworthy people
inside of these communities, you're gonna do really well.
And of course there are other YouTube channels.
I'd like to ask y'all, guys let's crowdsource this,
if y'all can comment in the thread below,
gimme some ideas of where you're finding
really great tutorials and help online,
maybe you find a Twitter channel,
maybe you found another YouTube channel,
something like that that is your go to,
your staple, I would love to brag on them,
give them some exposure here on our channel,
and talk about all these other places online,
all these other places maybe directly on the ground,
in person, that you can communicate with,
and find awesome help in being a freelancer.
Y'all, this is how it's done, this is exactly
how I started, just from your couch,
just grinding it out, and figuring out,
spending many a nights up at two, three,
four in the morning, maybe never going to sleep,
just trying to figure out that website.
I know you can do it, and I promise you,
if I've been able to do it, you'll be able to do it.
I make six figures now, and beyond,
because I've been able to get sponsorships
with my YouTube channel, I've been able
to travel and teach, I've been able
to travel and speak, you guys, this is how it's done,
get excited about it, know that if I'm capable,
you're fully capable I promise,
because I'm not even a developer,
I don't know if y'all know that about me,
I don't write any PHP, I literally just customize themes,
if I need some extra help, I've got some networking buddies,
I'll toss it over the fence to them,
outsource it to them for 125 bucks an hour,
get it back to my side, the client's happy,
I'm happy, my freelance buddy's happy,
'cause he's made his prime dollar,
everybody's happy, it's a win/win.
And that's a possibility for you.
If you like this, if you're interested more
in being a freelancer, check out an entire playlist
I have for you in the description box below.
I hope this has been helpful, I'll see y'all
next WordPress Wednesday, bye everyone.
(upbeat music)
(bell ringing)
Hey y'all, gosh, that was a pretty long video,
so if you've stuck around to check out my health journey,
thank you so much for doing that,
it's very kind of you, I'm actually on week four
of chemo and radiation right now,
and I am still definitely feeling the fatigue
whenever we're talking about chemo,
radiation though, I just got news today y'all,
holler, woot woot, the tumor is shrinking,
my cervical cancer is getting smaller,
that is the official word from the doctor's today,
so I couldn't be happier, and it's a lot
of your positive attitude, your amazing tweets,
your kind DMs to me, all these amazing comments
that y'all are leaving me, thank you so much
for the encouragement, I read every one of 'em,
and I try to respond to every single one of 'em,
so thank you so much for that,
such an encouragement, such a positive way
to make me wanna get back in front of the camera
every single week no matter how wonky
or tired or exhausted I look, it doesn't matter to me,
I just wanna help y'all, I wanna encourage y'all,
and challenge y'all, you can do this, I promise you
you can do this, don't give up on your dreams,
work hard, and stay humble always, right y'all?
Alright, I'll see y'all next time, bye everyone.