Yeah yeah, there’s tons of great web-designers out there. What can you do to stand out?
No need to get overwhelmed or feel like the market’s over-saturated. There’s a million web designers out there because there’s a million jobs for them out there.
There’s basically 2 ways to stand out and win web-design jobs. The “professional way” and the “personal way”. Or as I like to say…the “super-hero way” and the “real-world way”.
The SUPER-HERO way
Get some agency experience. Or as I like to say, “work with talented professionals”.
Working in a big agency alongside way more talented people is gonna skyrocket your skills and confidence like nothing else. Agency designers are easily 10 cuts above some hermit working from home. They’ll also have more experience with more unique projects and around more interesting clients.
I guess that’s part of the secret. To have unique work, you also need interesting clients. Most clients are not interesting, they just need you to design something cheap enough within budget that’ll be “good enough to make money”. Interesting clients have more artistic goals…persuading people to donate, or sign-up, or brand awareness for a new campaign, trying to go viral, or just make their website more fun to use, etc.
You’ll never have to look for clients if you’re truly talented. If anything, the rest of your life will be that you have too much work and find it hard to turn them down. Every week, a new client appears on your doorstep with an incredible project and a massive paycheck to beg you with.
The REAL-WORLD way
Make connections, network. Talk to a bunch of people and tell everybody you know that you do web designs. You’ll eventually run into someone who needs a website (or knows someone who needs one) and will hire you simply because you were in the right place at the right time and made a personal connection.
“My brand is more approachable, kinda fun and less techy. Having participated in mixer events I found a good chunk of what I’d deem “my ideal client pool” felt some bigger agencies were unapproachable solely off of their web presence. So I brand myself as capable, but approachable.” – Nate Galloway (someone in FB group)
Leave a Reply