Anatomy of A Freelancer’s Website
Posted on Sep 9, 2010 in Freelancing 101 | 17 comments
I recently wrote about how every freelancer needs a website. There’s no reason not to take advantage of the visibility and branding opportunities a website can give you. I guess technically it is possible to run a freelance business without a website. It’s also possible to hop from my house to Michigan Avenue on one foot. But I wouldn’t recommend it.
Knowing you need a website is one thing, but actually putting it into action is another thing. The biggest obstacle that new freelancers have with website building is not knowing what to put on it. In its most basic form, your website should describe your freelance business to the world. But let’s say you’re fresh out of school or fresh from a cubicle somewhere, you might have a hard time trying to describe yourself as a freelancer.
Don’t psych yourself out by overthinking it. You don’t want to get caught up in all the options available. There are tons of things that you can put on your freelance website. Over time you’ll come upon things that you want to add to your site by looking at other sites or hearing about techniques. But here are the basics of a freelance website that you absolutely must include. Start here and build on the rest.
Home/Welcome
This is your very first impression to clients and anyone else who shows up to your site. You want it to accurately describe who you are and what you do in an engaging way. Think of it as your elevator speech expanded. If you have a logo, this would be the perfect place to display it. It’s also the home to your most important links, such as if you have Facebook fan page, a Twitter profile or a LinkedIn page. Do you write a blog about your industry? Well, ideally, it will show up as page on your site. But if it doesn’t, don’t forget to include a link to it on your home page. And make sure that there’s a “call to action” on your home page (and every other page of the site) that tells the visitor to contact you and tells them how to do it.
About
This is where you tell your visitors a little bit more about you. What’s your story? How did you land here? Think of this as your resume. It should display any pertinent interests, experiences and accomplishments. It’s good place to list your client list, too. If you’ve got a professional picture of yourself, if you put it nowhere else, put it here. Don’t forget to include your call to action text.
Portfolio
And here comes the meat of your website. This is what most of the people who visit your website will be looking for. It’s also where that call to action text will get the most workout. There are those who would tell you to put as much on this page as possible and then there are those that would tell you to only show a few samples of your best work. I’ve done both and don’t have an opinion either way.
Now what do you do if you’re a brand new freelancer and you don’t have too much to put here? Then get to work make some samples. Are you a freelance copywriter? Make up some marketing samples for fictional companies. Freelance designer? Create two or three logos for a fictional organization. Freelance makeup artist? Make your three sisters come over, do their makeup and take pictures. If anyone asks, you tell them the truth: This is your work that you created from scratch but no, it wasn’t from a paying client. But almost nobody will ask. They really only care about whether you can do the work, not whether you got paid to do it.
Did I forget anything? What would you tell a freelancer to absolutely include in their website if they’re doing this for the first time?
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A separate tab for your blog – fully integrated.
Not truly essential but I also include testimonials on a separate tab, which I've worked hard to get for LinkedIn. There's a WordPress plug-in that feeds it into my blog site but you can also just cut and paste.
Oh yeah, your blog is important. You can use iFrames (just remember that search engines don't see them) or do a manual install. Even blogger lets you use a subdomain as your blog's URL. If you're a writer, your blog shows you can write. If you're any other kind of freelancer, your blog shows that you have something to say about your industry.
It sounds like you caught the most important things. I wish I'd read this article a few years ago when I was first having my website designed. I've recently had to do some expensive revisions because I left out some important parts and didn't put the right emphasis on others. For instance, at one point, *all* the blogs on my nonfiction links were dead. Not very impressive publicity.
My recent post Freelance Writing and Reverse Self Discipline
Oh no! Dead links are something I worry about all the time. I'm on my website at least once a month checking the links because I'm so paranoid. But at least you got your revisions done. It's something we all go through.
Great post – i'm going through re-vamping my freelancing website now and debating how to integrate the blog and my freelancing site (since they have different designs and different URLs).
My recent post An Honest Review of Site5 Hosting
Well, I recently moved this blog to a different URL because I realized it wasn't going to be a side project anymore. Since I decided to treat it like a stand alone blog instead of something I posted only for clients to see I could write, it was the best move for me. (Otherwise I would have left it at blog.psjoneswrites.com.) So I just added "Diary of A Mad Freelancer" to my navigation bar like it was any other page on the site.
I'll probably do the same. It's helpful to hear that that's what you did – my biggest worry is sending people to my blog and not having them have a way to get back to my freelancing website / get them back to those "calls of action" – my blog gets much more traffic than my static freelancing site, so I'd love to make it go both ways…. thoughts?
My recent post An Honest Review of Site5 Hosting
Yep. I plan to update my About section with my URL there and then I'm going to make another tab on blog that says "Work with P.S. Jones." That will tell the visitors a little bit about my freelance business and end with a call to action and the URL. And finally a large button for the blog's side bar that says something like "Did you get lost? Are you looking for http://www.psjoneswrites.com? Click here to go back!" I figure that if they can't find their way back after all that, it might not be in the cards for us to work together!
Love the "are you lost?" idea…
My recent post An Honest Review of Site5 Hosting
It's either that or "Hey, are you done snooping in my diary? Head on back over to psjoneswrites.com!" Or something equally as sassy. (Might as well get them ready for when they meet me
Another great blog post! I shared this one on Facebook – you should consider adding a “like” button to your posts.
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