Does designing websites make good money?

Are you looking for the best resources to start a web design gig?

Are you finding for the right answers to “How to earn money from web design as beginner?”

So, how do you start?

In this article, you will discover how you can earn money with web designing even as a beginner.

How to earn money from web design as a beginner?

There are several important steps that you need to follow by the ‘T’:

• Build a portfolio
• Using the right tools
• Promote your services
• Garner and display testimonials

Step 1: How to build a portfolio as a web designer (even when you are a newbie)

I’ve been a web designer myself (without coding skills – yes, no joke and please don’t hate me for this) J

Getting clients is the hardest step — it gets worst since you are new and doesn’t have any track record to share. I’ve been through that road and it was pretty.

I literally begged others to give me a chance and offered dirt cheap way to do so.

And I was burned down badly. It wasn’t because I did a bad job (for the record, I did an amazing job).

It was because I throw away all my dignity and decided to go on ‘desperate mode.’ That was the single, biggest mistake I did in my web design life.

I came across this strategy by accident and it worked like charm.

How to build a portfolio like a professional?

You need to have a website and a landing page. If you are in the web designing industry, you should know what I’m trying to tell you.

You need to be visible to the public. You must be known and allow to be reached on any platform, anytime of the day.

The process of creating a website is easy. What’s next is tough!

You need to have a simple website design that showcase who you are and what’s in for the potential client.

In terms of ratio, you should share 10% of the content on ‘about you’ and the balance 90% about the client. You know, the reasons why they need to even look at your profile.

Note: You need to understand what the clients are looking for and once you get those, portray yourself as a person who can deliver such requirements. Do this and you will close the sale every single time.

BONUS: Use a landing page that converts

Your homepage should be short and powerful. More importantly, it has to have specific call-to-actions (CTA) to move your readers from reading phrase to prospecting.

In other words, the CTA need to be so powerful that it will convince the potential clients to ‘know more.’

You don’t need coding skills when creating landing pages because there are plugins such as Thrive Architect that allows you to build a conversion focused landing page within minutes (not days).

What should the landing page have on it?

• Reasons why you should be considered
• No obligation and free consultation (yes, please don’t charge fee for this … yet)
• A simple lead-in form that allows readers to leave their name, contact number and email address

Note: Remember to collect contact number and email address at the same time. Human are prone to mistakes and you wouldn’t want to lose a potential lead for nothing.

Here's one great sample of a great landing page

Do you noticed that each call-to-action (CTA) and elements on the page is created for maximum conversion?

Step 2: Using the right tools for web design

How to start web design as a beginner? The trick is by using the right tools.

A web designer often have a wide range of tools at their disposal but if you are a complete beginner (thinking that web designing can earn you money), then you only need a few tools to start.

Those tools are:

• Turnkey and professional themes
• Page builder
• Web hosting

Yes, you only need the above three to get started with web designer as a beginner.

Choosing the right professional themes

This is mission-critical. You need to have a wide range of themes to help you kick-start your web design gig.

Choosing the right themes is important because it will either turn on or turn off your potential clients. So, make sure you are mindful of this.

When it comes to professional WordPress themes, I recommend you to start small — this means that while it is always good to have at least 50 custom themes in your toolbox, you can start with a small figure (anywhere between 5 to 10).

These professional themes must be easy to configure and it is almost an important requirement to have a drag and drop feature. You don’t have much coding skill, remember?

Why is it important to choose the right themes?

For starters, it need to be easy to use because you have limited skills as a fresh web designer. More importantly, you don’t need to get your hands dirty with the coding and all those mind bogging stuffs.

Secondly, the licence would need to allow you to use it without limit (unlimited usage). You wouldn’t want to buy a theme each time you get a new client because it is going to eat away your earnings.

What theme should new web designer be using?

For me, the choice is simple — Thrive Themes.

It comes with 10 beautifully designed themes that fit for a wide range of industries as well as all other tools to help you design the best web design at minimum cost.

On top of that, each of these Thrive Themes is highly customizable. This means that you can customize anything and everything in just a few clicks. There are also over 100 pre-made website templates you can import and install to create custom theme for your potential clients.

Step 3: Promote your services (as if there is no tomorrow)

This step is very crucial and important for your success. The process of building a portfolio and using the right tools are just two steps to build a strong base for your new venture in web design. The next critical stage is to promote your services.

Believe it or not, promoting your services is extremely important because you need to generate as much leads a possible — and fast.

So, how do you promote your web design services like a professional (and dignity in tact)?

Crazy and highly effective strategies to promote web design services

• Offer free web design services for the first 10 clients (and in return, they need to provide you with testimonials)
• Use social media advertising such as Facebook Ads to reach out to a specific audience or market segments
• Allow clients to pay you any amount (based on what their thoughts on your level of service)
• Provide low cost web design services with several upsell services on the side
• Be active on social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn, while providing value to your audience (to build trust and followed by potential leads)

If you are starting web design as a beginner, it will be very tough for you to build strong trust and generating many leads.

Expect the first few months to be the toughest but rest assured that you need to keep the momentum moving forward.

Step 4: Don’t be afraid to ask for testimonials

Most web designing beginners are worried of asking for testimonials — you shouldn’t!

Displaying testimonials is one of the best strategy to build trust and confidence. Therefore, you should display as much testimonials as possible on your portfolio blog.

According to VWO, testimonials can boost conversions by 34%, so why are you not using them?

I would recommend you to have testimonials to be in these critical places:

• Several testimonials on the homepage
• A separate testimonial page
• Automatic rotation on testimonials to build more trust

In order to achieve such results, I use Thrive Ovation, the only working set-and-forget testimonial plugin for WordPress. This plugin allows you to organize all your testimonials under one roof, and set specific rules on which testimonials to be displayed on specific pages.

You should not be afraid to ask for testimonials if you are constantly delivering awesome web designs to your clients (or in this case, you know that you can do so).

Are you ready to make money from web design as a beginner?

You can start making money from web design as a beginner if you have the right strategies. I certainly hope you find the strategies above useful because they worked like charm for me.

Find this useful? Share this with your friends today and help them make money from web design even as a beginner!