Mainly I have to register as a business but I haven't earnt anything yet so don't have to do that.

 

Anyway, I would like a list of everything that I need to take into consideration when starting as a freelancer, I would have to think about the process of serving clients, developing the website, improving my coding, design, seo, marketing, copywriting skills.

 

Anything else? I just want to make sure I haven't missed anything.

Firstly, you must register as self employed as soon as possible, it makes no difference if you have turned a profit, or not, you would be trading illegally if you failed to make them aware https://www.gov.uk/set-up-sole-trader. I know it used to be within 3 months of trading start date, not sure if that has changed? Again, it is different if you set up as a Limited Company.

 

Anyway, let's forget about the actual end product of web sites for a minute, and focus on the important things. When people see a website, that;s all they see, and if they have never run a business before they have no idea what is required in order to trade legally, safely and successfully. You don't have to be the greatest designer, or developer, to have a successful business, you just need to know how to run a business!

• Where will you be working from? If you reside in a council/housing association property, or private rent, you would need to check and gain permission to operate a business from such premises. failing to do so could see you in a whole heap of trouble as there is a big difference between residential, and commercial property insurances etc.
• Speaking of insurances. What cover do you have? Personal indemnity? Personal accident cover? Have you considered business equipment insurance (again, residential insurance wont cover you for equipment used to run a business)? What about public liability etc if you are inviting clients/colleagues in to your work place.
• Business bank account. DO NOT use a personal account, it is not worth it and quickly becomes a nightmare keeping business income separate from personal. Yes, you will pay for a business account, but don't be stingy, you are in business to make money so expect to have to shell some out to. We are with Barclays (one of the best in the UK for businesses tbh) and the costs are minimal.
• How will you be accepting payment for work done? Make sure you have clear methods of payment acceptance and terms from the word go. Don't accept cash if you can help it. Most business accounts will charge to pay cash in - that's if it even makes it to the bank BACS, merchant account (paypal if you must) are all ok. Cheques are fine providing you have terms in place that state work doesn't get done until cleared funds etc
• Contracts!! No ifs and buts. I don't care how small the project is, or how friendly I am with the client, they are still just that - a client. Make sure you have a basic contract template ready to go that can be amended for each project/client, and never do anything until this has been signed and returned.
• Accountant - get one! So you're good at maths, very organised with keeping receipts and filing invoices etc, great! Still get one! A good accountant does more for you than add a few numbers every now and then. Do you 100% know what you can and can't claim for through your business? They will. Are you up to date and in the know with all the legal jargon and do's and don'ts? They are. For the sake of paying somebody to handle all this for you, you can focus on running the business, marketing yourself and doing what you do best - build websites.
• Data Protection - How are you storing clients personal data (name, address, payment details, signed contracts etc)? Is it being stored on a business only computer, or do other, non-business related, people have access to the same machine? Do you print contracts out and store them? If so, are they locked away in an area dedicated for business?
• Do you have a dedicated business phone line? There's nothing worse than a client (or potential client) being greeted by a child, or just simply "hello". Get a phone line purely for business. It can be a mobile, that's fine as a freelancer, but make sure it is always answered politely, professionally and clearly and that it is always obvious it is the business, "Good morning, RootHost" is clear and simple and does the job.
• Target market - who are you targeting? By that, I don't mean specific companies or industries, but as a geographical area, who are you targeting? Do you know the market, how flooded is the market with other designers, what can you do better/different?
• Sales Literature - Is this all done and ready? At the very least, make sure you have good quality business cards. Forget vistaprint, they are awful, cheap cards and do not give the right impression. Spend a little money on some decent cards. Remember, quite often the business card is the first thing a client sees, and first impressions count!
• Branding - Keep this clear, simple and consistent. You would be surprised at how may freelancers I have seen that have inconsistent branding, or worse still, nothing! A good, professionally designed, logo is worth its weight in Gold and can define your brand. Think about the bigger picture. Where will this logo be seen. Will it work across both digital and print, on social media, will it work in both colour and black and white, is it memorable?

 

From somebody that has learnt the hard way, and grown quicker than anticipated, the above are all extremely important factors and should be covered, or at least considered with plans in place, before setting out.

 

The actual process of dealing with clients and producing sites varies hugely from freelancer to freelancer, but the key is consistency. Once you develop a strategy, stick with it. You can build on it, improve it and refine it, but the key is creating a workflow that is both time-saving and profitable. Although I/we have moved from freelancer to Ltd company, the basics are the same, so here is a brief rundown of what we do here (this is brief, so not complete). One thing to remember is we operate largely through Google Apps for Business, so a lot of our systems are interlinked (zoho crm, gmail and drive for example)

• Keep things structured. I have just one folder on my mac that contains everything related to the business. Inside that it is structured in such a way that it is clean and tidy, for example there is a folder called 'company', this contains contract/letter template blueprints, website frameworks, purchased plugins/scripts, advertising materials, brand fonts etc. This folder is also shared via Google Drive and a few other people have access to this for marketing/reference etc. We also have a folder called 'projects', inside this it is split in to the different kind of projects we handle (web development, seo, social media, branding etc), then inside each of those are 3 more folders (current, completed and leads). We then have a separate folder for each project within that (completed folder is archived yearly) which contains ALL project data such as word docs, mind maps, logos, fonts, client requests, legal docs (contracts/agreements), images/assets etc. Once a project has been signed off, we make sure anything from dropbox or drive is also archived in here. All completed projects are archived away and we just keep the current project data synced i the cloud for easy access.
• We also do something similar with our emails, which keeps everything nice and simple, easy to work with etc
• We tend to push ourselves as a WordPress website company. By that, I mean that is our preferred choice of CMS and the majority of websites we create will be built upon that. We have a custom WordPress framework that is used for all projects, regardless of whether a CMS is required or not. For us, it is a simple process, as this framework saves time and keeps our running costs as low as possible. Although visually it is barebones, it is the backend features and template structures that make this framework a time saver. WordPress isn't everyones cup of tea, and that is fine, you can use other CMS's, or build your own. For us, it is a good fit and in all honesty, we haven't found anything we couldn't do with it yet (some things just take a few hours head scratching moment lol) and we wouldn't use anything else. I guess what I am trying to say is that if you can create a basic framework/structure that can be used for every site, then stick with it. It can be built on over time and improved as and when, but the basics remain the same and it means you are able to improve your workflow and get more done.
• You will never be superior in everything. Fact! OK, and not blowing my own trumpet, I am more than capable of designing a website, coding a website, marketing a website, running a successful SEO campaign, writing compelling copy for clients, running an adwords campaign, running a social media campaign (I suck at graphic design btw, no really, I do!!) - but I quickly learnt that spreading yourself too thinly just means you cut corners and start making mistakes, resulting in unhappy clients! It is extremely hard as a freelancer, as you want to offer the whole package to retain your clients (and the extra income, let's not be naive here), but I think you have to know where to draw the line. Focus on your skills and consider outsourcing the rest. If your expertise is in coding the website, you could always get a freelancer designer to do the initial psd designs and put a markup on the cost etc. Same rule applies to SEO. Unless you really have extensive knowledge, and understanding, of Googles Algorithm and what it looks for etc then I would seriously consider not getting involved in SEO. For so many years all the black hat SEO tricks worked well and, unfortunately, the majority of newbie web designers still refer to these as viable SEO tactics (hidden text, keywords meta tag, buying 10000 links on fiver!). It is not their fault, they are uneducated in this industry and have been misled by cheap prices and unscrupulous SEO companies (probably other newbies who don't know any better). An untrained and lesser knowledgable SEO campaign will do more harm than good, and can have some serious long-lasting negative effects on a domain name/website. I think some of this was covered here http://www.webdesignerforum.co.uk/topic/79253-how-do-you-charge-for-seo/. Obviously, as a freelancer, you do need to have a basic grasp of most things, just don't feel you have to be an expert and offer everything.
• Make sure you have clear development, and payment, stages in place. Who is responsible for what, when and how. Silly things like stock images, make sure it is made clear in your contracts that these are chargeable extras as so many people forget about this and end up causing disagreements with clients.
• Are you going to develop locally, then push live, or will you have a live development domain that you work from? Remember, the client will want to be kept informed with the progress and should be able to see the website at various stages to sign off etc.
• What about hosting? is the client responsible for sourcing their own hosting or will you do it? Is it going to be on a VPS or shared server? You could go down the reseller route if you have the client base for it. This is what we do with the majority of our clients sites (some larger ones have their own VPS now) and it can be extremely profitable. The only downside is that, from the clients point of view, you are responsible for their website and if there are any issues, it is you they will come to. So, just make sure you have clear hours of business etc.
• Same applies with domain names really. Are you going to control these, and then invoice the client directly? Nothing wrong with doing this but you obviously need to make sure there are plans in place should something happen with you etc.
• You never stop learning. Our industry moves so fast that something that was popular yesterday, could be obsolete tomorrow. You won't keep up with every latest 'trend', not when you start to get busy anyway. The trick is focusing on the important changes, the things that will impact you, and your clients, directly and not the latest way to achieve a box shadow saving .00000001kb!

@@roothost, all valid points! I especially like your last point:

 

 

The trick is focusing on the important changes, the things that will impact you, and your clients, directly and not the latest way to achieve a box shadow saving .00000001kb!

 

as I find too many designers / developers focus too much on the latest tools and trends rather than what's important for client's business. Not saying trends and tools are not important, we have to keep up to date, however the main point should be if the website does its job and achieves the goals that have been set.

@@roothost, all valid points! I especially like your last point:

 

 

 

as I find too many designers / developers focus too much on the latest tools and trends rather than what's important for client's business. Not saying trends and tools are not important, we have to keep up to date, however the main point should be if the website does its job and achieves the goals that have been set.

Not that I am disagreeing, I agree with everything you have said in your reply but I just wanted to note the flip side, that keeping up with the latest trends for any business can sometimes go a long way into more business, latest trends is most certainly not to be ignored but must be used carefully.

Not that I am disagreeing, I agree with everything you have said in your reply but I just wanted to note the flip side, that keeping up with the latest trends for any business can sometimes go a long way into more business, latest trends is most certainly not to be ignored but must be used carefully.

Of course. I didn't intend on it coming across as that you should ignore anything new, that would be business suicide! We all need to keep learning, picking up new tricks along the way, but we also have to have the ability to draw the line under certain things and realise when a trend is just that, a trend, and has no long-term beneficial gain for both client and developer.

 

Unfortunately, there are far too many developers out there that focus so much on trying to 'know all the latest trends' that they end up screwing themselves over as they outprice themselves for the 'average website client', then come on here and complain they have no work!

Let's continue here http://www.webdesignerforum.co.uk/topic/79617-latest-tools-and-trends-do-you-follow-use-them-just-because-everyone-else-is/

don't want to hijack the thread.

Holy ****. The post by Roothost is probably the only on you'd actually need to read.

 

I agree with him about the SEO bit and it can be applied to any other skillset; focus on what you're good at and find people that are better than you at the other bits. SEO for example, is a process of just sticking a few keywords into the page and getting a few links back.... That's the mind set of many web design agency's that are lured in by monthly seo retainers. However, organic marketing is extremely deep, and wide, as a knowledge set. Can you honestly spend your time to learn how to get a website ranking for Kitchens For Sale (and countless other keywords) all through high quality and aggressive link building. Or maybe ranking a website for "glass" through intelligent link building, content marketing and continued content growth? My point here is you won't have the time as a freelancer to do everything, or at least do it well. So make a little bit of cash by outsourcing whilst you concentrate on te good stuff. I will point out that SEO isn't cheap, certainly not if you're looking to do something half decent. I don't, as with a couple on this board, barely take jobs on for less than 1k a month. It's about the man hours needed on a project. So just remember that not everything cheap, is good.

Also I only mentioned price because any online service costs money but many are amazed at how much it can cost. Remember that clients don't know the value or how to value your service, they base it on figures they see around the internet and from friends, they try to compare it to another service or another business expense

A hosting platform/domain name registrar for the websites you are looking to set up for your clients?

A hosting platform/domain name registrar for the websites you are looking to set up for your clients?

 

I covered that

 

 

• What about hosting? is the client responsible for sourcing their own hosting or will you do it? Is it going to be on a VPS or shared server? You could go down the reseller route if you have the client base for it. This is what we do with the majority of our clients sites (some larger ones have their own VPS now) and it can be extremely profitable. The only downside is that, from the clients point of view, you are responsible for their website and if there are any issues, it is you they will come to. So, just make sure you have clear hours of business etc.