Are You Spending Enough Time on Your Own Website?

The shoemaker’s kids may always go barefoot because he’s so busy working on other people’s shoes. But he won’t work on my shoes because the first thing I would think is “Oh man, the shoemaker must suck because his kids would rather be barefoot than wear his crappy shoes.”

Your website is your calling card as a freelancer. Of course you’ll probably get more work through referral, word of mouth or prospecting. But the first thing a potential client will do is take a peek at your website. So try to make it the best website you can. If that means that you have to spend an afternoon a month retooling it, so be it. You’ll benefit from it in the long run.

I’d say that for freelancers word-of-mouth and referrals are your #1 lead gen source, but having a well maintained web site adds credibility. You wouldn’t apply for a job without an up-to-date resume, the same should be true for your freelance business web site.

First of all, if you visit my website please ignore the “We’re working on a new site” message that’s been there for something like two months. lol I can totally relate to this post.

Part of the problem is that I’m super critical of my own site/content. At least clients know that they are paying for my time when I work on their stuff so that keeps them from being too picky. Now when I have access to a “free” web guy (me), I make him jump through all sorts of hoops and try more ideas than I could possibly afford had I been paying him.

So maybe you need to do an upcoming post about the hazards of perfectionism.

Hi everyone!

I have to say that I’m one of those shoemakers – 100% of my time goes to my customers – I have been trying to change that for a long time now.

can totally relate to this post – i just finished my site a few months ago after procrastinating for about 5 years and now that it is done i want to re-do it already haha

I try to spend a few hours every week updating my own website.

But, yes, I too am guilty of helping others and my poor little child goes “shoe-less” sometimes.

Nice blog – a good reminder for all of us to do some updating!
Thanks.

@ P.S. – I would have to agree with you. It’s still very critical even if it isn’t your main source for new clients. Like you said, usually the first place they will go is your website whether it be referral, word of mouth, or a business card they were given. Having a remarkable website that shows off your talent and expertise will only help make you as a designer/developer more confident in selling yourself when you are marketing to others or speaking with potential clients.

One way I have found that is helping me keep my site updated with new content is to simply aggregate much of my information elsewhere back to my site. It can seem like a daunting task to update your blog, Twitter, Facebook, tumbler, contribution blogs, etc. The ability to integrate the vast majority of this information so you are only posting once can be huge. This may not always be efficient, but even if it’s fitting 80% of the time, it’s worth it.

Oh man, oh man! tis is exactly what I was thinking about today while looking and thinking of an idea/design for my personal site.

I run a computer support company (www.macjunky.nl) and I work on that site day and night to hone it to meet the requirements of my subcontious, and my work comes from word of mouth and Google, but I am increasingly being asked by my clients about creating, maintaining and helping with SEO for their sites, new and old, hence needing a new site to showcase a few things I have done and can do.

So I would say that it’s something I really need to get on with.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention!

I’m also fairly new to the world of freelance – and what with trying to juggle clients and jobs it’s taken more than six to finally build my web design business a website.

I found the hardest part branding myself and my business, it’s so simple (relatively) to help your client nail down an identity but when I was trying to brand my own business the possibilities just seemed endless – and overwhelming!

That said it’s incredibly rewarding to have my own website, even if it isn’t nearly as helpful as cold calling in finding new clients. Not to mention that it’s given me a little taste of how clients must feel when their own websites go live

I think this is a question many freelancers face, I have too and my own website and blog were neglected because “the client comes first”. I finally got a little breathing space and spent time fixing my site and blog just the way I like it. Of course, a website is never finished, so there will always something to update, to polish and shine, etc.

As for writing for other blogs … I’ve been invited to write for a few well-known blogs in my industry, but on giving the offers second thought I decided that it was far better to spend what time I have to put effort into creating and establishing my own brand. Besides, the so-called droves of traffic promised from these popular blogs (which I love reading, don’t get me wrong) simply is not the targeted traffic I need to convert into real paying jobs, and that’s always the primary factor in effectively managing your website.

I can completely relate. I finally bit the bullet and told myself “Enough! Upload it!”

I have no site at the moment. I did, and now I don’t but I should. I’m currently taking time out from web design/development work for a few weeks or a month to work on my own sites and build up an online portfolio. The one thing potential clients ask is about my portfolio. It would be so much easier for me to have it online.

Hence the reason why it has taken me 4 months to create something I probably could have done with 2 weeks of concerted effort!
@Dave I completely agree, I abuse my personal web designer and don’t pay her nearly enough….

I tried to take a day or two each month to work on both my portfolio site and the app I run, Codesnipp.it that way, it keeps everything from becoming stale.

The one thing you have to learn when dealing with your OWN site is: Set up a big, thorough-thought out plan – AND STICK TO IT, no matter if you don’t like it anymore after 2 weeks etc.

This time, I stuck to doing the base first, adding the nice-to-haves later. Thanks to this, my “beta” site was already functional and working while I still was adding nice-to-haves to it.

The plan and sticking to it – these are the keys for a proper-done site, even it doesnt have all the newest nice bling-bling effects you just saw somewhere else. You still can add that after you’re done, if you by then still like the effect.
But: Finish it first!

There’s always something to do on your site, no matter what you do

cu, w0lf.

I launched my consulting business less than 45 days ago, and I have found that I give my website attention in spurts. I hope to have it finished before the end of July, because I know that is an easy way the judge the attention to detail of a freelancer.

Could not agree more! Great points and some good reminders. I’ve decided to redo my site and have now found new ways to burn time.

However, the results have been worth it. Page view, ranks, SEO are all rising.

Thank you for the reminder!

Cheers,

B

In additional to my portfolio, I’ve run over a dozen person sites over the last 12+ years. An astronomy site for kids, some pet care sites, a movie review site, some band fan pages, a forum or two, etc. When they were all I had on my plate, besides maybe college, I was fine. Nowadays? I find myself working on other projects so much that I don’t update mine as much. And since I wanted my portfolio to be 100% just mine, it’s just html/css/php. It’s static (no databases). So updating it isn’t super efficient. If I could update one post and have it reflect on 20 places on my site, I wouldn’t be so bad, so I’m thinking of getting over this “coming soon” hurdle and using Drupal. As for the other personal sites, most of them are down. But two of them I am brainstorming back into reality, and when they materialize I’ll have three sites to worry about on a regular basis. I’m actually kinda pumped, though.

I like to dedicate at least a few hours a week to maintenance of my website.

We recently completed a redesign without dragging it out for months. After deciding to treat our site just as any client, we blocked out time during the day and stuck to a schedule.

We don’t have everything exactly how we want it yet, but it’s online and we’ll keep working on it consistently.

No, I am not. Perhaps because I’m not a traditional writer. I just hastily remove all the good, the bad, and the ugly comments from there, keeping it clean, trying to stay neutral to my new readers. The “old” already know me along with my style, my dark writing career spans over 16 years, please check my Slaughter Catalogue 1993-2010 agenda without any prejudice.

My website was an embarrassment for a long time. When I had some downtime between projects this year, I spent a good two weeks completely rebuilding it. I also committed to blogging every weekday.

It’s been the best decision I’ve made as a freelancer. Some of my clients have mentioned that they’re not hesitant to refer people to my site any longer. And my traffic increased 800% initially because of the blog traffic.

Best of all, I’ve had more leads from my site in a month than in the whole year previously.

Before I thought I was fine because I was word of mouth, but my site has built confidence for referrals and brought in new clients since it’s re-launch. I can’t believe I waited so long.

I’d definitely keep maintaining my site and blog, especially the latter since it’s also a part of my online portfolio. The site serves as your credibility and your storefront, so it’s important to update it to make it more attractive and appealing to your customers.

As of the moment I don’t have the funds yet for the overhaul of my site, but when I do I’m gonna make sure it looks like a professional site for a professional freelancer.

Good article! I just realized this a while ago, and started to work on a new site for myself. It’s not quite finished, but on its way. Feel free to check it out, the main language is swedish though.

It’s true. Since I am the boss of my own site, it does give me enough creative freedom but then I cannot post as regular as I should or as I could. It might be because I’m not getting paid directly or it is not in my Top 3 tasks for the day.

This problems has bugged me since I started freelancing full time. My client’s site gets higher page rank and more traffic than my 2 year old blog.

I always have to maintain my website because my business focuses around it since I’m a website designer.

Other than that, most other professions can get away with spending little time on their website. As long as it leads to sales, I say you don’t have to maintain it much.

Fantastic comments folks – thanks for adding quality to the article.

To add insult to my own injury – I looked at my analytics for today, lots of bonus traffic to my site because of this post, but when i checked the site to see what you saw – I found one of my plug-ins was apparently not plugged-in very well – so unless you waited, you only saw one post.

Another reason to update more frequently…

Loving the conversations that develop on the site – there are so many people willing to offer their help and support. Really feels like a great community.

Glad to be a part of it

Jason

I must agree with all of the above, I am also in that situation where you just don’t get time to update your own, and I’m glad I’m “too busy”, because that means my business is doing well. And common sense tells us clients will look at our websites first, so we all just need to take the time, when we find it, to make our own sites look good

I think it’s mainly getting into the routine that’s difficult. I’m sure most people spend couple minutes daily checking their FaceBook, Twitter, Flickr, whatever it maybe but if you take that time or even split it and dedicate it to your own site then I don’t think its too hard to find time for keep your portfolio updated.

I obsess over our company website and I am always working on it. To me it is a reflection of what we can do, so our site is always improving, changing.

I try to balance my time with clients and our marketing. We haven’t even started selling and we get clients with word of mouth and our site.

Great post. When I was very active in my SEO and Web Design Company, my partner and I took the site where we think it needed to go. We got some great responses to the site, and started bringing in clients. We both knew this would happen, but both our rankings and other items on our own site stopped getting worked on because we got so busy with our clients.

After a bit of time, we did field phone calls about why an Internet Marketing company wasn’t ranking as well, and it was difficult to convince possible clients looking for SEO work when our site wasn’t ranking well. It is absolutely a must for all businesses to spend time on their own website. Find a good balance of time management between clients and your own, or use some of the profits to hire someone to assist you.

I spare fair amount of time on advertising my page by posting to sites and online porfolios like behance. Altough most of my clients come from refferals it`s still nice to see a good traffic amoung going through your site, you never know where that can take you to.

While I think having a good website is important, I also think sometimes people get too obsessed with it.

In fact, I’d argue that at least in some cases, freelancers will spend lots of time tweaking their websites instead of getting out and finding customers!

Let’s face it – if you are a bit of an introvert, cold calling or networking events may sound scary. But hey – you can always try to improve your website’s SEO a bit and then you won’t have to do those other things, right?

Yes – a good website is important, and yes – you should occasionally update it (or write regular blog posts if that is your thing.) But it is no substitute for actual marketing.

http://indycoding.com/Default/10-04-16/Tweaking_your_website_ne_marketing.aspx

I personally WANT to spend more time on my site. I had just enough time to do a decent design and very very quickly wrote all the content accompanied by some basic images just so I can have the site up (http://www.alpaproductions.com) but after one week, I realized that I should’ve focused on the design a bit more at the start. I’m already looking to re-design the site now.

It goes for most of the freelance designer including me as well. I’ve heard this quote before, the hardest client is ourselves. Plus time is also another factor why designers don’t really update their blog and website.

Websites need planning and this takes time. Time is money so a valuable resource.

I update my design blog at least once a week with new source files and tutorials , etc , but when it comes to revamping the site design/graphics, Im too lazy to do it, or I keep changing the design.

I update my site pretty regularly. Styles change more rapidly in graphic/web design than in ANY other industry. If you look at the Web Design Index books you can see dramatic shifts in design aesthetics from one year to the next.

Don’t be afraid to remove outdated designs from your portfolio. Have a set number of projects on your site. For every new project you put up, take one down.

So it goes…

-dp

YOUR WORST CLIENT IS YOU!!
That’s probably the number one reason why never find time to update our site’s design because we are so picky (well I am) that the site has to be almost perfect before we put it out there so that why I don’t think it’s only about finding the time. It’s also about being able to accept a certain level of design sometimes.

In my case, I have a full flash site (http://www.e11world.com) so I think it’s a bit harder to change little things and I’d much rather start from scratch with some jQuery + CSS3 and maybe some flash here or there if I really need to this time.