I could use some advice on how to approach business to get some business!
(Note: I am NOT a salesperson, but am being forced into this role…) 
Here are two ideas that I came up with…
a.) Go through Google Maps of my local area, find businesses, look at their websites, if they don’t have one or it sucks, call them.
b.) Go door to door introducing myself and passing out business cards.
Cold calls rarely work. If there’s no prior relation, most times it won’t work.
Better results usually come from referrals. Satisfied customers are your best advertisers. Get recommendations you can post on your site, or better yet, ask them to keep you in mind if any of their business partners or personal relationships are in need of services like you provide.
Then I am a dead man…
How do you get referrals when you have no customers?
I don’t have a website yet.
Just got a domain yesterday, but I feel paralyzed today…
How can I waste time on designing business cards if you say cold-calling won’t work?
How can I justify time on a website when I am out-of-money TODAY? (I thought cold-calling or going door-to-door was more proactive than waiting for people to come to me…)
You’re going to have to get some sort of portfolio built and/or a list of referrals. Do you have any existing relationships where you can barter for work? Or work with a local charity you work with to produce work?
Once you have that done, then you need to build your brand (site/business cards/etc).
Until you do those, you can’t even cold call. Calling someone and telling them “Your site needs help. I’ll fix it for you” without any proof that you can do better will get a lot of hang ups, or worse.
??? (grammar)
I have the one website I built for that mechanic.
Circular problem is this…
1.) On one hand I know I know my shit having worked in business/IT for over a quarter of century. On the other hand, I look at people’s website, and often am like, “Shit, that would take me 4-6 months to build!” So how can I approach people with, “Your site sucks, and I can do better!”
2.) People seem to want $100 websites. (WordPress has decimated the web development world!)
My current/last client is bitchy with me, because he feels he isn’t getting the traffic we had hoped for. We are going to sit down and talk about things later this week. As I see it, I delivered a professional-looking site, with the best content in the entire metro, and put him on page #1 for several searches. In my mind I did what web developers do. And when I add up all of the work i did for him, it comes out to $15/hour. (I saw a job today on Craigslist to help evict someone for $20/hour…) WTF???
How can I ask for referrals when he is pissed that I won’t keep working for him for free? Am I not worth more than $15/hour?
I don’t doubt what you say is true, David, but how can I feed myself under such insane situations?
Caught me. 
Fixed.
Welcome to the world of free lance. Until you’ve developed a reputation and have proven yourself, people expect lions work for sheep pay.
One thing to consider…not to be stereotypical, but “blue collar” type businesses will be willing to pay at lower rates than “white collar” companies. So an accounting company will be more willing to pay you a higher rate than a mechanic or barber.
I don’t have a website yet.
Just got a domain yesterday, but I feel paralyzed today…
How can I waste time on designing business cards if you say cold-calling won’t work?
How can I justify time on a website when I am out-of-money TODAY? (I thought cold-calling or going door-to-door was more proactive than waiting for people to come to me…)
If you literally have nothing of the sort, you could have basic business cards and a one page informational site up in a day. If you wanted to. Would it be a masterpiece? No, but it’d be a start.
People seem to want $100 websites. (WordPress has decimated the web development world!)
People do want cheap or free, that’s the truth. But if you approach someone, and they are looking for cheap or free in a site? Walk away and move on unless you think they’re able to be reasoned with. People who are penny pinching aren’t going to often be your target market in this business.
And there’s nothing wrong with Wordpress (in this regard, not in a technical one). You can build someone a WordPress site for a thousand or more dollars easy. In fact, using things like that might be a way for you to get some money, quicker, at the start, before you’re stable again. If you know any such CMS/platform well enough to work on, that is.
Still not following you. Did you mean, “You need to build a portfolio and/or a list of referrals.”
Well, I did prove myself and delivered what I promised, and yet all I hear is bitching. In fact, I picked up someone recently off of Craiglist. Did business plan and requirements for a start-up that is seeking angel investors. The work I did for him would normally take 4-6 months and cost maybe $40,000-$60,000. Instead he wanted it in a week and I made $1,200 which came out to $19/hour…
How in the f*** can I make it when people don’t respect what I do?
And to remind you, if working in corporate America was so rosy and stable I wouldn’t be trying to start my own business…
Probably true, but then again, it is easier to approach and convince a plumber he needs a website than convincing an insurance company to hire someone who doesn’t even have a business card or website yet…
I am trying to find freelance work because my job search is dead it being the middle of summer, and gasp my creditors don’t seem to care!
I’m confused. How can anyone condense a 6 month project into a week timeframe?
You cut lots of corners and leave out tons of important details.
For instance, if I asked you to write a novel in a week, what do you think you could produce? Maybe you could write 500 pages, but I bet it wouldn’t be as good as if you took your time and did it right.
People are flipping cheap!!!
Yes, and you’re going to need more than one. One could be luck, two could be coincidence, three and more is a pattern.
Craigslist is not a place to drum up quality business. That’s the same as the people that go to pawn shops and expect the shop to pay retail. Not going to happen. And that person will get what he paid for because there is no way a complete business plan and requirements can be done in 60 hrs.
Finally, a voice of reason! 
Actually, all things considered, I did one hell of a job. But the dude is still living in a fantasy land if he thinks someone can gather requirements and do prelim design work in a week.
The mobile app I did the requirements for could actually bring in a couple million if he wasn’t such a cheap ass… 
When I was in college there was this thing called “internship”. Basically working for near free in exchange for the creds.
In other words, if you can’t find paying clients, do a favor for a non-prof or three and build your portfolio
Being pro-bono gives you more say about scope, and who knows? Do a great job and they might even pay for more.
Because, if you’re looking for people to employ you to build a site for them, you need to prove, at the very least, that you can build a site for yourself. It doesn’t need to be the world’s greatest - just a basic site; clean, tidy and easy to use. (You can always improve on it later, when you have more time.) I can’t imagine anybody employing a “web designer/developer” who doesn’t have their own site, any more than I can imagine somebody commissioning an artist without seeing a single example of their work.
How do you expect to tout for business and advise others that they need a web site for their business if you don’t even have one for your own? It’s a question of establishing basic credibility.
I do have one completed website in my portfolio. Thought maybe that is what people would want to see.
I would love to build an awesome website for myself, but fear it will take too long and I will be on skid row by the time it is done.
Can I just have a single page with contact details, or must my website reflect my development capabilities as well?
What do you think? You’re asking
Don’t you think you at least need something which will back up that claim? As I said, it doesn’t have to be brilliant. It doesn’t have to be huge. It doesn’t have to be perfect. (You can keep working on it a little at a time until you’re really happy with it,) But it does have to be good enough to make people think “Hey - maybe she’s right. Maybe she can build me a better site.”
I’ll repeat myself…Yes, and you’re going to need more than one. One could be luck, two could be coincidence, three and more is a pattern.
If a one page site is all you can get done in a reasonable amount of time, it’s better than nothing. But you better spend some time building something if you ever want to get off the ground.
Your online site is basically your resume/CV, so you need to find the way to put your best foot forward…
Maybe…
Most of my career I have sold myself on my words not a portfolio. Any interview I have ever had, I sold myself in the first few minutes. No smaples were needed, because people know I know my shit.
Now that I am branching off and trying to stop “working for the man” but run my own business, maybe such an approach doesn’t work?
I would love to build an awesome site for my business, but to my other laments, “quality takes time”.
I need to earn about $1,000 in the next two weeks to meet financial obligations. That means I need to land business in the next day or two, and I’m not sure how much I can do as far as a website by then.
My hope was cold-calling people or stopping in their shops, showing that I am indeed an expert based on my words would be enough for now. But it sounds like some people above think that is a tough approach.
That is why yesterday I was looking for sites off of Google that are so horrible that it should be obvious that anything would be an improvement. (Or businesses that have no site.)
If someone has a decent looking site, then obviously I need to wow them with an example.
I dunno. So much pressure and so little time.
If only I had 3 months to learn RWD, build a great portfolio, and then go out and sell…
My guess is you’ve never tried this. Being interviewed for a technical position by people who talk the same language you do and will understand your words is very different from discussing web sites with non-technical people who (in my experience) may not be certain what you mean by a browser, far less anything beyond that. They don’t care if you know HTML, CSS, PHP, ABC, CIA, R2D2 - they want to know what it will look like.
[quote=“mikey_w, post:18, topic:195870”]
That means I need to land business in the next day or two, and I’m not sure how much I can do as far as a website by then.
[/quote]Then might I suggest that your time would be better spent actually getting on with it than angsting over the details on a forum?
Well interviewing with a mega corporation is far different that selling to a small business, but in my defense, I usually have gotten former jobs because of my ability to sell myself to non-technical managers…
Better to ask for directions before heading off into the great wide unknown! 