Freelance right of passage?

If people will hire you with no real work experience... Go for it.

Wait, do you mean if an agency will hire you, or if clients will hire you?

Normally when you freelance you would show a work portfolio of what you have done in the past to prove you can do what you say you can. If you are coming from this training and don't really have a portfolio, I would imagine it would be hard to get consistent freelance work. However if you can get contracts, then I don't see the need to go to an agency first if freelance is your ultimate goal.

Oh, I see. Yes, freelancing is my personal goal for my web career. I am planning on building my portfolio from free, or nearly free, work that I have done for friends, family, and small businesses. Still not sure if that's the BEST way to go about a successful freelancing career.

Use this as a guide on how to go Freelance

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How to get started

1. Think of a great company name, short, memorable, identifiable.

2. Think of a company structure, self-employed, Corp, LLP

3. Think about what your business will be, ie. web design only? plus hosting? e-commerce?

4. Get a small budget

5. Get your software, hosting, domain name

6. Get a contact number, and email address.

7. Create a database, accounting system to keep track of clients, invoices and receipts.

8. Create your website

9. Have some terms and conditions, that also act as working guidelines

10. Do free sites for friends and family to get a portfolio

11. Advertise your business on local sites, gumtree, craiglist, BT tradespace

12. Get customers

13. Record details in database

14. Offer quote

15. Take deposit

16. Build site

17. Tweak site

18. Complete site

19. Take payment

20. Offer subsidiary services,e.g newsletters, advertising, stationary

21. Offer loyalty scheme

22. Kick back and relax

23. Increase budget

24. Use GoogleAdwords

25. Add USP or other differentiator.

26. Contribute to forums to build skills.

27. Employ someone!

Repeat 9-27 as many times as needed

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Skills you need

Patience

Imagination

Access to the internet

A support network

Flexibility

The mind set you need

Time is money

Quality is important, perfection is not

Keep to you circle of competence

Make the client happy

Be professional

Speed is everything

Standardize, standardize, standardize

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Tools you need

Your choosen web design tools, e.g. DreamWeaver, Sublime, or NotePad.

Illustration application like Illustrator or DrawPlus

Photo editing application like Photoshop, GIMP or PhotoPlus

NotePad

Premium stock images

Premium vector icons

Browser bookmarks for

• Sites you like the design of
• Sites you like the technology of
• Sites from various sectors
• Resources
• Learning sites

Fast paced music

Templates, templates, templates, frameworks

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Hope that helps

Thanks for all that detail!! I would love to hear actual stories from people who have worked in both situations. Their hard earned/ learned advice from real world experience is key.

I do the occasional Freelance and here are some points I've observed;

1. Clients want to see a portfolio of site and read client testimonials,
2. Having a 'script' to work from the moment a client contacts you is more effective that working on the fly (unless you're good at that)
3. Clients can take forever to give you the information you need, this can seriously delay the project and wreck finances if the final payment is due on completion.
4. Clients are slow to pay.
5. Clients always try to get a bit more work done, that's fine as long as it's within reason, but you should tell them the additional costs.
6. Not all websites will work out for the client, this may have nothing to do with you, e..g no website can sell ice to Eskimos.