If you’re looking for resources and ideas on How To Become a WordPress Freelancer – here’s a great starting point from Kori Ashton. Learn tips and resources on supporting a career that could lead to a SIX FIGURE income as a website freelancer working for yourself!
Full Transcript:
Hey y’all, my name is Kori Ashton in beautiful San Antonio Texas, and today we are gonna talk about how to actually become a web design freelancer. So many of you out there that watch my channel are either trying to figure out how to build your own website, or maybe you are trying to be a freelancer, and you’re trying to learn how to get money from other people to build their websites for them, whether it’s their personal website, their business website, their community website, whatever that looks like, you’re trying to become a freelancer, how do you do that?
I’m gonna give you some great examples today on not only how to get started, where to find some first few clients, and how to find some great resources, let’s talk about it.
Hey for those of you interested in knowing about my health journey as I combat cervical cancer, stick around at the end of this video, I’ll give you an update to that, but let’s get right to this you guys, we are talking about how to become a freelancer, which is super exciting to me, because that is my heart, that is absolutely how I started my company, I was freelancing from my couch, and in coffee shops, hanging out with my dad, working with him as he had clients, and I would help him, and then we started networking around in the community, that’s exactly how I got started.
So I wanna walk you through today some ideas on how you can get started as well, and not feel so totally alone or helpless or feel like all you can do for resource is YouTube search. Come on y’all, we can get more creative than that, I’m gonna give you some ideas starting right now.
How It Started For Me
So it’s true, my story started on my couch, that’s exactly how I started working, networking, with potential clients, I would meet them, maybe out in the community, I would go to their restaurant, and while I was sitting in the restaurant I would do a search on my phone and figure out, wow, their website is horrible rotten, just wonky looking, and I’ll call over the manager and say hey, who handles your digital marketing, I’d love to help improve this, I’d even do a trade. Right, especially as you’re starting to grow your portfolio.
I did a lot of trades in the beginning, I ended up getting a brand new kayak, I ended up getting a trailer for our band, I got landscaping done for my house, I got granite countertops for my kitchen, I got a roof on one of my houses, you guys, this is how you do it, you start in just kind of that trade attitude, and tell somebody, hey, if you’re willing to let me test and build your website, and kinda learn from your experience, let’s do a trade, you can give me an exchange of goods. That’s one way to start.
Simple Fees
Another way to start is to just set a very basic fee, a very simple fee, something like 2,500 bucks, and that gets you, what, 2,500 bucks gets you customized WordPress theme, so you’re gonna go out and you’re gonna either use a free theme or a purchased theme, and you would customize it for them, match their colors, match their logo, embed their logo in it, match their fonts as best as you can with that customized WordPress theme.
You’ll go ahead and build out five pages for them, that could include their home page, their about us page, their contact page, and maybe two service pages, and then you’ll go ahead and agree to do their home page onsite SEO, so their top page is typically their home page, so you would do onsite SEO for that one particular page, and then you could link in maybe up to three social networks, so their Facebook, their Twitter, and their YouTube channel, or their Instagram, something like that, you would add the links to the bottom of their website, very very simple, very straightforward, 2,500 bucks.
Providing Additional Services
Then after that, you can always add onto the project, if they say, well I have four services. Okay, well that’s gonna be an additional $250 per page, that makes our project now worth three grand. You see how it adds up y’all, it can add up actually very quickly, and if you’d like to know more about adding up, I just did a video about how to add to your scope, I’ll put that link in the description box below, and I give you a lot of different ideas of how you can add different things to a simple scope like this, where all of a sudden you’re not just charging $2,500, you’re now charging nearly five grand, six grand, 10 grand, you can really go big with these things.
It really depends on how hungry you are to learn, and how hungry you are to educate your clients, because the more they’re educated and knowledgeable about what it is that they’re buying from you, the more trust you gain, the more recurring revenue you gain, and you get them coming back asking you for more help and more help, and you’re able to add more invoices and build more revenue, that’s the way you start as freelancer.
How To Find Clients
Okay so what about those of you wondering how to even find clients or customers, how do you get them? That’s one of the most frustrating things, is you’re spending a lot of time learning everything, but you just aren’t having anybody knock at your door or email you off your website.
How do you actually find customers? I have an entire video dedicated to that topic right here, I’ll put the link in the description box below so you can go check that out, how to find customers, I give you ideas beyond just going and doing a cold call.
I give you a lot of different ideas, where you can go to different communities, how you can engage with your community, how you can maybe hold an event that is inexpensive to do, and grow your network.
Resources – Great Hosting & Security
Alright, so we’ve talked about how to actually start and price things, right, we’ve talked about now how to find clients, and be sure to watch that other video, ’cause I’m gonna give you a lot of cool ideas there, but there’s also the fact of where do you go whenever you just need help, you need resources?
I’m gonna give you a list right now that’s gonna help you, and I’ve got other videos as well. So first and foremost, you need to invest in a partnership with a really great hosting company that can provide really awesome hosting packages, and security for every single website that you build.
Here’s why, you’ll want to bring your clients into your hosting environment, so that one, you know there’s backups running, you know if something breaks, you know how to get to it, and two, you can charge them that recurring revenue every month.
I’ve got a video down below that talks about recurring revenue, this is the all out key for being a successful freelancer, you guys need to wrap your heads around the different steps you need to take in order to be successful at this.
A lot of you are gonna pick up maybe one or two or three websites a year, just kind of talking to your friends. You don’t want that, if this is something that you wanna have your full-time career, this is supposed to be providing six figures a year, providing for your family, providing for you to have a travel life, whatever that looks like, you can do it, I’m testament to that, you can do it, it just takes understanding how the model works.
So what I did was I went out a found a great hosting company that I can actually resell their packages, basically, and have great security, so I highly recommend Liquid Web, if y’all are familiar with them, they’re the most helpful humans in hosting, and I just adore them, they’re incredible, huge help when it comes to WordPress, specific WordPress hosting.
Great Community
You also wanna find a great community, and we have that inside the world of WordPress. You have something called WordCamps that you can attend literally all around the world, these are being held every single month, and you can go to them for the horribly expensive price of like 20 bucks, it’s amazing.
You can go, maybe if it’s a two day event it might a $40 fee, that includes typically some sort of really cool swag, and all of your food while you’re there, and amazing workshops all day long, so be sure to check out WordCamps, you can do a search for WordCamp.org, I’ll put the link in the description box as well, and there’s also amazing meetup groups.
Again the WordPress community is extremely active, and if they’re not particularly active in your specific area, why don’t you engage that? Go ahead and start a meetup group in your area, start reaching out, ask WordCamp central to help you create that meetup group, they’ll pay for the expense of meetup.com, they want you to build and grow the community, as long as you’re hosting events, they’ll be a part of that, and they’ll support that, and they might even find you a sponsor to help pay for pizza once a month, or something like that, so that you can really spoil the audience, and get them engaged and get them communicating there as a really great resource for you inside the world of WordPress.
Another thing you wanna do is find great support, so again, Liquid Web has just been amazing to us, because they understand WordPress. There’s nothing more frustrating than calling up your hosting company and they tell you, oh, sorry, that’s a WordPress issue, we only handle server issues, or we only handle security issues, we don’t know how to help you with your plugin break. Well, that won’t happen, Liquid Web can absolutely help you with that because they are WordPress experts.
PressTribe is another community that I was blessed to start, it’s a free Slack community where you come in, and once a week, we’re doing live chats, where you’re able to engage with other freelancers, and build that community, build that resource, maybe you’re not a very good designer, but you’re a great developer, and you need to connect with a designer, this is one place you can go to do that.
WP Elevation is another really cool resource, that I’m gonna suggest to you, especially if you’re ready to take your freelance process to the next level, let’s say you’ve been trying this for six months, a year already, and you’re kind of wondering, should I stay in this or should I try something else?
Well, I’m gonna tell you right now, get a hold of WP Elevation, Troy Dean, his entire community over there is gonna help you understand how to take your freelance game to that next level, to punch it up a notch, and to figure out how to actually make it be profitable for you. There’s a lot that he offers, a lot of different courses, so check that out.
And you need to have really great resources so that you aren’t just Googling, or coming over to YouTube, and trying to struggle on my channel, so WP101 is a really great starter site, WP Beginner.com actually has a lot of beginning information, as well as advanced topics, so take a look at that.
Did you know that WordPress itself over on WordPress.org has an actual support forum where you can go in and ask your question, and people literally from around the world come in within minutes typically and respond back to you, and you can get that type of instant help, if it’s not instant it might take a couple hours, but you’re more than likely to get a response, especially if it’s a broad topic.
If it’s related specifically to a theme or to a plugin, you might need to reach out to those specific developers, but I’m telling you right now, if it’s a broad question like hey, I got locked out of my WordPress site and I don’t know how to get back in, there’s gonna be somebody there to help you. Or hey, I broke my entire menu, and everything’s frozen up, and I don’t know how to fix that, there’s an entire community there to help you, you just post that question and you’re gonna have people responding to you, and in multiple languages.
And I mentioned earlier WordCamps and meetup groups, those are really great places for resources to network, not only to find potential clients, but also to find people who can resource with you, maybe you’ll find a photographer who’s ready to go to work for you, and you guys can start growing your package deals. Maybe you can find a designer or a copywriter. Again, you can kinda grow your scopes and increase your offering and your value to your clients, that’s gonna increase your profit margin at the end of the day. All you would do is outsource to them the task that they can do, and you handle the rest of it, it all goes under your scope, your contract, of course, you’re liable to do the work, but if you find some trustworthy people inside of these communities, you’re gonna do really well.
And of course, there are other YouTube channels. I’d like to ask y’all, guys let’s crowdsource this, if y’all can comment in the thread below, gimme some ideas of where you’re finding really great tutorials and help online, maybe you find a Twitter channel, maybe you found another YouTube channel, something like that that is your go-to, your staple, I would love to brag on them, give them some exposure here on our channel, and talk about all these other places online, all these other places maybe directly on the ground, in person, that you can communicate with, and find awesome help in being a freelancer.
Y’all, this is how it’s done, this is exactly how I started, just from your couch, just grinding it out, and figuring out, spending many a night up at two, three, four in the morning, maybe never going to sleep, just trying to figure out that website.
I know you can do it, and I promise you, if I’ve been able to do it, you’ll be able to do it. I make six figures now, and beyond, because I’ve been able to get sponsorships with my YouTube channel, I’ve been able to travel and teach, I’ve been able to travel and speak, you guys, this is how it’s done, get excited about it, know that if I’m capable, you’re fully capable I promise, because I’m not even a developer, I don’t know if y’all know that about me, I don’t write any PHP, I literally just customize themes.
If I need some extra help, I’ve got some networking buddies, I’ll toss it over the fence to them, outsource it to them for 125 bucks an hour, get it back to my side, the client’s happy, I’m happy, my freelance buddy’s happy, ’cause he’s made his prime dollar, everybody’s happy, it’s a win/win. And that’s a possibility for you. If you like this, if you’re interested more in being a freelancer, check out an entire playlist I have for you in the description box below.
I hope this has been helpful, I’ll see y’all next WordPress Wednesday, bye everyone.
Health Update
Hey y’all, gosh, that was a pretty long video, so if you’ve stuck around to check out my health journey, thank you so much for doing that, it’s very kind of you, I’m actually on week four of chemo and radiation right now, and I am still definitely feeling the fatigue whenever we’re talking about chemo, radiation though.
I just got news today y’all, holler, woot woot, the tumor is shrinking, my cervical cancer is getting smaller, that is the official word from the doctor’s today, so I couldn’t be happier, and it’s a lot of your positive attitude, your amazing tweets, your kind DMs to me, all these amazing comments that y’all are leaving me, thank you so much for the encouragement, I read every one of ’em, and I try to respond to every single one of ’em, so thank you so much for that, such an encouragement.
Such a positive way to make me wanna get back in front of the camera every single week no matter how wonky or tired or exhausted I look, it doesn’t matter to me, I just wanna help y’all, I wanna encourage y’all, and challenge y’all, you can do this, I promise you you can do this, don’t give up on your dreams, work hard, and stay humble always, right y’all? Alright, I’ll see y’all next time, bye everyone.
