Full Time Web Designer

Back when the days of starting up in this web design industry, I had experienced total discrimination because I have no portfolio. Well, my first employer was good enough to give me an actual test where I can design a site hands on. But my 2nd employer did not even took a look at my work! I have all my sample sites in my flash drive but I have no site back then to where I can showcase my web designs. And that actually turned them off.

You can actually guess by my experience that if you’re a web designer and looking for a job in a web design company, the number one rule to have to get that job is the web design portfolio. Not many people have experience in this field and would like to try their luck and I can definitely tell, if you want a good company to get into, you should already have an experience.

Freelance Web Design

If you want to be a freelance web designer, it should be you’re number one goal to set up a rock solid web design portfolio. No one’s gonna gamble their money to know how good (or bad) you are at web design. They WANT PROOF. So before you win a client, they already did their research and most of the time, the quality of your work reflected from your portfolio is the best way to win a client.

How To Build Up A Web Portfolio

Now that we know the importance of web design portfolio in this business, lets talk about how we can build your own portfolio.

• By all means, join contests - This is by far the best way to build your portfolio. You earn while you learn and build up your sample works. Digital Point and Site Point are two great sites for web design competitions.
• Do Free Web Design For Friends - If you have friends that needs a web site design, even if its free, do it. But only take a handful, you can always expect friends to abuse free stuff from you, decide only a number of web design works that you will accept and keep in mind your true goal — to build a portfolio.
• Free Themes - Learn to design blogs and submit it to free wordpress blog themes sites. Wordpress.org lets you upload your own theme and be used by many people. The more people using your theme, the more you know that you have a great design. And a great design is always a great addition to your portfolio.

Setting Up A Site

Now that you have a portfolio, there are two things you can do with it. Either showcase it and host it in a free hosting. Or paid hosting, your own site and domain. My personal suggestion would be buying your own hosting and domain. Why? This is business, so treat it like one. Invest on a domain and hosting, it is the most professional way to go and brand your site.