Being a full time web designer for a company would mean 9 hrs of your day dedicated to your comapny, and around 3 - 5 hrs more for your side business (freelance). Freelancing is a business and it will take you more than just do this, and do that kind of thing to get it going. You have to do the accounting, invoice writing and the dreaded customer support. You know you can’t go forever with this kind of set up, juggling full time work and your freelance web design business. You’ll soon realize that you have to pick. Full time  web designer or full time freelance web designer?

Full Time Web Design Job

People loves security, no doubt, we want a better and safe future. That is why sometimes having a full time job is the best way to go. I think this is one of the best reason why people can’t quit their job. It’s for the security. Being a web designer, you know that you only need to design sites for the company, day after day. And wait till the end of the month to get paid. The only thing is, you’ll always hope to have an increase of maybe after a year? The good thing is you only have to work 9 hours a day for the pay check.

Freelance Web Design

Freelance web designers are entreprenuers at heart. They depend on their skills not only in design but people management and social skills. Maybe some business skills but the basics are all there, you can research the internet for that. Now, the advantage of this is that, the more you work, the more you earn. And time is flexible. BUT, the draw back is that, you are not sure of your income. It may decline or rise. There are income fluctuations, just like in real business.

Things to Remeber If You Want To Become A Freelance Web Designer

There are a couple of things I always think about before I took the plunge and quit my full time job. They are:

1. Do You have money to pay your expenses? If you quit your full time job, you have no more income source. Do you have the money to pay the bills without working? What I did was to set aside money to pay my bills for 6 months. Secure that money and quit to become a full time freelance web designer.
2. Do You feel limited, bored at work and think that work is getting in your way of improving? I always felt that doing routine work can bore the hell out of people. And the hardest part is that, you’re like a robot that does things over and over and over again, without consciously thinking about it. This will stop improvement in your skills and, come on people, its plain boring, if that hits you, you know there’s something wrong with your life or you’re better of doing business yourself than browsing youtube in the office.
3. Do You have a good number of clients and works to sustain your freelance web design business? If you are doing freelance web design jobs while having a full time job, it is best to have and keep clients that trusts you and those that have more work for you. When I quit my full time web design job, I have no rock solid client base, I only depended on contests to hopefully feed me. So, if you have the guts to go and try what I did, this I say to you, don’t you dare, or your family will think you’re stupid. Build a list of clients first and think if these clients will come back to you for more work and hopefully sustain your business.
4. Do You have a strong control of your emotions? Believe me, this one is a biggie, most people will think you’re stupid to quit a high paying web designer job. Do you have the guts to control the urge to get angry? If you don’t mind what other people think, you are on your way. Always remember that:“An entrepreneur stands tall against the tide of popular belief”.
5. Have you prepared yourself for the worst and planned for the best? Freelance web design is a business. In business, there are no certainty. We are all at risks. Business will come and go, are you prepared to accept that fact? No one will give you pay check, you are in command of how much you could earn now. Make plans for expansion, harness your skills. Learn more skill set. These are the traits that a full time job won’t teach you.
6. Don’t Be Afraid To Fail! If you never failed, you never lived.

If you follow this pointers, it will help you get started in the freelance web design industry. Always remember that freelancers are entreprenuers, selling their skills, it takes a lot of confidence to sell their skills to people. If you got these trait of an entreprenuer, making money by freelance web design will be easy for you.

During the last couple of days, I have been telling future freelance web designers out there on how they can make money online by freelance web design. I also talked about the importance of building a web design portfolio, should you want to gain a large base of loyal and returning clients. But, the reason I wrote this post is that, I forgot to mention how you can take the payment for the web design work.

Taking Your Web Design Payment

The best way to take payments from clients from around the world is to have a Paypal account. Let me explain what paypal do. Paypal accepts money paid by major credit cards, debit cards or another paypal account. This is very advantageous for web designers in the Philippines as you can accept instant payments from anyone from around the world and in dollars too.

There are things you need first before you register at Paypal.

1. A Valid Email Address - You will need a valid email address so paypal can notify you of transactions. Also, this email address can be used by the web designer to purchase other products on the web. If you decided to buy a software for web design, you can use this email address and Paypal will do the rest to pay it and deduct on your Paypal Balance.
2. A credit card or debit card - You will need a credit card or a debit card to verify your Paypal account. This may be done later if you want, but there is a drawback, you can only send $100 limit. After that, you need to enroll a credit card or debit card on Paypal for verification. They will charge about $1.60 on your card and will be refunded back to you when the verification is complete. Just to let paypal know that your card is working and is enrolled successfully into Paypal.

How To Get Accepted in Paypal Using Eon Debit Card

We all know that its hard to get accepted for a credit card. I know, because I got decline numerous of times. But I found out that Union Bank offers Visa Electron or what they called EON Card that lets you use and be accepted in Paypal with no problem. This is actually what I’m using right now and have no problems so far. The only thing is that it took me 2 weeks before I could use the card.

Hello Dashboard

Once accepted, you can now login to your paypal account. This is where most of transactions happen. You can Withdraw funds from your Paypal account to your Bank account. Or you can put funds from your Bank to your Paypal account to purchase goods online.

Basically, if you would like to offer your freelance web design service internationally, you should be able to accept payments internationally too. And Paypal will do the trick. You can register at Paypal now or see a complete detailed guide on how to make a paypal account.

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.