20 Ways To Promote Yourself As A Web Designer
Web Designers can often find it hard to get their name out there, and begin getting clients. Promotion doesn’t always have to cost money. I have compiled a list of how web designers can promote themselves, and get their name out there. Some of the ways require little to no effort, whilst others require much time. Either way, you will still receive more clients. If you would like to share any others you may have, drop a comment below.
Maintain a Website
If you maintain someone else’s website, the owner may spread the word about your services. You could maybe ask for a small link at the footer of their site, linking back to your site, which will gain some exposure.
Create a Blog
Creating a blog can bring in loads of traffic, and maybe even clients. If you write great content, other people will link back to it, and it will rank higher in search engines, so its a win win situation.
Network Online
Use online social networks such as facebook, twitter and digg to promote your blog articles, design work, and do personal networking with other designer.
Create An Email Signature
Putting a signature in all your outgoing emails can generate alot of traffic, especially if you send alot of emails.
Purchase And Design Business Cards
Business cards can generate alot of business. If you have a nice eye catching design, and something that is unique, there will be more chance of people looking into your services than if you had a plain business card design.
Create a Portfolio
If you put up all your work into a nice online portfolio, clients will be able to see your work, and websites will link to your work if its of amazing quality.
Participate In Forum Discussions
Participating in forum discussions can generate buzz. If you have a clear standing opinion to many forum threads, people will begin to look into who you are, what websites you have etc. The forum threads will be in search engines, thus giving you long term promotion.
Get Personal
If you are personal and unique with your designs, people will see you as unique.
Volunteer
Contribute to open source projects / non profit online organizations. It looks great on your portfolio.
Create A Forum Signature
If you put your website link or even an image in your forum signature, and it looks eye catching, people will click it. Then you just have to post more threads, and reply to them, and it will get your link all over the forum.
Buddy Up
Get another web designer as your buddy. You can work together, give each other work and help each other out. Win win situation.
Blog Comments
Participating in blog discussion, by commenting on other peoples blog entries can give you traffic back to your blog. If you post a good comment that many people are likely to read, then you will get clicks.
Guest Post
The Internet is full of opportunity. Many bloggers big and small go on holiday, and love to take breaks. They might like you to guest post on their blog, and this means you can post link backs to your own site, when it says article written by. Especially if its a big blog you are guest posting on, you will gain loads of exposure.
Participate In Design Competitions
Don’t be shy. There are many websites such as 99designs and digitalpoint forums that hold design competitions. This can give you opportunity to showcase your work, and show people what your design skills are like.
Word Of Mouth
Tell people about your website and the services you offer. Your friends and family are sure to tell other people about you.
Get Yourself / Website In The News
Do something to get your website or yourself in the news / talked about over the blogosphere. Sponsor a charity event, turn your website upside down, it will work!
Trade Ads / Link Swap
Web Designers can help each other out. You can trade links and add them to each others blogroll, or even trade image ads such as 125 x 125px.
Develop A Relationship With All Your Clients
If you develop a personal relationship on a one to one base with all your clients, they will respect you and maybe even come back for more work or better yet, refer you to their friends.
Submit Your Work To Web Galleries
Web Galleries love great design work. Some web galleries online are immensely popular, so if your work gets on the front page of them, you will receive thousands of clicks back to your work, which means more clients.
Hold Contests On Your Website
If you hold contests on your websites, people will tell other people about the contests if it has a great prize, and it will generate alot of online buzz.
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Aneslin (2 years ago)
woow. thanks a lot for this excellent tips.
I think its not fit only for web designers,
as a remote network admin, i can also do many of ur ideas.
just we can make ur ideas to fit our niche.
great article
thanks bro
Yoosuf (2 years ago)
Huh hooooo, its a nice tip, i am doing some and not doing some!, hope to all what mention in the post!
Erick (2 years ago)
Thanks for the tips are so nice.
Im looking for promote my services and meet people, im begin in webdesigner world.
klaus (2 years ago)
Wuhu thats really an amazing tip collection
instant bookmark… keep on
Joel Vardy (2 years ago)
Some good tips, I think new and initiative business cards are a great way to become noticed if you work face to face with people!
fandy (2 years ago)
Hai, thanks for nice tips, and the one I more like is about be “unique” in the good thing…
Caitlin (2 years ago)
These are all great tips, especially volunteering as a way of building a portfolio. It’s a great way to help your career and your community. Thanks!
Ayo Adigun (2 years ago)
Excellnt article. Ive used 90% of the above, with great results.
Dejan (2 years ago)
The article is great,
great tips.
tnx
Pooja Kishnani (2 years ago)
Great tips, thanks for sharing
Zumzar (2 years ago)
Indeed a great article! It contains very useful advice. Especially using forums is a good method.
PelFusion (2 years ago)
liked the article and retweeted it too
e11world (2 years ago)
I gotta say, I feel pretty good about the way I do this. I bascially do all of the above without even noticing. My only problem is not having enough time to complete things (such as my blog).. Nice article!
Website Design Katy, TX (2 years ago)
This is a must read for any website designer! Thanks for the great list!
Alda (2 years ago)
This is great advice. It’s neat that you are giving such precious information. Congratulations for the great work you’ve been doing so far.
TND webdesign (2 years ago)
Aha, so commenting also helps? Well, in that case…
No seriously, this is a good list..but almost a dayjob to do correctly right? My question is..how much time should you put into promoting yourself..
Andy (2 years ago)
As much time as you think is necessary. If you are promoting yourself, and still don’t see an increase in clients, you need to try new ways, and put more time in. If you put the time are effort in, you will see a rise in traffic to your website, and possibly clients.
sidhu (2 years ago)
very nice artical
Website Design (2 years ago)
Thanks for the wonderful tips. Much appreciated
Carson Shold (2 years ago)
Great advice.
The only thing I disagree with is participating in design competitions. Yes, it may get your name out there, but the problems with spec work heavily outweigh any benefits that contributing to a design competition may have. Take a look at my a recent blog of mine about just that – http://carsonshold.com/blog/
ajay (2 years ago)
Awesome article, Thanks for sharing this post.
Leo Ashcraft (2 years ago)
Tweet Tweet!
Raja Raman (2 years ago)
Fantastic Article.
I have recently purchased a new domain.
Have to get users for my Site.
Really helpful article.
Andy (2 years ago)
Fantastic artwork Raja on the behance network
Katrisha (2 years ago)
That was a great article. Have to admit, I was expecting another useless article with a bunch of “Tips” leading to this big “If you pay now” ending, like the rest of them, but this actually helped me! And I have to agree with e11world , one of my problems is the blog too. But practice makes perfect.
Thanks again for the great article. I will be sure to bookmark and ReTweet this one.
Thanks!
mickaservices (2 years ago)
Thanks, I love it
Mabuhay
“I want to change the world but I dont have a password”
Alan Nowogrodski (2 years ago)
Great list!
I would also add that people should use classifieds. There is tons of work in classifieds. oh, and tweet tweet!
Thanks!
Egypt Web Hosting (2 years ago)
Great article, thanks so much
Tim Read (2 years ago)
Great list – also add writing articles. If you can create well researched articles and post them on relevant sites, that really brings good street cred to you
NJ (2 years ago)
A huge collection of CSS galleries along with page ranks and submit links can be found over here:
http://www.stonesouptech.com/blog/2009/09/a-more-complete-up-to-date-list-of-css-galleries/
It’s useful if you want to submit to 200+ websites.
TheAdamJanes (2 years ago)
This was great reading. I hope that somebody notices my hard work once I start building a larger online presence.
Check me out!!! …lol : )
Team Novo (2 years ago)
Great article….keeping coming…
need4design (2 years ago)
Good post. Golden words for a aspiring designer
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Maveric Designs (2 years ago)
Great post. Will definitely be looking into these
GH Web Design (2 years ago)
Very nice amount of information. Will have to try some of these ideas.
Flash Designer (2 years ago)
Something that is not mentioned, SEO, get a domain name that works for you, and optimize the site properly. If you search on “Flash designer” you may see how i rank, with hardly any special SEO effort, such as link building, articles submissions, etc
Peach (2 years ago)
Another great tips here. Thanks a lot!
gr8najam (2 years ago)
wow great… Thanks alot.
Tai Travis (2 years ago)
Most of these seem like a good idea. I am not sold on the #2 and #3 however. If I am tweeting and maintaining a blog then that is less time for me to be designing and coding. It seems like an inefficient advertising. Anyhow back to work..
Logon suunnittelua (2 years ago)
Wau. Thanks a lot! I’m a rookie that wnts to be profesional.. some day.. Thanks for tips.
Ritwika Ghosh Bhattacharya (1 year ago)
Thanks for the tips. Can u give a list of good Web Galleries?
Angelene Zaplan (1 year ago)
thank you so much. it really helps to have someone like you, helping noobie web designers like me
thanks heaps 
phraisohn (1 year ago)
wow!! Thank you for your content. It’s help me lot.
Theo (1 year ago)
Helpful points, thanks for the useful article !
Art4 (1 year ago)
Great stuff.
Thank you very much.
S. Preston (1 year ago)
You almost created your list in sequential order like a to-do list!
Cat Noone (1 year ago)
Great post! Thanks for posting it. I definitely plan to use the tips as much as I possibly can.
Appreciate it!
Webfanatix (12 months ago)
Hmmmm, very interesting. Only question is where you’d get time to do any actual work if your networking the whole time. Something’s gotta pay the bills. I guess you need to find a balance.
Marcus Lewis (6 months ago)
Managing time is essential if you’re attempting to accomplish many of these tasks, but their all necessary in order for you to grow as an artist. As long as you keep on top of your marketing, social media and work great things will definitely happen.
I have begun to really focus on implementing a lot of these tips and have received great results so far. Onward and upward is the only way to go!
Thanks for the refreshing tips
IgniteWebsites (5 months ago)
Excellent tips. I would add cold calling or hire a freelance salesperson. If you hire a freelance salesperson be prepared to pay about 20 to 35% commission.
Claude (4 months ago)
Still a very relevant post even after 2 years.