20 Ways To Promote Yourself As A Web Designer

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Web designers can often find it hard to get their name out there and begin getting clients. Don’t fret! Promotion doesn’t always have to cost money!

We compiled a list of ways web designers can promote themselves, and get their name out there. Some of the ways require little to no effort, whilst others require an investment of time. Either way, these tips work and you will start getting more clients in no time!

If you would like to share any other tips and tricks on how to promote yourself as a web designer, 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 help you 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 it’s a win-win situation.

Social Networking

Use online social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Digg to promote your blog articles, design work, and do online networking with other designers.

Need some help? Check out these social media marketing guides.

Ways To Promote Yourself As A Web Designer social media

Create An Email Signature

Putting a signature in all your outgoing emails can generate a lot of traffic to your online portfolio and social media accounts, especially if you send a lot of emails.

Purchase And Design Business Cards

Business cards help you present yourself in a professional way to your possible future clients. If you have a nice eye catching design, and something that is unique, there will be more chance of people looking into your services.

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 it’s 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. Show your personality through your work!

Volunteer

Contribute to open source projects / non-profit online organizations. It looks great on your portfolio.

Ways To Promote Yourself As A Web Designer (3)

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 discussions, 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 it’s 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 digital point forums that hold design competitions. This can give you the 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.

Ways To Promote Yourself As A Web Designer (2)

Get Yourself / Your 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 other’s 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.

3

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 a lot of online buzz.

Author
Iggy
Iggy is an entrepreneur, blogger, and designer who loves experimenting with new web design techniques, collating creative website designs, and writing about the latest design fonts, themes, plugins, inspiration, and more. You can follow him on Twitter

57 thoughts on “20 Ways To Promote Yourself As A Web Designer”

  1. All good information, but avoid 99designs and the rest like the plague.

    Everyone needs projects. Find a local business and barter or a nonprofit.

    Crowdsourcing websites has furthered the assumption that clients can get free work before deciding to pay and has devalued our profession.

    Never, ever give your work away.

    Reply
  2. I guess it is important for every web designer out there to learn SEO as well. It will be a gross misunderstanding if we label blog and forum posting as SEO. Other web marketing techniques need to be adopted for a successful promotion. And above everything else, learn what you are doing and learn it good.

    Reply
  3. Great advice.Some of those tips are invaluable as a freelancer but I find many of my enquiries also come direct from search engines. I have previously overlooked SEO when creating my portfolio but a more considered approach seems to have paid off this time.

    Reply
  4. 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.

    Reply
  5. 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

    Reply
  6. 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.

    Reply
  7. thank you so much. it really helps to have someone like you, helping noobie web designers like me 😛 thanks heaps 🙂

    Reply
  8. 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..

    Reply
  9. 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

    Reply
  10. This was great reading. I hope that somebody notices my hard work once I start building a larger online presence.

    Check me out!!! …lol : )

    Reply
  11. 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

    Reply
  12. Great list!

    I would also add that people should use classifieds. There is tons of work in classifieds. oh, and tweet tweet!

    Thanks!

    Reply
  13. 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!

    Reply
  14. Fantastic Article.
    I have recently purchased a new domain.

    Have to get users for my Site.
    Really helpful article.

    Reply
  15. 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..

    Reply
    • 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.

      🙂

      Reply
  16. 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. 🙂

    Reply
  17. 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!

    Reply
  18. 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!

    Reply
  19. 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!

    Reply
  20. 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

    Reply

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