Web Design Business Startup Kit | EVERYTHING YOU MUST HAVE!

starting successful freelance business can be way easier than you think but only if you have the right tools today we're going to be talking about everything that you need to start a successful web design business on a budget let's get started [Music] what's going on guys this is pate Smith and welcome to another video if this is your first time on my channel and you want to learn how to grow your freelance business or just get paid to do what you love make sure to click below and subscribe we live in a pretty cool time where there are literally tools that can fill almost every role in your business there are tools that can fill the role of an accountant an attorney even a collection agency and anything else that you can imagine this is a huge benefit for freelancers like you and I that don't have the extra money to go out and hire all of these different team players to build your team so as we go through each of these tools please keep in mind that there are other tools that will work just as well and if you already have found a tool that you like and it fits your style and it fits everything that you're doing don't feel like you've got to change that just because I recommended it in this video but you also have to keep in mind that these tools are your virtual team members and a team is only as strong as the weakest player so we need to make sure to pick the right tools for you that are gonna set you up for success now if that being said the first tool that you're gonna need is something to manage your proposals your contracts your invoices and everything in between this is essentially the accountant and the attorney of your business now when I started my business I tried several different tools to manage all these different things and I finally found one that fit everything that I needed it to do and this tool is called hello bonsai hello bonsai is geared towards freelancers like you and I and so it's gonna take care of our proposals our contracts our invoices our payments and everything in between it actually can even track your time on projects if you're charging an hourly rate now a couple things that I love about hello bonsai is first the pre-written legally binding agreements that look super professional this save me a ton of time having to drag those on my own I also love the Auto payment options because this gives me flexibility to sit somebody up on a monthly fee that just gets auto billed from their credit card in the proposals you're able to set clickable options so if you've got different to your packages you can send the proposal and they can actually click the package that they want and then approve that proposal when you send proposals and agreements you're actually able to see when that client opens that so if you haven't heard back from them or they haven't approved that but you know they open it a couple days previous you're able to reach out to them and fill out that situation and kind of have a good idea of where they're at in that process I also love all of the payment options hello bonds that works through stripe but you also have the ability to offer wire transfers and also PayPal and I love giving clients a lot of different ways to pay and also I know that hello box that came out with a recent feature where people can do partial payments which makes it super easy to get paid from your clients finally I love the support that hello bonsai offers I've never had any huge problems but it's super nice to know that if anything did happen you can reach out to them and they're super quick to get back to you and help you through any issues that you might be having now when we're talking about price this is one of the pricier tools that you're going to use but it's definitely worth it when you are dealing with people's payments and agreement you want to make sure that you've got the right setup so you don't have to worry about it down the road so price wise if you want to pay a year in advance it's gonna break down to about sixteen dollars a month if you want to go just month-to-month it's about twenty four dollars either of these is definitely worth it for everything that hello bonsai is gonna offer for your business a lot of other freelancers that I know also like to use QuickBooks which is a great option regardless of which tool you choose just make sure that you you understand how it works and then you can move forward and focus on your business and not have to deal with frustrating invoices or proposals or figuring out how to use your payment processor now the next thing that you're going to need is a powerful web design platform and if you've watched any of my other videos you know that I am a die-hard web user now with that being said I'm not going to get into all the reasons that I love web flow because there are a lot of other options out there the important parts that you find a platform that meets your needs and it's going to help you be as efficient as possible I've built websites on Wix WordPress and Squarespace and all of these are very viable options so regardless of which one you pick and make sure that you commit to it you master it so you can build truly beautiful websites on your platform now most of these web design platforms are going to be free it's important to note that obviously your client is going to have to pay a hosting fee so a lot of times you can have it in a pre-launch phase where you're able to build it design it and there is no charge to you however once you want to take that website live you need to make sure to have your clients pay that fee in rare cases like with web flow it has so many different features that are for freelancers that there are paid options that you can update ooh but worst case scenario you're gonna be paying maybe 50 or 60 bucks a month and that's only when your agency or your freelance business reaches the point where you've got 10 to 15 projects going on at the same time but other than that you're not gonna have to worry about any big fees to use these platforms the next tool that you're gonna need is something that allows prospects to book a strategy call with you now this is one of my favorite tools not only because it's free but because it's a super effective way to get on the phone with prospects and close them as clients so for me I use a software called calendly there are paid versions of this I found that the free version works just fine and you can actually embed your calendar link right on your website and so people can look at your schedule they can see your availability and they're actually going to be able to just book a call right there and then even receive reminders before that call just to make sure that the calls go through and you're able to get on the phone with as many prospects as possible you're also gonna probably want a screen share and video chat software and this is something that's going to be super important if you're wanting to work remotely now I use a software called joined Omni it's basically a simpler version of Zhu which you've probably heard of regardless of which of these you use you're going to want to make sure that you have a way to have a client or a prospect get on their computer and you be able to share your screen and what's going on on your computer this is a great way not only to go through proposals but it's a fantastic way to go through the website revision process or anything else that you need to talk to somebody or show them something this is gonna be a super useful software another tool that's going to be useful to have when we're talking about client outreach and reporting is something called luma and loom is a screen recording software and the way that that's different from a Zoomer join me is I'm able to actually click record and record not only what's going on on my screen but record my voice this is a great way to send out monthly reports is something that I use for my SEO reports I'll click record and walk them through all their analytics and everything and then just send that link right to their email I love this software because it makes it super easy for me to get a lot of information to my client in a short period of time and I'm also able to see when that client opens the video just to make sure that those reports or whatever it is that I'm sending is getting opened and watched this screen recording software is also my favorite way to do client outreach because a lot of times when us as freelancers are cold calling people it's really difficult to give them a reason to listen to us right and so what I'll do is actually take this screen recording software and I will do a quick three-minute video where right there on my screen I'm gonna walk them through their website and make a couple critiques and a couple adjustments to their site show them ways that they can improve that and I'll send that out to them once I see that they've open and watched that video I'll actually call them the very next day to follow up and this is a night and day difference when you've actually reached out to them and provided something valuable or useful when you get on the phone with them they're much more willing to chat with you because they can tell that you actually care and that you've put in the time so these are the most important tools for my business yes there are tons of other tools that you can use there's free tools and there's paid tools and for the sake of keeping this video short there's a lot of those that I haven't put into the video but I'll make sure to link them down below along with all the other ones that we've talked about I would recommend jumping into all of them and trying a free trial seeing what works best for your business because at the end of the day the most important thing is that you can get these tools in place you can start using them and understand how they work and then you can set them and forget them and focus on what you do best once you have these tools set up there should be nothing holding you back from just pushing forward and looking for your first client don't be bashful when looking for those clients and don't feel like you're too much of an amateur to charge for what you're doing just having these tools built into your business alone makes you enough of an expert to get out there and charge a good amount of money for a website so good luck I'll catch in the next video [Music]

Channel: Payton Clark Smith

Views: 13,277

Keywords: freelance, freelancer, freelancing, freelance tools, freelance starter kit, freelance startup, freelance starter guide, webflow, wix, wordpress, hello bonsai review, hello bonsai, loom, zoom, join.me screen sharing, squarespace, paytonsmith, paitdigital

Id: ptxOgYleaso

Length: 9min 33sec (573 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 07 2020