This is Day 17 of 31 Days to Start a Freelancing Business (or Make Yours a Better One). If you want to catch up, click here to read Day 1.

Yesterday, you wrote the first four of the seven essential pages of your freelancing website. Today, we’ll get to the last three.

5. Testimonials or Feedback

The testimonials or feedback page is a critical component of your site. Prospective clients take a lot of risk when hiring a service provider for the first time. By reading feedback from others your work, you’re reducing some of this risk for your prospects. You can read more about the importance of client testimonials here.

If you did the assigned task on Day 11, you should have a few testimonials for your site by now. Just put up whatever you have for now. On a later day, we’ll be working on getting more social proof of how good you are.

If you’d like a sample, you can look at my feedback page.

6. Work Samples

Your prospects will definitely want to see samples of your work. If you have work that’s been published online, put links to those pieces on this page.

You can also publish your work yourself, on your website. For example, if you’re a designer, you’ll want to put thumbnails for your best work on this page. Use thumbnails to minimize the loading time of your page. But make sure the thumbnails are linked to higher-resolution versions of the images.

If your samples are physical objects, such as an article published in a magazine or a brochure you designed, you can scan or take photographs of these objects. Very important: don’t publish copyrighted materials on your website! Instead, request your prospects to contact you if they want to see those pieces, like I do on my samples page.

7. Resume

Like the traditional resume, the purpose of this page is to provide information about your work experience and formal training. But don’t make this page look just like your paper resume. Translate the information for the web. Summarize key areas and don’t go into the littlest details.

I’ve noticed that not all freelancers even have this page. I think this is a big mistake. Your resume page can highlight your strengths, particularly if you have a lot of formal training and experience in your field.

For example, my resume page emphasizes how heavily I invest in my continuing education, as well as my 20 years writing experience.

By the end of today, you should have the 7 essential pages on your freelancing website.

There are other pages you could add, but which I think are optional, such as:

• resources – products and training programs you recommend to your prospective clients (this is the only place where you should have affiliate links, in my opinion)
• squeeze page – to collect the email addresses of your prospective clients. Highly recommended, but not necessary if you’re just starting out.
• privacy – your policy about protecting your readers’ privacy. You SHOULD have this page if you collect information about your readers, such as if you have an opt-in form or squeeze page.
• freebies – a landing page for free stuff you’ve made for your site visitors, such as special reports, white papers, WordPress themes, website scripts, etc. Here’s an example of a landing page for a free report from my site. (While you’re there, feel free to download the report; no opt-in required).

To Blog, Or Not to Blog?

Now we get to an important question: should you have a blog?

You have a WordPress site, which means you could blog very easily. You’ve got all the tools. But should you?

Blogging is an essential tool for any business to attract clients, including a freelancer’s business. So, yes, I think you should blog.

Here are just a few things you can accomplish with your blog:

• Highlight your expertise – especially if you’re a writer, a blog functions as an excellent sample of your work. But even if you’re a virtual assistant, web designer or other type of service provider, you can display your expertise through your blog posts.
• Attract a steady stream of traffic - by blogging, you’re publishing new content regularly. It’s content that will attract traffic to your site.
• Have a central hub for your social media efforts – a blog is central for participating in social media. It gives you a place and a reason to reach out to your social media contacts. They’ll want to get to know you better, and they will naturally check out your blog (rather than a static site), to do so.

That said, a blog can be a lot of work. So this is something you should definitely think about. If you decide not to blog (yet), don’t sweat it. You can start a blog anytime you want to. After all, you’re using WordPress on your site, right?

Incidentally, Sharon McMillan and I will be discussing blogging for freelancers in the next Savvy Freelancing Webinar. I don’t have the details yet, but if you’d like to stay in the loop, you can sign up for the webinar here. I’ll send you the webinar details as soon as they’re available.

Are there other pages you think you ought to have on your site? Did I leave anything out? If so, please post a comment below.

Lexi

photo credit: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

PS: Need a step-by-step blueprint for creating an effective website? You’ll find it in “The Savvy Freelancer’s Website Secrets: How to Create a Client Magnet Online.” Check it out!

This is Day 16 of 31 Days to Start a Freelancing Business (or Make Yours a Better One). If you want to catch up, click here to read Day 1.

Yesterday, you installed the must-have plugins in your WordPress site. Today, you’re going to start writing content in your site!

If you will only have seven pages on your freelancing website, then I suggest those pages should be:

1. Home Page

This is the entry page, or the first thing visitors will see when they type in your domain name (remember? www.yourdomain.com?). The home page should have a title or headline that will compel your target clients to read the rest of the page. This is where your USP comes in. If you did the assignment on Day 9, you’ll have something to put on your home page.

The home page should be brief, but give a summary of your services. It should also have clear links to the other pages on your site, such as your list of services.

You may also want to add a nice, informal, personable photograph of you on your home page. It helps your prospective clients to bond with you instantly. (Tip: Make sure you’re looking into the camera.)

For a sample, take a look at the home page of my professional website.

2. About Page

Now, pull out that story you wrote about yourself on Day 5. You may want to revise it a little to fit better on your About page.

Should you use the first person or third person? Either way works, except that some people aren’t comfortable talking about themselves the whole time! If that’s the case with you – or you want your story to sound more objective – then write the About Page in the third person, like I do here.

If you didn’t put a photograph on your home page, you should definitely put one in your About Page. Come on, let your prospects get to know you better!

3. Services

This is the page where you publish your menu of services, which you completed on Day 7. Make the page easy to read, so your prospects don’t get confused or lost. It’s easy to lose clients this way.

If you decide to publish your rates as well (which I highly recommend), use the assignment from Day 8. Make sure to read the comments on that post for an excellent suggestion about how to express your rates.

4. Contact

It’s essential that prospective clients be able to reach you from your website! Some people recommend having a telephone number on your contacts page, or even a customer support live chat. Whether you do so or not depends on your personal style and the needs of your target clients.

Personally, I don’t like to talk to my clients (prospect or otherwise). That’s because I’m a stay at home Mom with a preschool-age child. It’s nearly impossible for me to engage in a telephone conversation without being interrupted. In fact, I have to schedule phone calls (when absolutely necessary) during the times when hubby is home to keep the munchkins at bay, or after they’re asleep.

On the other hand, I know that some clients like to talk to a person first before deciding to hire them. So by making this choice, I am probably turning off some prospective clients. Oh well. We’re not the perfect fit for each other at this time. That’s ok.

At the very least, your prospective client should be able to Email you from your site. This is where the WordPress plugin cformsII comes in handy, and why I recommended it yesterday. With cformsII, you can create a contact form on your site without displaying your Email address online. You don’t want to publish your Email address because that makes you vulnerable to spam bots that harvest Email addresses on websites. Here’s the contact form I made with cformsII.

That’s it for today. We’ll talk about the next 3 essential pages you should have on your freelancing website tomorrow.

In the meantime, how’s your website going? Let me know by posting a comment below.

Lexi

PS: I should point out that you ought to write all this content by creating Pages in WordPress, rather than posts. Pages are for static content on your site. Use Posts if you want your site to have a blog, which is dynamic content.

PPS: If you’re not comfortable with writing, refer to Copyblogger.com and Contentrix.com for easy-to-follow tips on writing web content.

PPPS: If you want more detailed guidance on building your freelancing website, take a look at “The Savvy Freelancer’s Website Secrets: How to Create a Client Magnet Online.”

photo credit: gualtiero

This is Day 15 of 31 Days to Start a Freelancing Business (or Make Yours a Better One). If you want to catch up, click here to read Day 1.

Yesterday you installed your WordPress site and picked a theme to use.

Today you will install plugins into your site. Plugins are functionalities that allow you to easily do things in your site – technical stuff, like backing up your data, or things to help make your site easier for your readers to use.

Plugins make your WordPress professional website powerful, even if you don’t know anything about HTML coding or website authoring.

Here’s a list of 10 WordPress plugins I think every freelancer should use:

1. Akismet – helps screen out spam comments

2. WP-DB-Backup – automatically backs up your WordPress database

3. cformsII – adds a contact form on your site, without you having to reveal your Email address. See it in action here.

4. Social Bookmarks – adds social bookmarking buttons on your posts so your readers can easily share or tag them. You don’t need this plugin if you’re using the Headway theme, since Headway has its own widget for this.

5. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – automatically makes a lists of posts related to the current one, with links to each post. You can see it in action below this post, under the photo credit.

6. Tweetmeme – tracks the number of times your post has been Tweeted about, and displays a button so that readers can easily tweet it.

7. wp-cache – helps your site load up faster. Especially helpful if you’re a graphic designer with a graphics-heavy site.

8. All-in-One SEO Pack – easily optimize each post/page for your target keywords. You don’t need this if you’re using either Thesis or Headway or some other theme with SEO functionality.

9. Photo Dropper – finds Flickr photos with Creative Commons license, so you can enhance your post with a picture without ever leaving the WordPress editor.

10. What Would Seth Godin Do – allows you to display a customized message either on top of, or at the bottom of each post. Use it to invite readers to sign up for your RSS feed or newsletter. You can have different messages for first-time and returning visitors. See my message to you at the bottom of this post.

By the way, if you need step-by-step help to use WordPress, you can see free tutorials here.

Are there any plugins I missed? Let me know by posting a comment below.

Lexi

PS: Need more detailed help with setting up your professional website? Check out “The Savvy Freelancer’s Website Secrets: How to Create a Client Magnet Online.”

photo credit: striatic