Where can I get customers who want a website?

[Steve]

Im a web designer and I'm very low on customers. I really need a free way of getting customers as I don not have the money to go out and pay hundreds of pounds in advertising. Im offering it at a fixed rate (not bidding like getafreelancer) so what is the best way to find people who want websites?

Thanks

[Annoyingwish665]

The market for web jobs definitely isn't what it used to be.

Do everything you can as far as marketing yourself:

Print business cards and hand them out to as many people as you can. Even if they don't seem like they need a website, they may know someone who does and end up sending them your way.

Search for free classifieds like Craigslist and post once a week.

Search for businesses in your area, find their website, and if they're far less sophisticated than what you can do, contact them (cold call) and offer your services. This can also be done for businesses outside your area.

Market your company website any way you can. Join social networking sites, get listed on all the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.) Get backlinks to your site, as many as you can. The more links to your site the better.

Start a blog and write about what you can offer. Post everyday. Get as many visitors as you can. Link to your site. Broad search terms like "web design" won't help you, the market is already saturated. Optimize your site or blog for narrowed search terms like "wordpress theme design" or "CSS layouts", etc.

Search for "web development forums", join a few, read, and ask around for ideas on how you can drum up business.

I'm sure there are a ton of other ideas but I can't think of them right now.

Hope this helped a bit.

[FC]

Here are some ideas you will find useful I think.

Sources for customers: classified ad on ebay, lists such as craigslist are abundant and should bring in a few. Calling companies and speaking to their marketing department and making appointments to meet with them. Go back to previous companies for referrals most companies should be glad to help you out if you delivered a satisfactory product.

I used to build web sites and would consider having someone build them for me. The problem on both ends is profitability and maintenance. Then comes referrals.

Maintenance: building web sites that require higher maintenance (medium to larger sites) will be more profitable. If you doing 1-3 pages sites you need to find clientele who need more corporate type sites.

Since so many sites are unprofitable who wants that?
I would rater pay a smaller fee and part of the profits from the site over a period of time. This way the web developer, designer has a vested interested in seeing it become profitable.

Referrals: Next your customers should be able to give you 5 or more referrals each if not you are working with the wring clientele again. The new small account is not going to have referrals or a larger site. Its quick cash but it needs little no support and little or no repeat work. larger accounts will take longer to get the money out of (get some up front?). But these larger corporate accounts will produce continuous income streams with updates and additions. Plus any company of this medium to larger size should have quite a list of referrals. I saw all of this when i actively built sites for companies and learned to let someone else do the small companies site say 1-5 employees (though some in this category may be worthwhile). Sine larger companies may have in house designers, the mid-size company is your target likely 10-100 employees. focus on these and you should do better.

Also if your skills are up their other designers should come to you for consultation and you would charge consultation fees for this. It is not always knowing the answer right at hand but knowing where and how to get them so your resourcefulness is going to play a big part here.

Also other web companies that are doing well should be willing to hire you for some freelance work that could be profitable and turn up some good sources.