I’ve been hiring and working with freelance designers since 1999 and there is something which has always amazed and shocked me.

Even though every freelancer has a unique style and taste but there is one starking similarity in them — hardly anyone of them uses the most effective tactic to double or triple their profits instantly.

I am talking about tactics popularly known as Up-Selling — the art of selling addon products and services

Yeah yeah, I know you don’t do it as much for the money as for your passion for design. However, you have bills to pay and that BMW to buy.

The most perfect example of Up-Selling is when you order a burger at McDonald’s, you are always asked if you’d like fries with that. Yes, we are talking about giving the user to purchase additional services / products from you when they order something.

Now whenever a client comes to you for a design, they probably have just one thing in mind — they want a website for their business. Most of the times they haven’t decided on the webhost they are going to go with, the internet marketing strategy they are going to follow and, sometimes, not even their domain name.

They just know that they need a website and they need a designer to create one. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is an excellent opportunity for profit.

SO, what all can you resell with webdesign? Here are a few ideas –

1. Web Hosting. Sure you can’t have a website available to the world without having a webhost. So rather than confusing them by recommending 10 different webhosts who offer 50 different packages, buy a reseller hosting account and sell hosting to them yourself.

With a reseller account, you can charge your client anything and pay a wholesale fees to the ISP. And interesting thing is that they will never know who actually is hosting the site and will have the comfort of dealing with a real person. For you, it’s extra profit.

One host which I fully recommend is HostGator. I had an account with them for over two years before I moved to a VPS and was very happy with their services. I am sure that you will be too.

2. Marketing Services. You can offer managed internet marketing services to your clients. And to make it easier for yourself, just subcontract them. If you are interested, I run a company which offers reseller plans for web designers and consulting firms. Just give me a buzz at lord@lordbrar.com and I’d send you the details.

3. Domain Names. You can offer consulting services for helping to find a good domain name and you can even register a domain for your client on their behalf.

4. Annual Maintenance. Offer your customers an annual maintenance service where you can offer to do minor tweaks and updates on the website for an annual fees. It doesn’t involve much work and can be a great stream of income.

5. Backup Services. You can easily sell your customers a data backup service just in case something goes wrong. If your client’s site uses databases or other dynamic stuff then it’s even better. Remember, the fear of loss is worse than hope of gain.

All that said, it is important that you don’t upsell the stuff to the client that he or she doesn’t need. They are trusting you for good advice and great service — give that! The happier the client, the more business and recommendation he or she will give to you.

In the next post, I am going to talk about another very important strategy for increasing your profits — Repeat Selling. Until then - Rock on!

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I’ve been through my fair share of clients, well over a hundred successful transactions in the past two years for that matter, and I’ve come to know when a project is worth taking on or not. As a freelance designer, I know that time was of utmost importance. Knowing when to drop a potential project can mean hundreds (and in some cases, thousands) of dollars, not to mention precious time. Now, I share my knowledge with you! Here’s some situations I suggest I’ve been faced with that I suggest you try to avoid:

• I don’t have any money, but this will get you some great exposure! Heard this before, and 9 times out of 10, that’s complete and utter bullshit. Unless you have some hard evidence that your client’s project will, without a doubt, succeed, then don’t give in to this kind of ploy. Client’s that tell you this are generally just looking for some free design work and aren’t worth your time. However, there are certain times when some back-links are worth your time. For example, let’s say that your client owns a site that sells non-unique Wordpress themes. Your client comes to you looking for a Wordpress design to add to their inventory, but doesn’t have any cash on hand and offers a link to your site in the footer of the theme. This could potentially be very profitable for you, providing that people buy the theme and that the people who buy it actually have some decent traffic. On the other hand, this could prove to be pretty pointless; if the only people that use your theme own blogs about gardening, chances are no one’s going to be clicking the “designed by” link you so graciously accepted as payment for the design. Use your brain in this situation and evaluate how much exposure you’ll actually be getting.
• I’m not sure what I want, and I won’t pay if I don’t like it. I’m sorry, but do I look like a Jedi to you?

I can’t read your mind, and neither can most normal people. Clients that have no idea what they want are either really indecisive or haven’t put all that much thought into their site. Chances are, they probably have no idea if they’ll want to pay you either. Never work without some kind of design brief, it should save you some misery.

• I have a few other designers in mind, can you create a few mock-ups and maybe I’ll pick you? This can be one of a few things. The client could possibly already have a designer picked out and needs some ideas to hand over to him. What better way to get free ideas than to ask for free mock-ups from a bunch of other designers? The client might be an honest person and is just looking to find the best designer he can get with his money. Either way, free mock-ups are generally a waste of time. Put your foot down and tell the client that you’ll do free mock-ups — if you’ve received a 50% down-payment.
• I’m not comfortable with a contract/up-front deposit, can we go without it? Don’t bend for anyone. If you’re old enough to be legally binded by a contract, do it. Protect your own ass as much as you can. Take a 50% up front deposit so clients can’t simply run away with your hard work. If a client ever suggests that you change your business practices for them, deny them (in a professional way, of course) and move on.
• I thought this was supposed to be coded? I’d like my money back. If you’re like me, you love the Photoshop aspect of design and can’t stand coding. I generally just create .PSDs and refer my clients to a good coder to get their project finished up, or handle the outsourcing myself and hand over the complete package. I’ve run into quite a few clients though, that never mention a word about front-end coding until it comes time for payment. As soon as the phrase “my PayPal address is ..” comes up in conversation, the words “I thought this was going to be coded” flies right back and slaps me in the face. So, after my first encounter with this situation, I’ve kept logs of all my conversations so that when someone tries to get free coding out of me, I can send them a large text file and tell them so try to find the words “coding”, “HTML” or “CSS” in it. Sidenote: After many comments regarding this point, I thought I should add this. My clients know that I outsource my coding work, and I make this very clear. This point refers to clients that try to get free work out of you, which is quite common these days.

Once again, I hope this article can help some designers out! Thanks for reading, and have a great Easter Monday!

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