AJ Picard — Owner: Sauce Designs + Clava

Photo by Cytonn Photography on Unsplash

Over the past two years, I’ve started to develop a passion for design. That’s when I decided to really dive into learning how to become a great designer.

After developing this huge passion for design I tried to see if I could make some extra cash on the side designing websites and mobile apps for people. My first couple of customers I had were on Fiverr, even those this platform helped build out my portfolio (if you don’t have a portfolio to showcase your work good luck closing any clients) I did get paid for those jobs but I was way underpaid. One job I did for $100, it took at least 15 hours to complete.

Fiverr sends leads but the issue is if you’re not the dirt cheapest you aren’t going to close anything. I remember when I first got on Fiverr I was charging $150 for my gig. I received 0 leads, I dropped the price of the gig to $30 and I got 2 gigs in a week.

I tried to find other ways to get leads that had bigger budgets and I could actually treat the project as an actual designer.

The best advice I can give you to get your first true client is to reach out to your friends/network, while you’re doing that you can also start designing products on your own and then posting those designs on social media.

I recently gained 2 clients from reaching out to a family member and the other I got from networking on Shapr. These clients originally started out as warm leads, but my next challenge was to figure out how to close these leads especially since I’m not an experienced designer.

Going into pricing out both projects I thought about one thing.

While developing the price for the project I always resorted to the times I used to watch Garyvee and people would ask him how they can get clients if they don’t have the experience. He would always say give it to them for free or dirt cheap. You’ll be surprised how much business you start to get, once you get more and more clients that’s when you can start charging more.

If you know you can do the job and you feel like your lack of experience might sway a potential customer from doing business with you, this is the perfect solution.

It’s a win-win for both parties, the client gets what they want and you get paid + get to add the project to your portfolio.

If you’re having trouble closing your first client try lowering the price of your quote. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet, in the beginning, in order to get to where you need to be.