3 Tips For Freelancing as a UX Designer🍥

3 tips gathered from 2 years as a freelance UX designer.

Over the past 2 years, I have been working on and off as a freelance UX Designer. The job comes with a lot of downsides, but can be pretty fun if you choose your clients wisely. Here are 3 tips to help you in your path of freelance UX Design.

How to get clients

We’ll start with what’s probably on everyone’s minds. How in the world do I get clients? The answer is probably going to disappoint you, but it’s active engagement and connections. Most of my clients come from communities such as Reddit, IndieHackers, and GrowthHackers. Know which topics could gain you clients and engage in any post or thread that talks about that topic. This applies to other social apps such as Twitter and LinkedIn, but I am yet to be active on either.

Be on the same page

Clearly state the requirements of the project, deliverables, time-frame and project budget before continuing. This is only going to save you lots of time later on. Take your time thinking, and send over the e-mail.

Example e-mail:

Hi John!

I’d be more than happy to work on this project, before we move on, so that we can both be on the same page, here’s everything we’ll need in this project:

1. Budget: $2000 (50% downpayment, and 50% upon completion)

2. Requirements: Brief consisting of project objectives and business goals. Any document or file type I might need(i.e. Logos, Style Guide, Etc.)

3. Deliverables: Lofi wireframes, user journey, detailed report of design decisions, final Figma file.

4. Timeframe: 2 weeks. End date being 24th of August, 2020.

I hope this will make things clear for both of us as we continue on with this project. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Obviously, feel free to add or remove whatever you deem necessary for the project, but it’s important the client knows you’re in control. Ultimately, clients with knowledge about products and services are the ones you want to deal with, not clients with unclear visions or objectives (which are fine, if they are willing to work through those problems and not expect a redesign will magically help with revenue, yes that happened).

Recurring Clients

Most of my reccuring clients come from the simple fact that I asked if they needed help with anything. That’s it. Follow up on your services after a month or two, and when you have a large enough client base, you’ll end up getting some reccuring clients.

Share your thoughts in the comments below about how you obtain and retain clients!