Nowadays, I'm working 6h/day on website projects for clients all over the world. It's not always been like that, though. In January 2023 I decided I had to completely change the way I existed in the design world, otherwise I'd have been stranded in the Gaming Industry unable to make a full-time living.

As I approached the end of 2022, I began to get burned-out. Creativity was still flowing, and designing Stream Packages for creators was really fun, but I wasn't making a living. I'd bought an iPad for myself. My phone bill was paid off, but… our daughter had arrived and we were still living with my girlfriend's parents. Something had to change.

So, what did I do?

I changed everything.

As January 2023 rolled round, I decided it was time to wrap up all the projects I was currently working on, and stop altogether. Not stop Design altogether, but leave the Esports/Gaming scene for good and I knew exactly where I was heading.

For the entire of the first half of 2023, I studied web design and I studied it hard. I'd had no experience beforehand, I'd never even tried to design a website, but I knew this what what I wanted to do. Seeing beautiful, minimal site designs, even when I was way outside of the Web Design sphere lit some sort of fire within me.

I spent my days split evenly between Framer, Figma and YouTube, plugging up all the knowledge gaps that I had as I went through the motions of designing my first ever website. The first one was trash, of course it was. So were the next 10 and that's totally normal; I'd literally never done this before.

Then all of a sudden an opportunity came my way. Seth Fowler, owner of BROLL Media was looking to have a pretty large website built. I felt it was my time to shoot my shot, but I was heavily under-geared.

No portfolio, no website of my own, no testimonials and all my past work in Design had nothing to do with building Seth a killer website for his company.

So how did I close him?

I knew that Seth would be taking a risk hiring me with my huge lack of experience compared to other people that would've built him a great website, but I made it clear to him that I understood that. I offered a price much lower than I intended to be charging for a website of similar size, but explained I know I can do this. I was flexible with the pricing structure and set some terms that would allow Seth to exit the project if it went south. I knew he wouldn't need these, as I knew I was capable, but the option was there so Seth knew his investment in me was safe and the risk wasn't as great.

We worked hard, back-ing and forth-ing for months, until we finished the website in September 2023. It's a long way behind what I can produce now, but at the time it was a complete first for me and an immensely proud moment. I learned more on that first project that I got from being flexible with my terms and my price than I have on any other project since and it shaped the way I deliver my service to my clients even today.

If I can say one thing to anyone starting out… just GET the work. You shouldn't be diving into Freelancing without savings anyway, but your savings mean you don't need to be paying the bills with your project fees for a little bit. Start small, gain those reviews, those vouches, those referrals - so, so key. Step away from your 'ideal' price or ideal conditions for a while to make sure you can actually successfully deliver for clients.

Once you have a few under your belt, the snowballing will begin, and you'll be ready like I was.

Thanks for reading, I'll see you soon.
Ryan