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Thinking about starting a freelance web design business? Congratulations, because there’s never been a better time to help businesses create an online presence and take advantage of all the different ways they can monetize online!

So why is it that so many talented web designers are struggling to not only find clients but find clients are willing to pay a living wage?

If you’re anything like me when I first started my freelance web design business, you’ve probably decided to charge hourly for your web design services.

You figure you’ll get clients by listing all of your web design skills on your website with a contact form for anyone that wants to hire you, and then you’ll share your website on all of your social media profiles and let your friends and family know you’re open for business. You’re also planning to set up a profile on one of those freelancer matching websites (think Upwork or Fiverr).

This is what so many new web designers think they need to do to market themselves and get clients, but there are a few fatal flaws with this plan:

• There’s a finite amount of money you can make when you’re charging by the hour for your services. When you’re a freelancer, you’re spending time doing unpaid work like general business administration, marketing, client consultations and proposals. So if you need to get paid for 40 hours a week at a certain dollar amount an hour to make ends meet, you’ll be doing another 20 hours of unpaid work on top of that to find and book those clients.
• There are people with the exact same skillset as you living in countries with a much lower cost of living, which means they can charge significantly less than you for the same set of web design skills. That makes it very hard to compete for clients on skillset alone.
• It’s riskier for clients to pay by the hour for projects, especially if they aren’t sure what a project really entails. The last thing they want is to hire a web designer for a project and get an invoice for double or triple what they were expecting to pay. So if you’re charging a significantly higher hourly rate than other web designers, it’s riskier to hire you than someone charging much less, even if there are things like time differences and language barriers.

I’m here to tell you that it’s not your fault, and there is a better way! These fatal flaws are what lead to so many web designers to struggle or even fail. I personally fell victim to the first fatal flaw. I started my freelance web design business as a side hustle with the goal of replacing my day job income, and it was totally impossible for me to work enough paid hours to pay myself, cover expenses and pay taxes.

But I kept hustling anyway, and I completely burnt myself out and quit working with clients altogether.

So before you jump into the deep end and almost drown like I did, I want to share with you X things I wish I would have known before booking my first client!

These X things are decisions I made before saying yes to clients again, and figuring out these things before you start will save you so much time, money and stress.

Instead of charging by the hour, think about how you can package your services around specific results that your clients want to achieve and offer them for a flat fee that takes into account how much time that package takes. When you can charge a flat fee, clients can feel confident that they know exactly how much something will cost and they’re less inclined to look for the lowest hourly rate.

Your fees should take into account all of the unpaid time it takes you to run your business. Marketing, consultations, contracts, invoicing, bookkeeping can take up significant time when you’re a freelancer, so your fees should take that time into account.

Don’t forget to account for business expenses and taxes.

My rule of thumb is to figure out how much money you want to pay yourself as a paycheck each month and then double it.

Decide how many hours a week you’re able to work on paying projects (vs. how many hours you’ll put into unpaid work), and divide how much you want to make a month by how many paying hours a month you can work.

That number is the lowest amount you can charge per hour to pay yourself, pay taxes and business expenses.

That number might give you some total imposter syndrome at first… I know that it did for me! But that’s why you gotta market yourself and play on a different playing field than everyone else.

As you’re thinking about what types of packages you want to offer, you’ll want to also figure out how much time those packages actually take you.

Make sure to work in the amount of time it will take to get the content from the client and time meeting with the client to review the work.

Once you’ve figured out that number, double it.

Projects always take longer than you think they will because you will inevitably run into unexpected issues.

Take your hourly rate and multiply it by the number of hours you’ve estimated for your package, and that’s your flat fee for your package.

If these numbers are giving you anxiety, look at them as a target rather than a starting point.

The number one thing I wish I would have done when I started my freelance web design business is letting clients know how and when we’d communicate throughout the project. Feeling like you are always on call for your clients can be a fast track to burnout – but it’s also important to be responsive to their questions.

Let your clients know how they can communicate with you. If you don’t want them calling or texting, don’t give out your phone number. If you don’t respond to emails outside of business hours, let your clients know when they can expect a response. Set clear boundaries from the beginning – but instead of giving them all the “dont’s”, give them all the “do’s” and let them know what to expect from you.