Benefit From These 10 Soft Skills If You Are A Freelance Web Designer
‘Freelance web designer’ is one of the top paying freelance jobs in the world. Nowadays, professionals especially youth tend to choose freelancing over traditional nine-to-five as they can enjoy lots of freedom being their own boss.
A recent survey from Truelancer found that around 58 percent of Indian freelancers are less than 30 years old.
Another study from the same reveals that India is just after US in freelancing population with more than15 million freelancers working in various sectors like designing, animation, videography, sales and marketing, IT and programming, content and academic writing etc.
A freelance we designer cannot succeed only by being a freelancer. Market is very competitive than before. Even the talented gets thrown easily.
So, to become a successful and top freelance web designer you need some powerful skills and techniques that will help you outperform your challengers.
10 Soft Skills Every Freelance Web Designer Must Have
Here are the top ten soft skills every freelance web designer need to develop in order to be successful.
Table of Contents
Communication
A freelance web designer without excellent communication skill is worthless and ineffective. This is the first and foremost skill a freelancer must possess.
Simply saying communication is the act of transferring information from one place to another. How effectively and persuasively you communicate with your clients is what matters most.
As Plato once said, “wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something”, you must have something powerful to say. Your dealings with customers, colleagues, whether it is via phone, email, social media define your career. Communicate powerfully and regularly and never make your client bored.
Time Management
A freelance web designer will never get top if he or she doesn’t manage the time properly. Effective time management is the secret mantra for success. It is everything.
There are enormous benefits for effective time management such as
(a) professional reputation,
(b) greater productivity,
(c) less stress, and
(d) greater opportunities to achieve your professional goals.
“Ordinary people think merely of spending time. Great people think of using it” is a saying from an unknown author. Think using of it if you want to be a great freelancer.
Problem Solving
As a freelancer, you may face different problems. Successfully solving and overcoming them is what a capable freelancer does. Having strong problem solving skills will make a huge difference to your personal and career life.
Excellent communication skills will help you solve the problems. First, study the real cause of the problem, be open minded, and listen carefully. Then, find out the ways to overcome and choose the best.
The great A.P.J Abdul Kalam has put it rightly saying “We should not give up and we should not allow the problem to defeat us”
Discipline
Freelancing could mess up things as you get much freedom and become your own boss. Here, proper discipline is what you need to develop. Disciplining your career will also discipline your life.
The stories of almost all most successful people in life speak how they kept discipline on a daily basis. Buddha says: “to enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind”.
You can apply the same philosophy to your career life as well. Control your own mind and stay focused, you will witness happiness.
Presentation
For a freelance web designer, presentation skills are as important as communication skills. Excellent and impressive presentation skills are needed to get potential customers and big projects.
You must work hard, do research and studies, and prepare an impressive presentation to grab the attention of biggies. How you present your project is again what matters most.
As Harvey Diamond said, “If you don’t know what you want to achieve in your presentation your audience never will.”
Organizational Skills
This skill will help a freelancer to organize his projects and arrange his tasks accordingly. Sometimes he or she may get lots of works at a time and might get messed up. Prioritizing the task is the most important in such situations.
Organizational skill doesn’t mean just to put things in accordance. There are actually many different types of organizational skills such as scheduling your projects, planning, resource coordination, goal setting skills and many more.
These skills help promote positive habits, eliminate problems, and make for a more productive working environment.
Teamwork & Leadership
A freelance web designer is a leader as well. He is his own leader. Things will go smoothly if the leadership skill goes smooth. As famous Ray Kroc puts it, “the quality of a leader is reflected in the standards he set for himself”. Let your standards reflect your leadership skills.
Teamwork is essential for success. You cannot alone win a match. Here, how you utilize the resources is what matters most. Your team is you and your customers. Now, lead the team and play it well, the winning smile is yours.
Creative Thinking
A freelance web designer is ought to be creative. Creativity is one of the most overlooked skills in this field. Since thousands of the freelancers rush in the market, art of creativity seems to be dead.
Creative freelancers will produce amazing and extraordinary works which will be absolute worth buying. Eric Jerome Dickey has the best definition of creativity I ever heard, “it’s impossible to explain creativity. It’s like asking a bird, ‘How do you fly?’ You just do”.
To be creative you need to work hard, think critically, observe even minute things, and think positively about each and everything.
Marketing
How you are going to market your products without knowing effective marketing skills? Marketing skills are what brings projects to you. Excellent communication and presentation skills plus impressive marketing skills can change your career forever.
“Good marketing makes the company look smart. Great marketing makes the customer feel smart” is a saying from non-other than Joe Chernov. Your job is to make the customer feel smart.
Freelancers being leaders of their own have immense opportunities and absolute freedom to market their works. Whoever brings creativity and innovation to the marketing will grow beyond limits.
Research
The last bust one of the most important skills is the skill of research. Research is what tells you what, where, when, how and why you want to do your project. Researching and studying should go parallel with your project and never stop it.
The famous Albert Szent-Gyorgyi beautifully defines research when he said: “research is to see what everybody else has seen and to think what nobody else has thought”.
A freelance web designer must do research continuously on the new trends in the market, new products, technologies, his competitors’ projects, new clients in the city, upcoming projects, and above all research and study his own projects to make them better and better.
A Freelance We Designer without These Skills Cannot Succeed
These most important skills with some others play an important role to make a freelancer shine among the contenders. Without these skills, he cannot succeed as a freelancer while there are a lot of his kinds in the city.
I conclude this article with a saying from the wonderful Shiv Khera, “people who wish to go into the future should have two skills to succeed – the ability to deal with people and the ability to sell.” I think this saying has summed up all the points I wanted to tell.
