What makes for a good freelancer web3 website? So, I’ve decided to work towards the goal of being a full time freelance web3 developer. With 17 years of full stack development experience, I’ve found myself doing small contracts, side projects, and collaborations for a while now. Yet, as with most full time corporate developers, my portfolio is sad, my website was built years ago, and is full of dust and cobwebs. Let’s look at the anatomy of a good freelancer website.
What services do I offer and what are my standard rates? Nothing is more frustrating to me when shopping around for services than a website that refuses to tell me what their standard rates are. If you do not have standard rates, figure that out then come back to your website. I published a few thoughts on the subject in an earlier entry. For me, I charge more for complex or boring tasks. Frontend development is generally easier and less frustrating for me, while solidity development can be complex and requires a high attention to detail.
What makes me qualified to do this work for you? This question should be answered by the whole website. This website should showcase your skills without being hard to use or navigate just for the sake of showing off something cool. A page with portfolio examples and testimonials will go a long way towards people who are on the fence, but don’t forget that there are many opportunities to explain plain text what you’re capable of.
When can I start? The standard “contact us” form is okay, but a proper scheduler that actually puts the meeting on the calendar for both parties is much more engaging and leaves less ambiguity. Find something that integrates with whatever calendar best reflects your availability. I’ve used calendly recently on the side of the scheduler which was very easy to interface with as a google calendar user.
Payment processing. We’re building a web3 developer website, if you don’t accept crypto what are you even doing here? Building an interface to allow for payment through crypto as well as other popular options like zelle or venmo is something I’d consider to be essential as both a tech demo as well as a user experience win.
Most people love fun demos and easter eggs. Keeping the experience light and entertaining is something I personally connect with, just make sure they enhance and don’t get in the way of the core functionality. I’ve seen a lot of portfolio websites that took forever to load and were frustrating to use because they pushed flashy tech demos over clean ui/ux.
Speaking of clean ui/ux, while my design skills have come a long way, it’s still something that takes me a lot of thought, research, and time to implement. Focusing on my strong suits I could farm out the design to fivver, 99designs, or upwork, and spend most of my time on the ux and functionality. On the other hand I would be much more comfortable and proud of the website if it was developed top to bottom by me. Don’t be afraid to stick to your strengths if your best efforts on the rest don’t meet your standards.
https://www.curiouslycory.com is going to be a living growing project, and I’m looking forward to sharing it more as various features are developed and released. I hope this wall of text helped you in your own journey, and if you learned something here, follow along and join me as I continue this journey.