Retrace Design (Portfolio AND a case study)

You can't case study yourself!

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Watch me! 

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Jokes aside, what's a better case study, than one I had the privilege of experiencing every win and loss on my own skin. Here's what works, and what doesn't, black on white.

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Starting out

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I was very fortunate starting out. Since I was familiar with the internet culture and business from reading a lot about it before I started, I've had a pretty good idea of how I wanted to lead my venutre. I knew I should leverage every advantage that I have, and at that point it was that I made pretty unique designs and that I knew the internet very well.

The gameplan that I developed was this

1. Create a mind-blowing portfolio website
2. Instead of working for free for a portfolio, make 10 landing pages for different websites to showcase different design styles
3. Leverage the knowledge of the internet to unconventionally market
4. Get the money to re-invest into outreach

The gameplan has worked incredibly well. I have made more than $3000 in the first month, while working in on web design as a side project.

Sometimes it is not important whether you do things unconventionally or conventionally. Find unique ways to find clients, do not do what everyone else does. And if you do - do it better.

Unconventional Marketing

All of the advice on the internet will send you on a wild goose chase of websites like Upwork and Fiverr. Those are great in their own right, but you are competing with thousands of people just like you. Since I realized that, my next avenue was a forum that I knew very well. Reddit.

Besides posting on job boards whenever I could, I went out of my way to 'cold dm' every single entrepreneur on business related subreddits with personalized messages about what I would suggest they do with their websites and offering my services to each and every one of them.

Speaking of unconventional marketing - Have you seen my video ad? 

And you know how they say 103rd's the charm. This was my 'secret sauce', my surefire way to, with enough effort constantly get clients and make a good living off of web design. Of course having all eggs in one basket is bad so...

Competing with the sharks

Moving over to Upwork to expand my reach has been a big journey as well. In order to stand out from literally hundreds of thousands of designers, I knew I had to make myself different. While it's still in early stages, I've gotten a few contracts at a very fast pace, and the way that Upwork works - it will snowball into greater deals.

What I did was dragging a few of my old clients to leave confirmed testimonials to give myself social proof, made a PDF handbook that I sent to people detailing how I work - which I was told has set me apart multiple times and instead of copy/pasting proposals, I took a long time to commit to every customer's different needs. I am currently experimenting with video proposals, and am expecting them to have great results.

Word of mouth

And finally, before I move into different sorts of outreach that require more investment, I was lucky enough to get the best reward a client can ever give you. Word of mouth. So while I am building up other channels, I am still living off of referrals and word of mouth.

Moving Forward and lessons learned...

While I did use unconventional methods to get a lot of amazing clients and work, it can be very tiring and grueling work, like anything with cold messaging. My plan for the future is to hire 2 or 3 virtual assistants and salesmen to use my marketing methods to score meetings for me. While I could do the conventional method of ads, I love doing things my way, to be able to provide every perspective for my clients.

Since I started I have taught myself Webflow, Wordpress, php, MERN stack and most importantly, how businesses of every size are ran and how they grow. With all of that experience, my next step is hiring and focusing on SEO and freelancing platforms now that I really do stand out.

And since you read all this way... I am looking forward to working with you :) 

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Enjoy some of my portfolio pieces/mockups below