Today, I wanna talk about three reasons I think you should create your own personal website as soon as possible.

Improve your Tech Skills

Reason, number one, by learning to create your own website, you will gain a ton of technical knowledge. And what I’m saying a ton is you will learn everything. You will learn how the internet works, you will understand what is hosting, what is a domain. You will know how it is connected to each other. You will learn about design, you will learn even a little bit of coding in the process. And all of this technical knowledge has a very, very big value. Even if you decide at some point to stop your freelancing journey, you will always be able to apply to a company and show these valuable technical skills. And believe me, they are highly appreciated by any employer out there.

And if you decide to continue your freelancing journey and decide to hire someone for help, you will know exactly what to look for. You’re not gonna get like confused with all the technical lingo. You will know exactly what you’re talking about and who to hire.

Save Money

Reason number two, depending on where you live, like a truly professional website from like an agency or even a freelancer, can cost you several thousands. And I’m saying dollars or euros or whatever your currency is. And of course, I’m not saying that that’s not worth it. Of course, these agencies and freelancers are legitimate. I mean, that’s how I make my living! But if you just wanna start out, if you are not ready to commit to such a huge amount of money, you can always start by trying it for yourself so you really understand what you want. And of course, if you have all these tools, you will be able to create and design the website that suits your specific needs.

Stop Depeding on Freelancing Platforms

I personally think this is the most important reason to start your website now.
Let me start by giving you a bit of a backstory: I am part of a Facebook group for freelancers. And most of these freelancers get their gigs from either fiverr or Upwork. And after reading a lot of their posts throughout the weeks, I realized that there is actually one recurring theme: These freelancers have to behave a certain way in order to get work. And what do I mean by that? Let me give you a quick example. If you’re not familiar with it there is a thing called the “response rate” on fiverr. This is just one of many, many factors. But the response rate is something that has to be at least at 90%. Otherwise, you’re gonna get penalized. And how do you get the response rate to 90% or up? Well, you just have to respond as fast as possible and always to any possible client that reaches out to you. And if you can’t, you will get penalized. And the reason why you can’t, doesn’t really matter. I don’t know about you, but in my opinion, the main point of freelancing is to be able to decide yourself when you’re gonna respond to something. Of course, a client will be super happy if you respond fast, but I think you should be the one to decide what fast is and not an algorithm.

You should not depend solely on a platform to get clients, especially if that platform restricts you in such a way that if you don’t behave the way they want you to, you will not even get clients.

Because what if you are in a meeting or driving or something happened and you cannot respond that fast? Is your business in jeopardy? I think that’s very stressful and not really the point of freelancing.

So to get back to the third point why I think you should create your website sooner rather than later is not to completely ignore these platforms, not at all, but to have a channel that is actually yours, that belongs to you. Because this way you can create your own rules. You can decide when to respond, you can decide who to take on, and you will not get penalized if you don’t respond within a certain amount of time or if you don’t wanna work with someone.

Having Your own personal website will give you this freedom. And you will get also some clients that are not just online, but also in the “real world”.