

Ask HN: How do you land the first online clients? - victorin

Long story short, my girlfriend and me have been living in the US for the last year, but in a couple of months we'll move back to Spain.<p>I'll continue working on my current project, but my girlfriend will need to enter the labour market. Right now the unemployment rate in Spain is at 24.8% (53% for under 25), so I think our best bet is to set up her own company (like somebody said "when jobs are scarce, create your own" ).<p>She is a graphic designer so we have set up a website with two landing pages offering Logo and Business Card design services.<p>It is a crowded space, but I think it's not totally impossible to make a full spanish salary (around $1200/month) in the long term.<p>BEING SAID THAT, I'd like to ask for some methods to land the first clients that may worked for you in the past.<p>Although our budget is tiny, our initial approach is to start some adwords campaigns and keep optimizing landing pages and ad copies to see if we're able to reach a profitable cost-per-conversion.<p>The website for the new graphic design studio is http://mylidias.com<p>So, How do you land the first clients for your recently launched online service?
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andthejets
Second on the website. I mean no offence, but the current design of the
website would cause me to never hire your girlfriend. The logo font is pretty
bad and the design is too wide. Make it really simple and responsive.

I'd recommend doing away with the categories that you design for and just
include a page with sample work basically a portfolio.

If someone is looking for a graphic designer they are going to be turned off
if your website looks pretty bad :( The logo also needs some work if you
expect someone to pay you to design a logo.

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victorin
I don't see why it's better to create a general portfolio app. Then what's the
strategy to get new clients? I mean, the purpose of the categories is to have
landing pages that rank on google and have good score for adwords

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andthejets
I get that but maybe put those keywords as examples of things you do. I'd
imagine you want to take any design work possible so at least make sure you
have an easy process to make inquiries. Also your pages are basically the same
which just strikes me as kind of weird.

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freshfey
Check out <http://jobs.freelanceswitch.com/> \- for around 7$/month you can
apply for jobs even if you're not US-based. There are some Graphic design jobs
your girlfriend could apply to.

In the beginning use sites like these and your personal contacts to get a few
jobs. Adwords seems not really fitting for your budget at least in the
beginning! Good luck.

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victorin
Thx, freelanceswitch.com looks awesome, it has plenty of jobs she could apply
for. We'll start there for sure

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negrit
I can't tell what but there is something wrong with the website may be the
design.

You should may be display some sample on the home page. Also, you can try to
go to/sponsor some local hackathons/startup weekends/... Those people might be
your target.

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victorin
Clickable link: <http://mylidias.com/custom-business-card-design/>

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victorin
ok guys, got it

First of all we need to improve the website and corporate image, cause that's
what we sell.

