How to Become a Freelance Squarespace Designer [Video Podcast - Part 1 of 4]

In this video, I talk through becoming a Squarespace designer, why to use Squarespace, and how to start a freelance web design career on Squarespace. Just like kids learn to speak before they can write, learning Squarespace can be a great introduction to website design.

I also share my personal experience of building over 500 websites for clients on Squarespace. I discuss various aspects of becoming a Squarespace designer, including designing websites, managing client relationships, and asking for budgets and more money. I emphasize that Squarespace is an excellent starting point for beginner designers, as it is user-friendly and has numerous resources available. Overall, this podcast episode serves as a valuable resource for anyone interested in becoming a Squarespace designer.

Major Takeaways

• We cover topics related to building Squarespace sites and helping clients with SEO work

• I share my personal experience of building websites for a nonprofit organization on Squarespace that started it all

• As of today, we have helped over 500 clients with their Squarespace websites

  We diiscuss topics such as background, landing the first client, creating systems, getting comfortable in client relationships, asking for budgets, and knowing when to cut clients

• Why we love Squarespace (It’s built for the end user and is simple to use)

• A degree is not necessary to begin website design

• Client relationships are important and should be managed proactively

• The best way to manage client relationships is to own it

• It is not necessary to know how to code, but knowledge of plugins and resources is helpful

Transcript

0:04

Hello, and welcome. This is the first episode of the podcast. I don't know how long this series is going to be, it might be four episodes, it might be six, and it might continue on from there. Basically, the premise of what I want to do right now is just talk about a bit of my process. But some things I found really helpful in building sites for clients. I've had the privilege of helping over, I think, probably at this point over, it's maybe higher now. But I'd say somewhere around 500 clients on their Squarespace websites and building it out. And now our business is solely focused on SEO work. So with that, we're going to talk about how to become a Squarespace designer. We're going to talk about background, we're going to talk about landing your first client, we're going to talk about timesavers creating systems for yourself getting comfortable in the client relationship, how to ask for budgets, how to ask for more money, know when boundaries are getting crossed, know how to cut clients when you need to. Today, I had most of our clients about $450 for SEO work had a client about 650, I would say closest $700 today, so a pity party a low 10 Trump note literally didn't pay any mind to it. And I'll tell you, there's been a lot of times that I have gone over stressed out about that. But in this case today, it's just one of those things of having clear set expectations and how I want to work that I didn't give that client the power and was able to just literally Okay, take a refund, no complaints, no arguing no China's sword it just take the refund and let's keep moving more clients to work on more more things to focus on, and more people who are who have healthy expectations to work with. So with that, let's get into this. I literally don't have a name for this podcast, and I am just gonna call it right now. The

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name I have in my notes on notion is, am I starting your podcast? podcast question mark? How to Become a freelance Squarespace designer. Cool. So here is episode one. Okay, so we're gonna start with some of the most basic questions that there are, which is just really clear and simple. Do web designers use Squarespace? Okay, so to talk about this question, there's a few ways to tackle this, what I'm going to focus on is this. Many people who come from a web design background, we'll look at Squarespace and only see limitations, or see something they think is design wise, is too soft or not, what's the grade of it is too low to even begin with. Now, that's a fair analysis on one handle, if you're trying to design a very custom site, or have certain looks, and feels and animations, and, and textures, and site styles, and all of that, and your web designer, well, there are a lot of tools and a lot of ways to build that out on your own. But on the other side of that, and this is really interesting, because I'm actually very adamant about this. On the other side of that, let's take a step back. When you as a kid, start to learn how to speak, you don't learn how to read first, you learn how to speak. And as you get better at speaking, you start to put send like words together saying a few words, you start getting better sentences. And as you get better sentences, you get better paragraphs and ideas. And it just continues to flow and flow from from that. And then you begin to learn how to read. Now you could say that's the normal process of of a child. It's the level of adaptation that we have, and all this stuff, whatever.

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But in actuality, there's actually a lot of power in that system. There's a lot of power in that system, because you're training your mind in a way. And I don't have the exact reference right now. But you're training your mind in a way that allows it to take things at certain stride. So get getting a good grip on words, and then going to reading has its own power as well. And this is where Squarespace is a great starting point. I never planned on being a web designer, I'm the last guy who would ever have thought I'm gonna go to a Code Academy. That's not where I started. But when I was working in corporate America, or actually started with a nonprofit, when I tried to build that first website, I just need to get something and that process of going from I just want that there. And that there allowed me to learn all the hard pieces behind it with the code to help it to stand as as I wanted it right and make it the way I wanted it. So do web designers use Squarespace. Many can. And many, I think should. The best part about Squarespace to me, in this case with kind of this frame of mind in this context is this. Squarespace is built for the end user. So there's no selling point on that side of it for the client. Yes, they may want to talk about features and other things.

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Don't get into that right yet. the usability of Squarespace is so easy. Double click it, edit the text, press save. It's it's refresh, done, front end editor. So as you make the change, you see it happen. You'll see how I look, you see how I feel. And this is the best part, you design a beautiful website, you pass it to the client, and then you train them to manage it in the process. This is something that you can't get with all web platforms. You could get it with a lot more today, but you can't get it with all web platforms. So do web designers use Squarespace. There are many out there. And just like WordPress, WordPress was built in some ways to be simple, that the average user can just go in there and build their site. But Squarespace has a whole market. And if you don't believe me, I could show you the payments. But there are so many different people willing and ready to pay for you to build their website for them. Whether it's $500 1500 dollars, or $15,000. There are a lot of people out there who are willing and ready to pay for sites on Squarespace. Next question. Do you need a degree kind of going back to my point about learning how to speak before learning how to write, to read or learning how to write sentences, it's nice to get a good feel. And this is why Squarespace works out so well. And I'm not an advocate for this. Like, there might be someone who ends up hearing this and saying, No, you have to know how to code to begin, it'll be so helpful. But the great part here is if you could start and you could start quickly, and you could get clients and you could help people and you already visited my websites. And maybe you're a millennial or generation younger, younger than millennials, possibly you already have a skill set than older generation doesn't have, or the older generation doesn't have the time to try to figure out. This is a big one, too. One of my first clients was a huge company. And they could have easily paid 50 k for a website. And then the owners were just building it themselves. But they got so busy that they want to hire someone to do it. So somehow they found me and we'll talk about that process of how they found me. They found me they sent me a message. And within I think it was 24 hours within that first like 12 hours of our contact, they had sent me a deposit for 650 bucks, I think we decided on the project to be 1300 bucks, something like that. They sent me the deposit. It was a Friday night I was this is my third project I landed, I was feeling so good. That was such an amazing process. But at the time, if we go back to that I can tell you in that moment, I did not know how to code. I'm skipping around a little bit. But let me let me put this all together did not know how to code. Anyway, many clients The reason they came to me it's because they were just busy. They literally were just busy. They want to do it themselves. They were coming from that vantage point, right? Not like, oh, let's do a 50 k website? No, let's just do it for cheap. They came from the vantage point of, Hey, we would usually do this for ourselves. But we don't have the time and energy. We want to move from WordPress, WordPress to Squarespace. And we want to hire someone to do it. So they did that they brought me on and we built the site. So do you need a degree? No, you can begin today. For website design, the main thing I recommend, truly, truly the main thing I recommend for website design is an understanding to begin a very basic understanding. And I'll even say this, I didn't even understand this. So this is maybe me giving you like advice that could be helpful for you to start. Not so much. Like in this society. I literally started not understanding this. I remember being on a phone with a friend. And he's like, yeah, so CSS is like the way you like decorate the inside of the house. And there's like a phrase for this or there's like a saying for this where you're like HTML is the way you build a house, right? Like the walls and stuff. CSS is like how you customize it, how it looks and feels. And JavaScript is like the foundation of the house, something like this? I don't know, I don't even remember. But at the time, that was my level of understanding of code. I really did not have any more understanding than that when I was learning my first client in the process. So do you need a degree? No, but what would be helpful? And this kind of leads us into the next question, which is do you need to know how to code but do you need a degree, I would say the main thing would be, hey, if you could learn and understand how CSS HTML and JavaScript work together, that'd be really good. Maybe one day we could do a little episode of this. But if you can understand how those work together, that is awesome. From there, if you also have a sense of how to get Squarespace resources, there are so many resources out there right now compared to three years ago. There were very few right now. There are so many resources that you can go to

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Find and get what you're looking for. Okay, do you need to know how to code, I will go back. Last time on this example, if you can learn how to design a website, and let me let me take a step back design is probably the biggest part of the process, you'll need tons of inspiration to really get your designs set. Right when I first started, the first website I built for a client that called me and sent me a message and we landed a project, I think it was like 1800 bucks, that was mind blowing at the time. Like, I literally was like, I just got 1800 extra dollars I did not have when that first client came to me, the site we built hideous, it is like respect, like, I will rebuild the site for a movie ever contacts me, like, literally it was I'll do it for free. It was hideous he we went back and forth. And we got to say, and he liked it, and it went in the right direction. However, looking back at it now with the experience I have now there's a lot of stuff I did there that I would not do again. And so my bigger kind of conversation piece, there's if you find some resources for that one main resource I recommend, if you're beginning you might hate this because it's so custom. But it's just a great for me, I like really, really big inspiration to start from. So one of the resources I go to is a website called land book, calm, land dash book calm. And that is a fabulous resource. Because it just pulls some of the best websites from like, around the world, a lot of the functions and features on those sites are not possible in Squarespace without heavy code. And so just bear that in mind. But you're seeing designers at their best like 30 5080 hundred and 50 k websites being built, that are just gorgeous, and so simple and like clean and straight to the point, it is a really good spot for inspiration. But from there if you could find other Squarespace websites have been built that are really clean and nice. You can then use that to your advantage to figure out design design is probably the hardest part. It's the reason our business currently. And this is probably a big point. The reason our business right now we do not do design services, because there's no one on our team at the moment who can handle the design requirement, I can, but I'm trying to free up more of my time and build other functions of the business that operate that I own that don't run more than I owned and things that run me. So that's why that is shaped the way it's shaped right now. So this next question, do you need to know how to code No, but it is really good to know what plugins what resources are out there. And learning bits of code, especially CSS, if you have an analytical mind, we'll be really straightforward and simple. So something like ghosts plugins, Ghost plugins calm, that's a great resource. I think at this moment, right now, they have over 300, free plugins, they also have templates you could start with, and they have packages where you could buy templates and get like three a month for a really affordable price. I highly, highly, highly, highly recommend stuff like that, to start out, clients will love it, because you're getting a starter look and feel. And it also helps you build the confidence to do that client relationship. The client relationship is an important part of all of this and how you manage that, in my opinion, the best way to manage that is to own it, not to let it pass by and just kind of be like, Hey, I kind of put this together and you you show it to them. No, you go to them, hey, so this is what we've created. This is why and this is what I missing, or this is what I need you to do next. There's a lot of confidence there. And also gives them especially when you come with the design and the feel and the look, they come back with being in like the the sea of like, How to say they're there, they take their role and you take your role. You don't want them to become the designer, they'll give you advice or tips or what they think is better for them specifically. And, and honestly, at those moments, for the most part, I go with the flow on that because it's their site, they're going to own at the end, and they're paying me to build it for them. I know I don't fuss too much about that. I'm not a designer in that sense. So if you're getting into this, and you're this far into it, and you're like No, but I am the designer, I love people who are really good at design. And I love great design. However, at the end of the day client is paying for their website. And so whatever that looks like for them is their choice. So we try to follow that as much as possible. biggest selling point, and I mentioned this before, is it's simple. To manage the client. You could record let's say, for 20 minute videos, and walk through how to set up pages, how to adjust text, how to adjust images, how to set up galleries, how to set up blog posts, events, products, set up those videos, they could be covered.

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together three or four videos, and literally send it to all your clients, you could do a custom training with every client. That's how I started, I always told the client, I'd be on the phone with them and say, yeah, so we are definitely like, the best part of this whole process is that, at the end, I'm going to walk through a training on your specific website, and I'm going to teach you how to adjust and make edits to your site, and the pages that you have. And that gives them so much confidence. Oh, and by the way, we're gonna record it. So you can have it forever, that kind of language. And those types of thoughts help support what happens after the site. And it gives a client this peace of mind that you know what you're doing, because they have even thought, sometimes they have even gotten there yet, they have even started to consider it. And a resource like loom to record training videos and just send it to the client is a great, you can even just use Quick Time, record it, use, we transfer, we transfer calm, forward it to the client, and you're good to go. Finally, I guess I kind of want to just talk through in this video at this time, I want to talk through my experience as a Squarespace developer. And so I don't want to bore you with all the details. And if people end up having questions, I may do this. Again. I've talked about this again. But basically, this is my story. I started out I was working in corporate America. I left corporate America, I I got one freelance job that was an ongoing freelance job running Google ad campaign. absolutely loved it. Actually, let me take one step back. Okay, so it was about 2013. I had just visited a country in Southeast Asia called Myanmar. And when I had gone to Myanmar, I absolutely I went there on a missionary trip where we were able to go and love on orphans and just be with them. And we went for Christmas. And we were able to be there with the film love with the kids. It was a life changing experience. I absolutely loved it. When I came back, I was curious of how I can help out. And I had heard that they had kind of started a sponsorship program, but it wasn't really running. And my first instinct was we need to build the website for them. So I use this platform. It was a hideous platform. I don't even remember the name. And it was so funny that I even use them. And that they even helped me because it was like for campaigns. It was like if you're going to become a local mayor, and you were running a campaign, it was a website that would help you do that. I don't even know why we decided to use them as a platform. Anyway, as we are going through the process, I built that site, it was a headache. I didn't know how to code it all. There were sections and things that weren't working. The way to sponsor a child, you can actually do it online, you had to submit a form to request to do it. And then we would send you an email with a follow up of how to do it. It was met a complete mess. And then a few years later, something came out on Squarespace or like two years later, something came out on Squarespace that I was not aware about and something came out that was a feature that I needed that wasn't there before. And at this point, I literally don't remember what that feature was. But there was some type of feature that I thought oh, if I just had this, this would be so beneficial. And so we got it and I saw the feature I went through the process I said okay, let's move this site is Squarespace we did all the hard work uploaded all the kids profiles we were able to host it on Squarespace is so good once it goes up on Squarespace is beautiful, is a really nice process. But I had to build the whole site on Squarespace and I had never done that before. And so I learned all these ins and outs how to adjust tags had no idea about h1, h2, h3 had no idea about design, I had no idea of how parallax works, I had no idea about how to adjust things. So in my head, so I know they look good on desktop and mobile help blocks work, none of that. So there was a huge learning curve of just going through the process. But this is something I'm going to talk about over and over and over again. One of the ways I've and this is my story, so I understand if this isn't relevant for someone else. But one of the main things that was so beneficial to me is that I really, I really always tried to think about there were some aggravating clients to work with. But always try to think about the process in terms of Okay, so client pays me $2,000. But truly, they should be paying me about 35 or $4,000 for the size of the website they want. I would take that URL, I would take that loss and build out the site as needed, right. And there's a boundary here to be careful about so don't quote me on this for any project. But you got to you have to kind of do this for yourself. I built that site knowing Hey, I've never landed a 4k project before. So if I build this site all have this as a reference point to use for my next client when they come and they say how much do you charge or if I asked them

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Might if they ask and they say, Oh, I budgets around three to four K, I'll say great. It's this website, it's going to be 3950. Because you just offered will do a job at 4000 for you at the same time, I be able to show them that work. So it's kind of been my whole story that way, it's how I got interviewed by Squarespace. It's how I now help so many clients, it's always been to start with taking that step to do more work than what was required. So then I could use that for the next client. And there's a certain point where that plateaus. But if you think about, I did that website for free, that first website, the next website, which we'll get into that part of the story, now, I did it on a job where they needed a website. And so I was basically paid to build the website within the company, that was an awesome experience. And then from there is when the freelance world really started. So I kind of like fast forward, and I'm going to go back and, and walk through those pieces. But just to give you a clear idea of everything on the table, those are the different pieces that that navigate that I think are really, really valuable in this process of just some things to consider, you know, like as you as you take steps further down the road. So now Okay, let's talk about this. Okay, back to the story. So I bought that orphan care website. It was, it was about a year or two years after I bought the first one. So commonly 2014. Yeah, 2014 or so. I just graduated college. And now I was looking for work. I had a job left that job, got fired from that job. Interesting story. Then I started working full time at a company and I was part of the marketing team. It was really cool at on that team. We needed a website built for one of our we're in a global brand for a country for one of the countries that were marketing it. And so I said, Hey, why don't we use Squarespace. I knew the tool. I knew we could build on it quickly. And I knew we could adjust it quickly. So I said, Let's build the site on Squarespace. So I think it took me about 20 to 4020 to 40 hours to build that site. But it was the best thing because I literally was getting paid to build the site, because it's just part of working hours. And so I was getting paid to learn how to build the site, even though I had only done it once before that site actually looked really good. I was really impressed with how it came out. Because I also had a lot of good feedback working with me on the team that I was working on at the time. It worked out really well. And that project finished, good to go. So around 2016 I believe it was about 2015 2016. I ended up leaving that corporate job about 18 months after getting hired there. When I left that corporate job. I found myself working freelance I kind of mentioned earlier, I started working freelance I had one ongoing client that was running Google ad campaigns for it. And so I was learning a lot about Google ad campaigns. I had learned it in the marketing job I just had. So I was doing a lot of campaigns. And as I was doing all those campaigns, I was getting a lot of exposure to how Google works. Now fast forward eight months, I left the corporate job in August. And then in about February or March, I was working with a friend who was really good at the freelance game. And he said to me two friends actually, one of them said to me that he said, Hey, dude, why don't you run Google ads for yourself? So if someone types in Squarespace web site designer, you show up and I was like, why? No, I don't want to pay for ads people who's gonna search that and then like, click on my website and try to find me. So reluctantly, I made a landing page, I put down my pricing. I think my pricing was like 950 1250 and 1500 1500 sounded ridiculous, who days later, my first client messaged me, I remember I woke up that day, and went to my computer and looked at it and I got a message on my email, I got a message on LinkedIn. And the client messaged me and I think they even tried to call me at one point, I don't remember. Anyway, I was so ecstatic. I called my mentor friend, as a dude, what the heck is going on? How do I do this call? I have no idea even what to talk about on this call, like, how do I do a sales call? And so he walked me through it. He's just like, yeah, talk about this. Make sure you have a clear process. Okay, cool. So I said, Yeah, the process is four steps. First, we do this, this this this? I had never done it before. And then as soon like, so he also said, like, I don't even know how this came up. When I was talking with my friend. He said something like, if you have an upsell, like use it or do it, like a logo or something. He's like charging 250 bucks for a logo and you can design a logo. And I was like, Whoa, wild. Okay, let me try it. So I get on the phone. It's a shaky call, but it works. It's working.

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At a certain point, I say, hey, do you need a logo? You say, yeah, logo would be nice. And I'm like, Yeah, the logos 250. Is it? Okay, cool. Let's do it. And I'd like to do your biggest package package three, what? I literally just made 17 1800 bucks. And the conversation was, what, 25 minutes max, it was, like 20 minutes. To me, that was ridiculous. I couldn't even believe it. And it was really beautiful at the time, because it was a design service. At the time, I was paying off a lot of debt too. So having that stable income before the ongoing work, covered all my bills, that money, all of it was going to go to pay off debt. And so I knew that was a big number to pay off debt, I had about 20 k of debt. So that was almost 10% of my debt was about to get paid off in that moment with that client. And I literally tripped out 1800 bucks within a 20 minute call. That was the turning point. For me. That was the special moment that really redefined things. And slowly but surely every other week or so and even quicker at a certain point. Atlanta new client in Atlanta, another client, Atlanta, another client, it was such a cool process to go through. And we'll talk more about all these details of like, what that looks like in these other episodes. But I do just want to start with, do you have to do web designers use Squarespace? I don't know they can. Can you start with Squarespace and become a web designer? Yes, you can. I don't know why there's like a shame around it, there needs to not be any shame around it. Do you need a degree? Or do you need to know how to code No, just learn how to really add value. And if you're good with digital tools, that in itself is a plus. That's a huge plus to begin with, if you're getting into this world, so I ended that call with the client. And

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I ended the call and I told them on the call, I'm gonna send you a starter kit, which is all the questions of what I need for us to be getting a website. I sent him that started I literally got off the phone, I made this starter kit, literally a Word document, added a few questions on my I don't know, where should I say brand color? Okay, cool. Tell me brand logo, what do you want for your logo? content for your website? What content Do you want for your site, built it out? Word document, sent it to him and sent him an invoice. And before you know it, I got to deposit 50% in my bank account, I was so excited. And this is something I think anyone can do. If they if they want to go for it. Do you need to run Google ads? Do you need to have all these systems in place? No, I really recommend you could start and you could start exactly where you are. So with that that is the first episode. I am so thankful you're here. Please continue to follow along I would I would say the best way to stay connected with me is through our website. So if you go to spacebar agency COMM And you sign up for the newsletter, that is the best way to stay connected on anything that we're doing as a company, whether it be these podcasts, whether it be work on SEO, talking about design services, releasing any of our courses, any of that stuff, the best place to find it is to go to Spacebar agency.com you could go to the Spacebar agency.com forward slash newsletter or just go to spacebar agency COMM And you'll see the newsletter somewhere on the site with that. Thank you guys for watching. Thank you guys for listening. However you are tuning into this and I will see you guys in the next episode. Peace