Ask HN: Proactively getting front end/design gigs?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8048546

by mjhea0 • 12 years ago

6 3 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Any font end developers or designers ever go out to websites and just make a few quick changes, take a snapshot and then email them, showing them what those changes can do, opening them up to the potential of using you to develop a new design?

subverting• 12 years ago

This is a good idea for sure.

I have a suggestion to make it even more powerful. Turn the mockups into a blog. This will benefit you in a few ways

1) You'll be able to grow your audience as a designer / consultant

2) It will provide you endless ways to pump out content to the audience you're building, allowing you to position yourself as an expert in your field and rank in search engines for terms related to UX design and design improvement.

3) You can do write ups on the blog which will be valuable to your following as you grow it and you'll start to get a reputation and more people will begin to approach you asking to design for them.

The above is a great long term way to demonstrate your skills and gather a network of peers in your field.

You could simply email the company the page of your website,

"Hello hope you don't mind,

I've taken a look at your website and I've used it as a case study for how I would improve it in order to benefit your conversion rates (whatever you guess their goals might be). I hope you like the publicity, perhaps you'd like to work together to make this happen?"

The above seems like a more credible way to go about this, you're giving them value for free, you're giving free and valuable information to an audience which demonstrates you care about the field and are keeping on the top of your game to your potential prospects. And you've got a handful of other example case studies that these prospects can look at demonstrating your ability to redesign things for businesses. Showing that you are the real deal and you have lots of good ideas. They will want a piece of your pie, most likely.

JSeymourATL• 12 years ago

Sadly, a lot of companies don't care to invest or make website improvements. Our site works just fine they'll say. My high school kid put that together!

Instead, look for companies that do seem to get it. Build a short list of design savvy firms. Then reach out to the chief decision makers CTO/VP/Director.

mjhea0• 12 years ago

I think this is also a way to open up organizations to the power of the community as well as open source. Seeing ideas come from outside the organization could perhaps open them up to wanting more and more feedback and fall on to open source to better parts of their current products.

Ask HN: Proactively getting front end/design gigs?

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