We wanted to hear from our freelancer Artbees users to hear some of their most common problems being involved in a web or graphic design freelancing business and saw some common points made across the board from all of our users:

Challenges for Part-Time Web & Graphic Design Freelancers:

1. Time-consuming Coding

Many freelancers and web agencies alike have often thought it to be the case that if you wanted to achieve the perfect design for your client’s website, it would involve endless hours of coding to tailor-make each page. This assumption can limit the number of clients you take on, leaving you missing out on great client opportunities and, thus, decreasing referrals and exposure for your work.

2. Undercharging for Your Time and Services

In competing with every other freelancer out there, you may feel the pressure to offer competitive prices for your services. In many cases, though, we’ve found that the ones engaged in freelancing business feel taken advantage of for their time and services, often left with the thought that they substantially undercharged. This can be enormously discouraging for any freelancer and leave them feeling overwhelmed and underpaid.

3. Tedious Administrative Tasks

For someone in the freelancing business, it’s most likely that you’re running a one-person show. You’re your own director of marketing, salesperson, accountant, and client relations manager. Wearing twenty different hats along with creating beautiful and functional websites for your clients can involve a lot of juggling, leaving you crunched for time when it comes to running updates, creating custom CSS and coding or making minor tweaks to the page content.

4. Low Quality, Low Paying Clients

In order to get more exposure for their work, or perhaps just to pay the bills, many part-time freelancers find it necessary to take any cheap project that comes their way regardless of whether that project will showcase and develop their own skills as a web or graphic design freelancer. While it is important to keep a steady income, these types of projects won’t advance your brand or properly highlight your work.

5. Designer’s Block

If you’re trying to minimize the amount of time you spend coding and yet are expected to create completely new, sleek and functional websites for each of your clients across a wide range of sectors, you may sometimes feel at a loss to generate new, eye-catching designs. With impending deadlines approaching and high client expectations, you don’t have the luxury to draw a blank for potential designs.

Let Jupiter WordPress Theme Do the Heavy Lifting for Your Freelancing Business

Reviewing the most common remarks we received regarding challenges and cons to having a part-time freelancing business, we took a long hard look at Jupiter to see if it could live up to being a freelancer’s most valuable asset. To find out exactly whether the Jupiter is the support system to freelancers we hope it to be, we interviewed José Rosado, one of our very own Artbees Themes freelancers. José has worked with graphic, web and video design for over a decade and has learned the ups and downs of being a freelancer during his off hours. With his experience, he was able to shed some light on what freelancers really need to look for in their WordPress Theme of choice and how the Jupiter has played a role in his work.

Before discussing the most notable benefits Jupiter WordPress can have for a part-time web and graphic design freelancing business, we asked José about his role and projects:

José: “Sure, so I really love being specific about what I do but it’s pretty hard to sum up actually. I have an 8-6PM job so that is my main occupation but my other passion is to work as a freelance web designer. Through this I’m able to work with people from the United States, in the Dominican Republic—all over the place, but my main job description is a graphic and web designer. I also work with videos, recordings and even music, though right now my main goal is to focus on web design because it’s a great job and I really love it—it just involves so many types of skills and you can make so many different projects for so many different people and sectors with web design.”

1. Take on More Clients Without Making More Time

For someone in the freelancing business, you’ll want to find a WordPress Theme that allows you to work with a wide scope of clients across a broad range of sectors in a timely and efficient manner. This along with limitless choices of design and functionality will allow you to create top-notch websites for several clients at once!

José: “I’ve worked with lawyers, bakeries, nonprofit orgs, the music school my wife and I own, another one of my jobs—all different types of sectors and it’s all just really fun for me, especially with Artbees Themes! And this isn’t any kind of propaganda or something, it’s just that the Jupiter is a really great theme!

Two weeks ago I was talking with a friend who’s also a web designer and I started talking about the Jupiter and got so excited and enthusiastic because it provides a level of flexibility and efficiency that I hadn’t found before in other themes and it makes my work so much easier. Really, I want to stress what a big asset Jupiter has been for me and how much I believe it can help other freelancers like myself optimize their productivity and talent. It just makes my work really fun and easy.”

2. Offer Competitive Prices for Your Services Without Undercharging

Sometimes as a freelancer competing for projects to take on during your free time, you may feel pressure to undercharge for your talent and time in order to not scare off prospective customers. To avoid this dilemma, having an efficient WordPress Theme that enables you to build beautiful and functional websites in less time will not only allow you to offer a more reasonable price for your client, but will save you from having to undervalue your services.

José: “Well, in first talking about the scope of my services to my customers I’d have to start by saying that with the abundance of templates available for you to pick from, that in itself is a huge added value for me and my clients. They’re a really big help because they allow me to take the time to show my clients the themes and explain to them the ability to change and customize the template to fit their identity and vision best. That way they know what the potential possibilities are for their web and can guide me better in creating a site that matches their expectation—this saves both of us time and money.

So the whole package of templates Artbees has really makes that process easier. Also the ability to customize each of them is really important because most themes don’t give you that much flexibility but with the Jupiter, you can use a template as a foundation for the site and then change each element inside, again, saving myself time and the customer money. Yes, I would say flexibility is the main thing I love the most about Jupiter because it makes working for my clients so much easier!”

3. Streamline Client Requests and Administrative Tasks

Especially if you’re working alone, it’s critical to determine which tasks absolutely require your input and skills and which other components can be delegated. Who can you rely on to take on such duties? Well, with an easy to learn, intuitive and well-supported business WordPress theme, not only can you let your clients take on some responsibilities but you can hand off tasks to the Artbees Care Team!

José: “Well I tried to use many themes before that included Visual Composer so that I could teach my clients how to edit their own websites but all of them just had too many things inside—instead they’d have something else that tried to emulate Visual Composer and it would just end up getting so confusing and if it’s confusing for me, the web design expert, then imagine how confusing it could be for the client. With Jupiter, that’s not the case at all and that’s a huge asset for me as the web designer because in giving my clients more participation in the editing and design process, I not only save myself time but I find it is much more fun and satisfying to the client too!

Another big time saver is Artbees Care services—any time I’ve had multiple client requests, I’ve been able to save myself a lot of time by giving certain parts of each project to the Artbees Care specialists—it’s like having my own personal backup team. I can always count on this care as well as constant updates made to the theme which streamlines the time it takes me to make sure all my client’s sites are updated!”

4. Develop Your Freelancing Business and Brand with Your WP Theme

Having a business WordPress Theme that enables you to create eye-catching, results-oriented and SEO-optimized websites will draw in higher quality requests from more well known organizations. In general, working with well-established clients gives you the opportunity to better showcase your work and drive your personal brand forward.

José: “I’ve heard so many beautiful things about the final website afterward—about the quality and functionality of the website and my clients are always surprised and delighted at how well the final product turned out. For example, I can only speak for my country, web development sometimes has a really bad image.

People usually have the perception that you pay the web developer, they usually provide low quality services and then disappear. Not just in the Dominican Republic, but I think everywhere, by being able to easily create a high-quality website, my work speaks for itself and brings in more clients from bigger name organizations and firms, even just through word of mouth.”

5. Find a WP Theme that Inspires Creativity

Developing your capacity for creative web and graphic design involves a great deal of exploration of design concepts, techniques and approaches. Having a WordPress Theme that not only provides the freedom and flexibility to play with all of its included features and tools, but also offers models that can help to spark more creativity in your work will help you always exceed client expectations.

José: “As you guys continue to make more and more templates for the Jupiter and add more features and flexibility, it makes it so much more fun for me to think of new and creative ways to design the layout and content for my clients. It also makes it so much easier for me to change the look and style of every site I create—since I have clients coming from every background, I need different designs and concepts and Jupiter makes it easy for me to meet their expectations. I just really enjoy seeing the new templates that come out every week from Artbees!”