Keep it simple.
You’re going to need a consultant website. No, it doesn’t have to be epic. Here’s what it needs:
- A unique URL, which should be your brand name. If your band name is your own name, then go and purchase your name as a domain name. See Scott Delong’s link below for how to do that.
- It needs to clearly state what you offer. “I am a consultant. I offer this. Here’s why you should hire me.” Honestly, that’s really all it needs to say (in not exactly those words.)
- It should have project pages: at least a few of your most recent and most successful.
- It should have clear, easy contact information. People shouldn’t have to search around for where to find you.
Should you hire out your consultant website design?
Probably. If you are both tech savvy and a good designer, there are a number of easy content management systems like Wix (easy) or WordPress (more complex but has much more potential) that will do the job for you.
Scott Delong has some good guides about setting up your own website.
Just remember a basic principle of freelancing:
Everything has a cost. You’re either going to spend money or time.
Think carefully about which will bring you the best result at the lowest price.
Also, think about blogging.
If you enjoy writing about your work and your profession, think about writing a blog and keeping it up to date. We’ll talk more about it here, but as a fellow blogger, I advise you to do this only if you actually enjoy the process of writing. A blog is a hungry beast that needs to be fed, and the internet is littered with professional blogs that haven’t been updated since 2017. Few things say “I’m not serious about this consulting thing” like a consultant website that is chronically out of date.
Whatever content management system you choose, make sure that you can update it easily. If you hire a webmaster, make sure you can regularly shoot them updates in Word format (with pics in jpeg format of course) that they can post for you within 24 hours.
Alternately, if you have a more hands-off webmaster, it isn’t too difficult to master the art of updating a web page yourself. Make sure your web builder understands that you require this from the get-go.
Again, it’s just a question of whether you want to spend money or time. Get in the habit of doing that analysis; you’ll be doing it a lot.
Examples of Websites
Here are some tasty freelance consultant websites. I don’t know these people and am not recommending their work. I am definitely recommending you check out their pages.
