Building a list of freelance clients is a challenging task. However with the proper marketing strategies you can be successful and grow your business. One strategy I've used through the years is to create multiple portfolio websites to advertise my business.

Even though the marketing websites carry the same theme, they focus on my skills in specific categories. For example, my personal freelance site: portfolio.jordanhudgens.com showcases my social media projects.

I have another website, Reif.io, that has a completely different focus. The Reif.io content is targeted to the Oil & Gas, enterprise, and machine learning verticals. And I'm currently working on several other sites right now to target new categories that I'm looking to extend into.

When I'm sending out proposals to clients I will direct them to the marketing website that matches their specific requirements.

A/B Testing

The approach of having multiple websites is not dishonest or tricky. Instead it is a form of A/B testing. Sites like Facebook and Amazon attribute high levels of their growth to A/B testing strategies.

If you have never heard of A/B testing, it's pretty straightforward. Essentially it's the practice of having multiple versions of a website or a proposal to see how they perform.

If you build multiple websites and realize that one of the sites is generating twice the conversion rate as the other site, that fact will provide you with data to help you improve the site with lower performance.

Other Examples

The strategy of having multiple sites is not specific to the freelance space. I once had a law firm hire me to build them a large number of sites. One for each city or region that they represented. I also created them sites for each practice area they specialized in (personal injury, wrongful death, etc).

Why create multiple marketing sites?

This marketing approach is very powerful for a number of reasons:

1. It helps with search engine optimization. If you are targeting specialized industries or locations with your websites you have a better chance of ranking higher on Google compared with simply marketing yourself as a application developer. This is called long tail marketing and has proven itself to be very effective in the search engine marketing space.
2. You target client needs. Many freelancer websites fail to connect with potential client needs. However if you have websites that target specific categories you will have a better chance of appealing to customers.

What's next?

Work on building several websites that target specific industries or services that you want to focus on. This is an important step in appealing to potential clients so make sure to build websites that clearly describe how you, as a freelancer, fill a hole in the market that you're targeting. In the next guide we'll walk through how to create proposals that generate results.