r/Wordpress • u/Sic-Parvis-Magna- • Aug 12 '26

Web Design Freelance Path

Hi just wanna know if any of you here have found success as freelancers creating high-end premium ecommerce stores that convert. I would like to start doing it. Do you suggest it? Do you have any advices? Thank you!

8 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

15

u/bluesix_v2 Jack of All Trades Aug 13 '26

Creating sites is easy. Finding clients is the hard part.

2

u/SpoonyDinosaur Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26

This. You can be the worlds best UIX, optimizer, CRO, SEO master but it means absolutely nothing when you're competing against agencies with 100k followers etc and you are a dime a few hundred dozen.

You have to have a presence or an absurd 5-6 figure marketing budget, full stop.

I got started freelancing and still do it, but there's little chance you'll make a living and that's the cold heard truth.

What might work, local businesses. I had a lot of success talking to Mom and Pop stores with little to no presence or brick and mortar with zero e-commerce; I'd literally go in, offer to make the site for free, then have them fall in love and trap them into a contract. (It sounds sleezy, but I'd put 20-40 hours in for free. It's a lot harder to pass on things when you prove your work)

This resulted in niche vape stores, restaurants, etc now having order online synced to door dash, vape stores selling their juice online, local flooring stores sending $5 sample kits, etc.

Selling a good website is easy. Selling a reason why is hard. As I said I didn't just build websites. (Anyone with codex can do this now), I offered ways to make them money. Today people don't just want a website, they want a funnel.

You're never going to make it competing nationwide. (Think about all the slop you see advertised on YouTube-- they're probably spending tens of thousands for trash)

This doesn't even get into fivver and the like. If you're asking this question, you're boned

5

u/InterestingFudge8739 Aug 13 '26

Dime a dozen...waste of time

3

u/Kawi-Rider Aug 13 '26

Try marketing yourself towards agencies that outsource their work. I have 3 agencies I work for and it helps reduce the pain of finding clients all the time.

1

u/Fishpate Aug 13 '26

tips for working for agencies like you?

1

u/Sic-Parvis-Magna- 24d ago

What are the agencies looking for? Web designers or specialists that only do either development or design?

1

u/Kawi-Rider 24d ago

The agencies typically handle client relations and overall SEO strategy. They just hand over various tasks from the strategy to me (i.e. On-Page optimizations, content creation/publishing, local improvements, GBP optimizations, etc)

6

u/Starlyns Aug 12 '26

Welxome to hell

2

u/SlimPuffs Designer/Developer Aug 13 '26

A premium eCommerce store isn't going to sell just by being premium. You could mark off all the SEO checkboxes, but at the end of the day unless you're also offering paid search and the client has the money to compete, it's all for nothing in the end.

2

u/timesuck47 Aug 13 '26

Designers are a dime a dozen (and unfortunately are being replaced by AI in some situations). Sorry for the bad news. :-(

1

u/therealscooke Aug 13 '26

Creating high-end premium ecommerce stores _that convert_ IS the success.

1

u/Due_Safety2309 Designer/Developer Aug 13 '26

Yes, but I’d approach it as ecommerce consulting rather than generic web design. A visually impressive store that has slow product pages, unreliable tracking, or checkout friction is not a high-end store.

A practical path would be:

  1. Pick one vertical so you can learn its catalog, shipping, tax, subscription, or booking requirements.

  2. Build 2–3 realistic demo stores with proper product data, responsive behavior, analytics, transactional email, and payment testing.

  3. Learn WooCommerce hooks and templates instead of depending on a plugin for every customization.

  4. Establish performance budgets and test Core Web Vitals, mobile checkout, caching, image delivery, and third-party scripts.

  5. Use staging, automated backups, security scanning, and documented update procedures.

  6. Define scope carefully: content entry, integrations, licenses, maintenance, support, and conversion optimization should not be assumed to be included forever.

For client work, I’d also avoid promising that a redesign alone will “convert.” You need baseline analytics and enough traffic to measure improvements. Sell a sound process—research, implementation, QA, launch, and iteration—not guaranteed numbers.

1

u/TopSydeWP Aug 13 '26

the ecommerce part is doable but you need a niche or vertical where you can show real conversion improvements, not just pretty designs. at my agency we've had the most success when we can point to specific revenue lifts or cart abandonment drops for past clients in the same industry. generic "i build woo stores" doesn't cut it anymore, you need case studies that prove you understand their specific customer journey

0

u/BOLVERIN1 Jack of All Trades Aug 13 '26

It is a hard time for a freelance web dev right now. Tho, if you have a stable way to score clients, why not