Web Designer Phil Matthews

Podcast Intro

About this podcast episode…

WEB DESIGNER PHIL MATHEWS

Meet Phil Matthews, a seasoned freelance web designer celebrating an impressive 20-years of independent business.

Based in Weymouth on the UK’s South coast, Phil's journey started when an unexpected request came in whilst working in a computer game shop. Now we get to hear how he levelled up his freelancing career over the years from there.

From creating websites advertised as eBay listings to building a loyal client base through word-of-mouth and stellar SEO practices, Phil shares his freelancing story - offering valuable insights on client relationships and the importance of recurring revenue streams.

We hear his experiences balancing client work with family life, and how being freelance has allowed him to be present for his children's milestones. We also explore his approach to gathering and leveraging client reviews, a key factor in his business growth. Speaking of which, if you enjoy this podcast, please do leave a review 😘 Enjoy!

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Transcript

Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Steve Folland and freelance web designer Phil Matthews

Steve Folland: As ever, how about we get started hearing how you got started being freelance?

Phil Mathews: I started 20 years ago, incredibly, which I still don't quite believe. I started when I was working in a computer game shop just after I'd finished college. I'd ended up just working there for nearly four years, not liking it one bit really, because so much serving customers, so much answering the phone and working over Christmas.

And then one day someone came in and they had just moved to the area and they'd opened a milkshake shop, and they just came in and said, 'Do you know anyone who designs websites?' And this was back in 2003, 2004, when websites were quite a new thing still. And I'd made a couple, just sort of hobby style websites, and I thought, Yeah, I can do this, and someone I worked with said, Yeah, we'll do it together.

And I remember we charged them £120 for it in the end, and it's really good I think, it worked for them, and yeah, I thought, maybe I can do this as a job instead of working here all my life.

Steve Folland: Oh my god, so how did that evolve from that? Was it like the milkshake brought all the other clients to the yard?

Phil Mathews: It gave me the confidence to think that, oh, there are people who want to pay to have this, because back then it was still quite a novel thing to have your own website, it was still quite new. And I think before then I'd made one or two websites, just for fun, really.

So that gave me the confidence to, yeah, maybe I can do this and maybe there are people out there who don't mind paying for it.

Steve Folland: So, other than the first person wandering in, how did you get those first clients?

Phil Mathews: It's not the method most web designers would use in this day and age, but bizarrely, I advertised them as eBay listings. And the first one was for £30 and, in return, it said, I'll create a basic five page business website for you for £30 and people just 'buy it now'. It wasn't an auction as such.

They just buy it now, send me the money. And I remember the second one I did, I charged £40 and then £50. And I think it's my second client who I got through eBay still a client today. It's probably one of my biggest clients, actually. And yeah, it's crazy how these things work out.

Steve Folland: You basically invented Fiverr / Upwork / PeoplePerHour? Like, the concept of putting on a service for a certain price, there was nowhere for you to do it, so you did it on eBay.

Phil Mathews: Yeah, it's crazy looking back at it now, but it seemed to work. I got quite lucky and I think I maybe got seven or eight clients that way and everything went smoothly. And as I say, one of them is still a client today. And I remember one of the first bits of advice he gave me was, he said you really need to set up some kind of residual income for your business as soon as you can.

 And I was thinking, well, what can I do? How can I do that for web design? And so the most natural things are things like domain names, website hosting. So as soon as you said that, I almost started offering that to clients straight away then. And it's always been one of the best bits of advice I've ever been given.

Steve Folland: So the idea being that rather than just designing a website and that's it, that's the end of them, you get, what, like a monthly, basically a retainer to take care of what they do.

Phil Mathews: Yeah, that's right. It started off with more than rather than a retainer where you offer work and updates for them is mainly just taking care of the admin of renewing their domain names providing the web hosting. And it's a lot easier now because there are reseller web hosts out there who make it a lot easier for web designers like me to split up the hosting package between different clients.

So they're all separate. They can all access their own thing. But back then it was a bit more fiddly and you really had to sort of. work hard to get it to work well, but it's something I've always offered. And I am grateful for it because you can obviously add a small markup just to say, you know, every month or every year that you renew, there is going to be that little bit of income that you can rely when, if it's, if you have quiet months.

Steve Folland: Are there any downsides to doing that?

Phil Mathews: Oh yeah. Yeah. I think I prefer my clients to register their own domain name really just because they own it because often if they don't pay an invoice, although it doesn't happen very often, you don't really want to sort of just cancel everything and because it's their business. So it's that side of things.

It's only happened a few times, but you've really got to make sure you've gone down every Avenue to make sure you've tried to get in touch with them. If there's a genuine reason they haven't paid, so basically to cover your back before you turn everything off, then it's always the last option. And luckily I haven't had to do it.

Maybe once or twice in 20 years, but it's always something you think, right?

Steve Folland: Yeah. Now, you have a company name, 'Magical Design'. Did you start with that?

Phil Mathews: No, no, no, I started off as Weymouth Web Design. Because I'm based in Weymouth, and it seemed to have a little bit of alliteration in the title, so let's go with that. And I changed the name back in 2012 to Magical Design, mainly because I'd started getting inquiries from people asking if I only worked with clients in Weymouth or if I just felt a more kind of generic name would sort of help show that I wasn't tied to one location.

But I've kept the website for Weymouth Web Design online because it's got some excellent search engine rankings and I can then redirect them to the main website.

Steve Folland: But you have the company name, but I noticed on your website that it's still very much 'I', like the language of 'I'. Has it always been that or have you chopped and changed?

Phil Mathews: No, no, I think when I started, it was definitely us and we, we can do this for you, we can design and I don't think I ever did it as a way of trying to appear as a bigger company or a bigger business than I am. It just seemed to be the way that a lot of web designers wrote the content for their websites.

And it's only when I redid my website about three or four years ago, I thought, well, it's only me. It's only ever really been me. I don't have any desire to really change that. Employ anyone. I just, I quite like just working on my own, so why not just change it to I? Makes more sense.

Steve Folland: Have you, though, tried bringing on other people at all? Because 20 years, that's quite a lot of room for experimentation.

Phil Mathews: I've been tempted. I think I am looking to do that more and more, especially with other freelancers, especially maybe copywriters, areas that I don't feel as comfortable providing as a service myself. And there are so many fantastic freelance copywriters out there. So recently when I write my proposals for clients, I, one of the questions I ask them before I send it over is if they will be supplying the text content themselves, or if they'd like me to suggest some freelancers who may be able to help them. So hopefully that will allow me to expand slightly without having to have actual employees.

Steve Folland: So you have what, like a survey when people first get in touch with you?

Phil Mathews: Yeah in the past I did have a website worksheet that people had to fill in to contact me and it was so long and I think it put a lot of people off. So nowadays my contact form is very, very simple. There's only about four or five fields and that way we can have a quick chat with a client if it's something they might want to go ahead with. I'll just email them over a list of the main questions I'll need. Yeah.

Steve Folland: Do you, slash, have you had pricing on your website?

Phil Mathews: In the past I have, yeah, I'm never sure if it helps or hinders really. I don't at the moment, I probably haven't for several years. I do kind of sympathise with people looking for websites because a lot of the time they just want to know what the cost is, how much they'll have to budget for it, but it's so difficult to give a price really and you end up just giving such a wide range that I don't know if it's really helpful.

I tried to send over maybe 10 to 20 questions, and that's enough to get a rough idea and a good starting point.

Steve Folland: What and then you can go back with it's going to be this

Phil Mathews: Yeah, often I sort of, I'll word it and sort of say, similar projects to this have been between X and Y, that kind of thing. And as long as they're happy with that, then we can sort of dig a bit deeper into the kind of service they want and the features they want. And yeah, I always like to provide a fixed quote at the end of it.

Steve Folland: Yeah, although with that in mind, how do you deal with the, I guess the scope, the potential for scope creep for them saying, Oh, actually, can you just do this and this and.

Phil Mathews: It's not something I dealt with very well, especially when I started because I'm very much an introvert when it comes to a business owner. So if a client says, Oh, could you just add this? Most of the time, I'll just, I'll just do it for an easy life. But these days I'm trying to sort of set more boundaries.

And I found a good way of doing it is if they do want something that's kind of a lot higher than the agreed kind of service we're providing. I'll often say, well, that sounds great. We could either increase the costs to this much to cover it, or we could finish the work we're doing and then approach it as a separate project after that.

And so far that just communicates that it is quite a bit of work they've asked for.

Steve Folland: Okay, so it obviously started with eBay, and you had a website with cracking SEO. Have most of your clients been finding you online?

Phil Mathews: Yeah, I think it's a mixture of finding me online, but most of it, I think is word of mouth these days. Always seems to have been the way. I've never really dabbled in advertising or anything like that. I feel very, very lucky to have always had that kind of stream of, not a huge amount of inquiries when I speak to other web designers.

I always think I'm not getting anywhere near that, but it seems to be just the right amount. It always seems to tick over and it's possibly pure luck, but I don't want to rock the boat too much and change.

Steve Folland: Well you say that. But clearly you're doing something right. And actually, one of the things I did notice on your website, and I don't know how long it's been there, is the huge amount of reviews. I'd love to hear about that. Basically, your process of getting them, but also how you found it.

Phil Mathews: My reviews originally started just me emailing the clients after we finished and just sort of said, if you don't mind putting a few sentences together, and then I'd sort of just add it to the website as a separate part of it rather than it being linked to Trustpilot or Google or Facebook. And in recent years, I've started to ask for reviews on Trustpilot and Google reviews as well.

And it seems to be an easy way to send people there if they're keen and willing to write a review, I just sort of say, here's the link, and I can collect them that way. I've got a little what do you call it, like a snippet. So I've got a keyboard shortcut and it'll just paste a little snippet of text with some links in.

And I've got it down here somewhere... it just says, 'If you like the service I provided, I'd really appreciate it if you could review Magical Design on Google, Trustpilot, or Facebook. Thank you'. And each of those has a link to those. And that seems to work quite well. It's to the point, it's short, it's It lets them choose whatever platform works best for them.

Steve Folland: And Google reviews - does that help with your Google Ranking? Like Google My Business?

Phil Mathews: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Google do use that as one of the factors, especially for local searches. So if people in my area were searching for web designers, the amounts of reviews and what Google would consider the quality of the reviews can definitely have a positive impact in where you appear for especially local searches.

It's something that's always been on my website and every iteration of the website I've had over the years, I've always made sure I copied the testimonials and kept every single one. Because it's just somewhere you can send people to if maybe they've never worked with a web designer or they're a bit nervous about what's required.

You can sort of just give them a bit of peace of mind, send them to that page and it's got, yeah, quite a few now.

Steve Folland: 20 years - a fair whack of time what's changed do you think over that period of time both in finding work or dealing with clients or the way that you've coped with it?

Phil Mathews: Working with clients, it's changed quite a bit, especially with the, the impact of WordPress and content management systems like that, it gives the client control of their website if they want to have it. When I first started up, everything was all just manual HTML pages. So if the client ever wanted to change, they'd have to come to me.

And I remember offering a service. I called it my "free minor update" service for websites that I hosted, and thinking back now, is a silly idea to do because there were no kind of limits on it. It's kind of like if the customer wanted an update to their website because there was no real easy way for them to do it themselves, they'd just email me and I'd take care of it.

And yeah, it's the kind of thing I shouldn't have been offering for free, but I think it helped in the early days because again, it helped the clients. They, there was no other way really for them to update the website. Obviously if I was doing that nowadays, I'd work it into some kind of care plan or maintenance package. But WordPress in particular, it's so easy to use for customers and clients these days that if they do want to update things themselves, they can do.

When I launch a website, I always record a video guide going through the admin panel just to show them how to do it as much as they want to do really - some clients embrace it and they'll update every part of their website. Some might just want to update the blog posts and publish their own articles, and others just, they don't want to get involved in that side of things, and they'd rather pay me to do it on a retainer basis, which is something that I've started offering more and more in the last, only three or four years.

It's, I'm so annoyed for myself that I've only recently started doing it when it's, it seems such an obvious thing to provide as a service.

Steve Folland: The great thing here is that the clients stick around and you got lots of that. I'm just thinking, how do you manage your day or your week? How do you make sure that these little things don't just consume your whole day and distract you from working on the next big thing?

Do you have lots of projects on the go at once. Like, how's that work for you?

Phil Mathews: It's so difficult. It's probably the hardest part of running a business, I think, because as you say, it's the little things and it's always the little things that build up and build up and you always think, I'll just do those and then more little things arrive and you find the more efficient you are at dealing with all the little things, you then get more emails back saying, could you do this?

And you end up making so much more work for yourself than you need to. Yeah. So it is a fine balance between those little changes that they multiply, I always think, throughout the day and having the big projects that you're working on it. So it's, it's really hard. I try to only have maybe two or three big websites that I'm working on at any one time.

Mainly because you can then, you can juggle it a bit more. You have enough time every day to ensure that you can do the updates for the clients who are on retainers and paying you to take care of their website. So it's so important to keep them happy and you want to do a really good service. You don't want to sort of say, I'll do that in a couple of days.

You want to sort of, they're paying you to update the website, almost like a premium service. So you want to be able to do it the same day if you can, or at least within 24 hours. But it can be difficult juggling that with the big projects because obviously sometimes they might overrun if it's something that's my fault that's taking longer to do it, it might be the client hasn't sent the content through.

So it's tricky. It's, it's something that I've been trying to improve on. You feel like you're getting better all the time, but you never quite get to a stage where you're fully confident you're on top of it.

Steve Folland: But then how do you cope when it comes to taking a holiday, like time off with that kind of service?

Phil Mathews: I'm terrible at it. I really am. We went down to Cornwall a couple of weeks ago and it was absolutely lovely. But in the run up to it, I was stressing myself out so much thinking, right, I've got to tell this number of clients that I'm going to be away. And then that in turn causes an influx of emails, people saying, oh, before you go, could you just do that?

So you want to sort of clear the decks before you go. Every time we go away, it's sort of, it's never as bad as I think it will be, but I never feel I can completely switch off and leave the laptop at home. I think it was, I can't remember who it was, it might be Andy Clarke, another web designer who I think's been on the podcast before.

He wrote something on Twitter a few years ago, and I jotted it down because it made so much sense, and I think it was along the lines of, I know I'm going to have to keep on top of a little bit of work. So he just takes his laptop with him just does a tiny bit every day. And I think that works for me too.

I'd sort of take the laptop with me. I'm not working all day long, maybe in the evenings while everyone's just chilling out, just open up, check the emails quickly, make sure there's nothing urgent or any emergencies. And that's it. You sort of, you get a bit of peace of mind that things are still ticking over and yeah, it doesn't completely take over the holiday that way. And that seems to be the best balance I've found for myself.

Steve Folland: So 20 years. And lots of repeat clients and word of mouth. So what do you think is a good client relationship?

Phil Mathews: I think you've obviously got to be polite, respectful, know what you're doing, but at the same time try and instill a fact that you are the expert, which is something that I haven't always done. I've always sometimes just gone, okay, they've asked me to do this, I'll do this. I might not think it's the best idea for the website, but you just go ahead of it.

And nowadays I'm trying to sort of, justify it a little bit more, because although it's not always easy to question a client when they come up with ideas, essentially you're only doing it to help them and because you want them to have the best possible results from the website. So I had a website recently that they wanted to change the background and have a big image behind the text and, and it made the text so difficult to read.

And I sort of, I did have to say, I don't think this is the best idea. And when I showed them, they, they were okay with it. So I think you've got to respect the client. Client's got to respect you back and I think as long as you've got that, it's sure to go well. Touch wood.

Steve Folland: So in terms of like putting yourself out there in, I mean, you said that you don't advertise, but do you do any, you know, I speak to people here who are, are making YouTube videos or they're doing blog posts or they're on Instagram stories or LinkedIn or whatever it might be. Do you do any of that?

Phil Mathews: Not as much as I should do. It really is the number one area I want to improve on. I see so many great freelancers and business owners on LinkedIn, and they're so brilliant at promoting themselves, and they're so consistent in how they do it, and I just think, I wish I could be like that. And I have actually got a book by Hannah Isted who was on the podcast a while ago.

And so I'm going to go through that and put those into action. And hopefully that should yeah, give me the kick that I need to promote myself more because it, as you say, it's so important and the number of inquiries from potential clients in general I've noticed has gone down so much in the last few years since COVID.

So it's definitely something I need to address, I think, because you can't sort of just sit there and expect the inquiries and the work to come in, because it, it won't forever.

Steve Folland: Yeah, because I was going to say, you're saying, Oh, I need to be better at this. And I'm thinking, I don't know. It sounds like you're doing all right. Like, you've got this nice steady stream, all of these referrals, the SEO, which is, you know, in many ways, better than spending all your time on Instagram, for example, building up great SEO must do wonders for you, but you're saying that you feel like there's a change where maybe you're missing out if you're not on LinkedIn, for example?

Phil Mathews: I think so. I don't know if it was just the effects of COVID, but I think there are so many other freelance web designers out there, and the advent of places like Squarespace and Wix, and they're just going to get better and better over time and easier for clients to use. So you do sort of see potential clients go down that route sometimes, which is fair enough.

So I think it's kind of a battle to stay one step ahead of the do it yourself website builders. Yeah, and I think that's why I've really got to up my game when it comes to promoting myself online. It's something that I've always had in the back of the mind. Yeah, I'll do that next week...

Steve Folland: By the way, I will put a link to Hannah's. episode She was on the podcast not that long ago, actually. And Hannah did a Q& A for us in the Being Freelance community as well, which you can go back and watch if you're in the community, which you are, Phil!

Phil Mathews: I am, yeah. Being Freelance is the only thing I've ever really been part of that's like that, and it's fantastic. I wish there was something like this when I started all these years ago. It's, it's brilliant. I'd say I've been members of like website forums and that kind of thing. And there's a really good Facebook group called The Admin Bar, which is mainly based around WordPress websites.

It's run by an American guy called Kyle, who's fantastic and shares so much advice on there. But when it comes to actual communities Being Freelance is the only one that I've found that it's just, it just fits in, it's perfect for me, it's brilliant.

Steve Folland: I swear I didn't make Phil say that.

Phil Mathews: Ha ha ha.

Steve Folland: I thought maybe there might be local communities that you were part of.

Phil Mathews: No, no there's, there's not very much locally in fact, 20 years ago when I started, one of the main reasons was there weren't any web design companies down here to apply for. It was Bournemouth and Poole and all of the agencies there all required some kind of design based degree, which I didn't have.

So I think one of the reasons I started up with those eBay websites was to sort of build up a portfolio that I could take to them and say, I don't have a degree in design, but this is what I can do. And well, it didn't come to that in the end because, luckily for me, it just continued to grow. And I think seven or eight years into it, we had our first daughter and I thought, well, I'll see if I can try keep doing this really.

Cause it'll be a lot easier to help her when she's going to school if I'm freelance than it would be if I was commuting an hour or two every day.

Steve Folland: Yeah, the work life balance side of things, fitting it around your family. How's that been?

Phil Mathews: It's fantastic. It's by far the biggest positive of being freelance. I think it's so great to be able to take them to school every day apart from when it's pouring down with rain, but you always get to go and see the school shows and everything. You always get to, and I've only missed one by accident, which I completely forgot about over the years they've been at school and they, they never let me forget that, but no, it's brilliant.

It's the freedom of being able to sort of say, right - they've got a, like a sports day, for example, I can take an hour or two off and I know I can make it up in the evening. I feel so lucky because I always think if I was even 10, 15 years older, website and designing websites wouldn't have been a thing until I was a lot older.

So I probably would have gone down a different career path. So it's just, I just feel so fortunate to be able to do it.

Steve Folland: And you work from home.

Phil Mathews: Yes, yes, in a conservatory that is boiling in the summer and freezing in the winter.

Steve Folland: What do you think has been the biggest challenge for you being freelance?

Phil Mathews: It's a tricky one. I think it really does come to come down to or especially in the last few years, getting the new clients in because I think I get far fewer inquiries now than I did 10 years ago. And every year it seems to go down a little bit a little bit. It seems harder and harder to get the new clients to get in touch and have a discussion about the website.

And I'm really fortunate that I've got this backlog of clients who I either host their websites or I provide a maintenance service for them. And I think without that, it would be so tough. So it really is, I think, just keeping those inquiries coming in. That's the toughest thing. And it seems to get harder and harder each year when you think it'd be the other way around.

I don't know what the reason for that is, but it does feel like a bit of a battle sometimes, but it makes you appreciate the customers that you've got and you want to provide a good service to them. So they stick around as long as possible.

Steve Folland: But the leads that come your way, are they the right leads? Like did they convert?

Phil Mathews: Someone getting in touch and they say , Hi, Phil, so and so has recommended you. So already you kind of think that hopefully they've got a bit of confidence and they've maybe seen an example of the work you can do already. But yeah, it's tough. It's I find as well something when I started people or customers just wanted a website.

They just wanted to. promote their business, be able to send someone to the website, maybe fill in an inquiry form. Whereas these days, the actual requirements for each website inquiry, I guess, so more in depth, lots of people want booking forms, membership areas, and there it's gone from being just something that you could design, really work hard on the design of it and to have something simple that converts and gets inquiries.

Whereas now that it's you've got the design side of things, but the development side of the website is so much bigger. And there are so many things that people know that websites can do because they, they've seen them, they've been on them and they often want those. So it can be difficult saying, well, you can do that, but it will increase the amount of work required by a, a huge amount.

It's yeah, you have to get the classic one as people wanting to design Facebook for 500 pounds.

Steve Folland: One other thing I remember thinking was, you know, in your list of services, it's all bad. Very well, it makes sense, you know, like website design website hosting, domain names, as you've said, and then photography comes in, which of course, all websites need photography, but like, has that always been something or something you've decided, like somebody once asked for, I was just intrigued by that.

Phil Mathews: Ah, yeah, no, it's always been a hobby of mine, and and when my kids were young, I sort of, that's when I got my first decent camera. And I find that you get inquiries from friends saying, would you mind taking some pictures of us and our family? And I was thinking, there's a possible chance for a bit of a sideline business here.

And I did quite a few over the space of a year or so. It's mainly local families. And again, a word of mouth sort of spread around, but. I think the results were really good for the photo shoots we had. I just found that the post processing of the photos takes several hours, and that would often dig into the time where I was supposed to be creating websites.

So it's kind of like a balance between those. And web design ended up winning in the end. It's I still do the photos, but this time, rather than doing family photo shoots on the side, now it's purely for family photos. businesses. So if there's a local company who I'm building a website for, if I can help them by taking some photos, which I know in turn help the website hopefully look better and have some really good quality photos on there, then I'm, I'm all up for that.

Definitely.

Steve Folland: Phil, if you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?

Phil Mathews: I think it would probably be you don't need a design degree to run a design business. Because I thought I did for so many years and it's only now that I've realised why. No, I didn't. I don't. Yeah.

Steve Folland: I meant to ask, you said, right at the beginning, the Milkshake website was very cheap. You had these offerings on eBay as well. How did you go about increasing your prices? Especially considering that one of those very early clients is still with you.

Phil Mathews: So that very first client, the first or second client who's still with me. They're very upfront and do say, 'you should be charging more than this - this isn't enough'. And they, yeah, and over the years they have come back for several redesigns and the main reason I carry on working with them is I provide support for them and people who work with them on the website.

So I sort of take care of all the updates, but yeah, they've been so good and open with any kind of business advice and they're. I do notice that sometimes with clients especially back in the days when I was doing those free minor updates, which I should never have done, you'd often get a client who said send me an invoice for this.

I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. And they'll say, no, you have to send me an invoice for this. You've done all this work. Send me an invoice. And so the signs are there just trying to drill it into me that this isn't how you run a business. You can't give everything away for free as soon - as you do that you sort of if you give everything away for free It's showing that you don't value what you offer really, isn't

Steve Folland: Phil, been so good to talk to you. Congratulations on 20 years of being freelance. For now, Phil, thank you so much and all the best being freelance.

Phil Mathews: Thanks so much, Steve. It's been a pleasure.

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