Hi folks,

today I want to share an interview with Carlie Hamilton from SproutSpire that I’ve done for YEhangout.

Carlie is from Australia and she created her first website in 1999. Fourteen years later she decided to turn it into a home based webdesign business.

That was the time where she launched SproutSpire. She decided that a blog would be the best way to prove her skills to her potential customers and I totally agree with her on this point.

It’s especially important to showcase your skills when you start a home based webdesign business, because your customers think that everyone could create a website.
You’ll have to show them, why you are an expert in this field and what makes your websites stand out against the websites of your clients cousin.

But more on this in the interview 🙂

This is the comic about the pains of webdevelopment Carlie mentions around 11:00.

Transcript

If you don’t have the time, I suggest that you save this post as a bookmark right now and return when you can spent 25 minutes on this interview. It’s definitely worth it and I won’t transcribe all information. It would just take too long to do this.

Building A Home Based Webdesign Business

Carlie shares her experience from building a home based webdesign business with SproutSpire.

She get’s her clients on online platforms for small businesses and she works with companies spread all over Australia. Working this way she makes use of probably the largest benefit that a home based webdesign business has: location independence.

You can create websites that totally meet your customers requirements without ever meeting in person with your customer. Carlie proves it and actually I’m doing the same because a friend of my future father-in-law asked me to design a website for him.

Though you have to make sure that people understand your expert position in webdesign, especially when you have no chance to convince them in a face-to-face meeting. So you’ll need high quality showcases.

Online Marketing

Carlie uses her blog to do online marketing for her home based webdesign business and it’s the way you should go as well, regardless what type of home based business you’re running!

Especially webdesign businesses experience huge benefits in maintaining their own blogs. They can give insights into their knowledge, showcase customers projects, and build relationships online.

Actually you’re reading a blog that’s build exactly for this purpose right now, though I’m not actively promoting any of my skills. Right now I’m answering the question How do websites make money and focus on building YEhangout. For this purpose I’ll do an in-depth interview with Carlie in a few weeks. We’re going to discuss every single step you need to do when you’re building a home based webdesign business, so stay tuned for this one – it’s going to be awesome!

Ok, this is it for the transcript.

Those are the topics we’re covering in the interview: productivity, figuring out the customers needs, branding, and mistakes in online marketing.

Please leave a comment if you like this interview and of course feel free to share it.

Best regards,

Jan