How a freelancer gets a website that wins the enquiry
A freelance website has one job: convert someone who already heard your name into someone who writes to you. They arrive slightly sceptical, having been referred or having found you in a search, and they are checking whether you are real and whether you have done this before.
What people are actually looking for
What exactly you do, in one sentence
Not "creative solutions". The specific thing: you rebuild Shopify stores for outdoor brands, you do bookkeeping for restaurants, you write technical documentation. Specific wins work; general loses it.
Proof you have done it before
Two or three pieces of work, each with what the problem was and what changed. A grid of logos is weaker than one short story with a result in it.
Whether you are affordable and available
Not necessarily a price list, but a signal. "Projects usually start around X" filters out the enquiries that were never going to happen, which is a favour to both sides.
That a real person is behind it
A photograph of your face and a short paragraph in your own voice. Freelance work is bought on trust, and anonymity is the opposite of trust.
Four ways to get there
All of these work. Which one suits you depends on your budget, your patience, and how often you will want to change things afterwards.
1. A profile on a platform
Upwork, Malt and their equivalents get you visible immediately, with reviews attached. What you give up is the margin and the relationship: the client belongs to the platform, and your rate is compared side by side with everyone else's.
Best if: You are starting out and need the first few jobs more than you need the margin.
2. A one-page site you write yourself
Carrd, a template builder, or plain HTML. For a freelancer this is often genuinely enough — one page, done well, beats five pages of padding. The hard part is not the tool, it is deciding what you actually do.
Best if: You know exactly what you offer and can write it in your own words.
3. Describe it to an AI builder
Useful precisely because the writing is the bottleneck. You describe your work and get a first draft of the positioning back, which is far easier to correct than to originate. Expect to rewrite the voice — it will be close but not yours.
Best if: You keep putting it off because you cannot face writing about yourself.
4. LinkedIn and nothing else
Plenty of well-paid freelancers work this way. The limitation is control: you cannot shape how you are presented, you compete in a feed, and a prospective client cannot send a colleague a link that looks like a business.
Best if: Your pipeline is entirely referrals and you have more work than time.
The prompt, if you go the AI route
The difference between a disappointing AI site and a good one is almost entirely the description you give it. This one is written for a freelancer: it says what to build, who is reading, and what to leave out. Fill in the brackets — the more specific you are, the less you will have to fix afterwards.
Copy this, fill in the brackets, paste it anywhere
Build a one-page website for me as a freelance [your discipline]. ABOUT ME - Name: [your name] - What I do, specifically: [I rebuild Shopify stores for outdoor brands — not "web design"] - Who I do it for: [small brands doing under 5 million a year, usually with no in-house developer] - Years doing it: [number] - What clients say I am good at: [being fast / explaining things without jargon / finishing what I start] WHAT I NEED ON THE PAGE 1. A hero that states in one sentence what I do and who for, with a contact button. No slogans, no "welcome to my website". 2. A short "how I work" section: three steps from first conversation to finished work, so a client knows what to expect. 3. Space for three pieces of work. For each: what the client needed, what I did, what changed as a result. Leave clear placeholders — I will fill in the details. 4. A section listing exactly what I offer, as concrete services rather than skills. 5. A short about section written in the first person, with room for a photograph of me. 6. An indication of price: "projects usually start around [amount]" — I would rather filter enquiries than field ones I cannot serve. 7. A contact form asking for name, email, what they need, and roughly when. Plus my email address in plain text for people who prefer that. HOW IT SHOULD FEEL Confident and plain. Like a good business card rather than a brochure. Lots of white space, one accent colour, no stock photographs of people shaking hands. IMPORTANT - Write in the first person. "I build" not "we deliver". - No jargon, no "passionate about", no "solutions". - Someone should understand what I do within five seconds of the page loading. - Keep it to one page. A freelancer with five pages looks like they are padding.
Works in any AI website builder. In relivo it is one click — we put it in the box for you.
Build it with relivoGather this first
Whichever route you take, having these ready is what separates an afternoon from a project that drags on for months.
- One sentence naming exactly what you do and who for — the hardest and most valuable part
- Three pieces of work you can describe, including what changed for the client
- A photograph of yourself that looks like you on a working day
- A rough starting price you are comfortable publishing
- Two or three sentences a happy client has actually said about you
Three mistakes worth avoiding
Describing yourself as a generalist
"I can do anything" reads as "I have done nothing in particular". The narrower the description, the more enquiries it produces — a counterintuitive fact that holds almost universally.
A portfolio without outcomes
Screenshots show what it looked like. Clients are buying what happened. One sentence on the result turns a picture into an argument.
Hiding your face and your rate
Both feel safer to leave out and both cost enquiries. Anonymity reads as risk, and no price signal at all means every conversation starts with an awkward question.
Questions that come up
Or paste that prompt and watch it happen
relivo turns it into a working website in about a minute — with your own domain, a contact form and hosting handled. Building is free; you only pay to put it online.