Freelance CAD Work

"Part III - How to Have Contract CAD Work Find YOU!"

In today's day and age, freelance CAD work is a popular way to supplement income via outsourcing.

If you are a CAD designer or draftsperson, there are several ways that you can tap into the growing freelance CAD job market, and I'm going to show you the "how-to" to get the ball rolling.

First, be sure you've read the previous articles about freelancing your CAD skills.

The  links are here: CAD Work from Home - Part I and CAD Drafting Jobs - Part II.

Once you've finished reading those parts you are now ready to learn new ways of promoting yourself as a freelance CAD operator.

There is Always CAD Work Available, Somewhere...

Whether you want to pick up some extra contract CAD work doing basic plans for an outsourcing firm, or complex 3D CAD work for an architect, you should be pleasantly surprised to know that there is a lot of contract CAD work going on in our global economy, at any given time.

In the previous articles I talked about ways that YOU can find sources that list jobs in the computer design and drafting field, such as using an online contract CAD work agency.

And as you have read there are many other ways to find CAD related work.

In addition to searching for contract CAD work on your own, another way is to create a static website for yourself that showcases your skills, CAD drawings, services, client testimonials and more.

This is such a great way to have the CAD work find YOU!

Help Them Find You

Building a freelance CAD work website may take some time and elbow grease, but once your site is up, it can passively attract engineers, architects, freelance CAD work companies, home builders, manufacturers and more, with little to no effort on your part after the site is built.  Do the work up front and it will come back to reward you 10 fold over time.

Let's say an architect has just started out on her own and has 2 or 3 projects on the horizon but is not sure what the future holds yet. So she decides to use a freelance CAD work draftsman to complete her projects until she is able to afford the overhead expense of hiring a full-time CAD employee.

Where is the first place the architect is going to look to find an experienced contract CAD worker?  Google.

Google is the King of search engines and the majority of online searches (close to 90%) are made using the Google search engine.

Now some may think that the local Yellow Pages may be the architect's first option to find a local experienced worker to fill their occasional need, at the architect's place of business.  Obviously many may do this, but Google is well known for having complex algorithms that monitors a web searchers experience on the websites that they list in their results.  In other words, if you have a good service to offer, and the visitors to your site are showing interest, Google knows this and can potentially place you in its top 10 results; which is EXACTLY where you want to be.

So if I had a choice of being listed in a local phone book under CAD services or being listed under Google's top 10 results, I would pick Google hands down.  If your site is high in the ranks on Google you can reach thousands of potential customers, versus a select few that may find you in the local phone book.

If you can afford to list your services in the Yellow Pages and build a website to advertise your freelance CAD services, great!  Do both then.

But I will say that we have never had to use the phone book to keep a steady flow of work coming in from architects and engineers from all over North America.

Another benefit to hosting your own freelance CAD work website is the ability to create other forms of income that are outside of actual CAD work.  Using the Google Adsense program to host ads is one way, making affiliate sales through recommending CAD software is another, as well as selling advertising directly from related CAD companies.

If 1 out of every 100 visitors requests a quote from you for a potential project, what happens to the other 99 visitors?  They leave your site and are off to search for something else.  But by giving your site visitor other options on your site, you've just created a separate form of income.  And as the old saying goes, "Don't put your all your eggs in one basket".

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