Facebook Page Design & The Freelance Designer – Worth It?

Such a Cute Doggy. He Loves Facebook Pages!

I’ve been a freelancer for 14 years (or thereabouts) and there have been a lot of changes in that time. One of the biggest (obviously) is the whole social media thing. It’s been a game changer in a lot of ways. It’s a great way to connect with other freelancers, it’s good for promotion, it’s good for branding – and it’s good for wasting time.

But, at the same time, it can be another great revenue stream. It’s something that’s pretty easy to design around, and with some easy-to-use tools, you can do some really cool stuff.

While there are tons of social media platforms, one of the most configurable and usable is Facebook. It’s nice that it’s also become one of the most ubiquitous – and it’s opened up a good, viable new stream of work.

I started a new company (I love doing that) in AVLFB.com. It’s focused on my local area, Asheville, North Carolina – but if you wanted to go nationwide (and I have with this, to an extent) it’s a rich field, and really seems to be growing.

Now – this really isn’t a promo piece for my businesses. It’s just demonstrating that diversifying is a good thing, and that branching out into Facebook Page Design is an easy way to add a new stream of revenue.

The design is pretty straightforward (Photoshop, anyone?) and the build-out is pretty easy, too. I use a couple of tools – Lujure and North Social to do the actual uploading and build-out. Lujure is my tool of choice, as it’s simple and has a great feature set. You can add like buttons, contact forms, images, fans-only images and areas, etc. Just about anything you see the big boys do on Facebook can be done using Lujure. I use the big (read: expensive) package – but you can do it all for the $30 a month package. You pay more for non-branded pages with some other bells and whistles – but, plan and price accordingly.

I’ve built TONS of pages with (admittedly) very little marketing – and I’d bet you can hop on the bandwagon now, too. It’s a growing field, and with some good marketing – or upselling – it can be a real boon to the old pocketbook.

Check out AVLFB.com for some examples. You can also see some examples on my main site, or the Facebook pages for either: DesignAVL on Facebook and AVLFB on Facebook.