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Building a portfolio using templates?

Anything considered a "hustle" and not necessarily a CENTS-based Fastlane

spirit

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I used to think you had to build sites from scratch to sell them, but I learned on here that most people use templates.

Can you use templates in your portfolio? For example for my first client I used this template: Atmosphere Pro Theme by StudioPress. Can I use this to demonstrate my work in my portfolio?

As you start to do well in your business, do you eventually start to build sites from scratch? Or do you always use templates?

Thanks.
 
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aeden

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I used to think you had to build sites from scratch to sell them, but I learned on here that most people use templates.

Can you use templates in your portfolio? For example for my first client I used this template: Atmosphere Pro Theme by StudioPress. Can I use this to demonstrate my work in my portfolio?

As you start to do well in your business, do you eventually start to build sites from scratch? Or do you always use templates?

Thanks.

Your customers will likely never know if you used a template or not. They want results: a web site that is built fast and that sells their product or service. Don't worry about predicting demand for customized design, just deal with it when you get demand for customized design - and then keep in mind that customized does not have to mean "start from scratch".
 

Rabby

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Customers will just get wide-eyed and say "wow, you know how to use templates? That's even better than I thought!" They don't care how hard you have to work. They care about what they get, and what it costs them, and maybe some other things. Using a template when appropriate just means you're more efficient, and they don't have to pay the labor cost of you building the same thing from scratch over and over again.

Eventually, perhaps more than building things from scratch, you might start building templates, APIs, shared code, plugins, etc.
 

spirit

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Can my online portfolio have projects from templates, though? If so, I'll include the first project I did for a client.

Maybe I have to change my thinking. I used to think using templates was taking someone else's work.
 
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Rabby

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Can my online portfolio have projects from templates, though? If so, I'll include the first project I did for a client.

Maybe I have to change my thinking. I used to think using templates was taking someone else's work.

You're talking about a web design portfolio right? Everything is built on other people's work. The probability that you can make a working web site without other people's work is zero. Can you write machine code for the wide variety of computers and devices connected to the Internet, and deliver that code to them without using frameworks and protocols made by others, and have it render to their screen as a sparkling glorious image of the business? You can not.

If you asked about an illustration portfolio, and all you did was trace other people's illustrations, adding nothing to them, then I would say no, you shouldn't put that in a portfolio. But you're doing something different aren't you? You can always attribute themes and such. Just write on the page "site design based on /using Whatever theme by ThemePerson." The theme designers made some HTML and CSS and PHP (etc) for you to use. Use it for a good purpose and put it in your portfolio to show people what you can do with the available tools... that's what a portfolio is for.
 

spirit

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Thanks for all of your advice!

Another question, what do you use for photos? I think most of my clients will be global. I don't want canned pictures that hurt the company's image.
 

Rabby

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Thanks for all of your advice!

Another question, what do you use for photos? I think most of my clients will be global. I don't want canned pictures that hurt the company's image.

To be clear, I'm not currently in the business you're in. If you looked at sites I own right now, you would see a combination of photos from/of the actual business, illustrations made for the business by illustrators, videos with illustrations in them, etc. While there are good stock photos, their place is often in the background, or as texture. I usually am not impressed by a site that looks like it's just featuring a stock photo on the front page. Especially the cheesy "corporate manager and three ethnically diverse employees point at paper on the conference table" type stock photos... even though I have admittedly used those for certain things.
 
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Rabby

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As an alternative to stock photos, if you feel you're over using them, consider these alternatives:
  • Sub out an illustration to someone on Upwork or Fiverr.
  • Recommend to the client that they replace one of the placeholder photos with an explainer video, which you then sub out.
  • Take a photo, or ideally hire a photographer to take photos, of the actual business, its products, services being rendered, etc.
 

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