A website of your own as a UK freelancer

By the ContractorUK Editorial Team · Fact-checked 7 November 2026

The first minute: what a client is checking

When someone's been given your name, the next thing they do is look you up. In that first minute they're answering four questions. What exactly do you do? Have you done it for people like me? Can you start when I need you? Are you a real business I can sign a contract with?

Each needs a clear answer on the home page or one click from it. Everything else on a freelancer's site is supporting detail.

Sell an offer, not a job title

"Freelance copywriter" describes you. "Website copy and product descriptions for UK online shops, delivered in two weeks" describes something a client can buy. Write each service as an offer: what's included, who it's for, how long it usually takes and what the client needs to give you. Two or three offers are plenty. If you do one thing brilliantly, lead with it and let the rest sit below.

Name the kind of client you suit, too. "Mostly B2B software firms and agencies" helps the right people self-select, and it puts off the ones you'd turn down anyway.

Should you publish your rates?

There's no single right answer, only a trade-off. A published day rate, or "projects from £X", filters out people who'd never pay it and saves you both a call. Keeping prices off lets you quote each job on its merits, which suits work that varies a lot. A middle path is a starting price for your most common job, with everything else quoted.

If a price does appear, the E-Commerce Regulations say it has to be clear and state whether tax is included. "£450 a day plus VAT" passes. A bare "£450 a day" leaves a business client guessing.

Availability is half the sale

A client with a deadline wants to know if you can start. Our sites can show an "Available from" badge with the date you can next take work, so the answer is on the screen before anyone asks. Update it whenever a project lands. An honest "booked until March, taking enquiries for April" still wins work; a date that passed last summer suggests nobody's minding the shop.

Show you're a proper business

Larger clients and agencies often check who they're contracting with before they sign. If you trade through a limited company, your site must show its registered name, number and registered office: see company website requirements. If you're a sole trader, different rules apply, but your name, address and email still have to be there; our page on websites for sole traders lists them.

A short "How I work" page does the rest. Cover how a project starts, how changes are priced, your payment terms and what you need from the client. It answers a procurement team's questions before they're asked, and it filters out clients who won't work your way.

Your own site or a marketplace profile?

Freelance marketplaces are good at one thing: putting you in front of clients who are actively hiring. In return they usually take a fee from your earnings, set rules about how you deal with clients, and control the profile and its reviews. Your own site is the reverse. Nobody takes a cut and the address stays yours, but visitors only arrive when you send them or search engines bring them.

Using both is sensible: marketplaces for new leads, your own site for referrals, repeat clients, your email signature and your LinkedIn profile. If you also take contracts through agencies, ContractorUK's IR35 calculator compares your take-home pay inside and outside IR35 for a given day rate, which is handy when you're setting direct rates.

Getting one built from your CV

Upload your CV or write a few lines about what you sell, and our builder writes a site on WordPress, usually within ten minutes: services, how you work, about and contact. It's instructed not to add clients or results you haven't given it, and where it has nothing to go on it usually leaves a marked gap; check the draft before it goes live. Search titles, structured data and link previews are already done when you first see it, courtesy of ContractorUK's engineers, and later changes are a plain-English request to the AI builder. You get the first build free for 7 days with no card; keeping it costs £49 a month including VAT, with no contract.

If your work is visual, our guide to portfolio websites goes further on showing it. If what you want online is your career history, an online CV website is the better format. Translators and virtual assistants have guides of their own: websites for translators and interpreters and websites for virtual assistants.

Who can skip it for now

If all your work comes from one agency or a few loyal clients and you're booked solid, a website is nice to have rather than urgent. Build one when you want work you haven't been handed, or before the contract that's keeping you busy comes to an end.