Freelancers who started a website. Worth it?

[Cerialkiller]

I'm a part time freelancer working in design. I have experience in landscape design mostly but also do technical work, construction drawings, kitchen elevations, scale plans etc, mostly as a subcontractor for other companies.

I'm a limited company and income has been slowly increasing year on year by about 10-20% but likely to only make 12-14k this year so still quite part time. I'm working around school hours and holidays.

I've been toying with starting a website. I have a fantastic portfolio of virtual work (no real photos of my own completed projects and don't want to use ones I made for clients).

For those of you who have made this jump, how easy/hard was the process, how much maintenance/faffing do you do regularly and was it worth it??

I created my website (but in fairness I’m an SEO content writer so it comes with the territory!)

I get a decent number of clicks but I’ve found it most useful as a place to send people who interact with me on LinkedIn. Having an easy way to email or just click a button and buy has got me a few retainer type jobs

I've been using Instagram in the same way but it would be better to have more space and formatting options for a professional website.

I suppose ideally I would want to find a service (like wix) where I could get best bang for buck and see how it goes for a year. If nothing then no harm done.

You could try the templates on Wix/Squarespace/Wordpress to build your own. It’s not too tricky.

I'd say something simple on SquareSpace or similar is probably worth doing but would keep it fairly simple.

Are you using LinkedIn as a way to promote and connect online?