I've been doing consulting on and off for over a decade (with a few full time jobs along the way) and in that time I have found two clients as inbound leads due to my website. On the other hand, calling people or emailing friends or asking people I've worked with in the past if they know anyone who might need help has generated enough leads to easily sustain a small business.
Work really hard to make sure your first few clients are extremely happy, but don't do that by undercharging. Charge your old annual salary divided by 1000 or so, or at least what you think a typical salary for you would be if your old job paid market rates if it didn't.
Get your first few clients to write you a testimonial and agree to be references for you so that future clients can read what they said and ask them about you to get over the "new consultant" hump.
Those first few clients will be probably your best resource for new work -- people change jobs all the time so make sure people at your clients' companies know your name and what you contributed. They'll move to new jobs or have friends who ask them for recommendations and if they think of you you're in a really good spot.
That said, my website is terrible and I don't think it matters. I am busy but not swamped and I'm happy with the stuff I'm working on though my one big regret is that being remote-only limits my ability to help with more hardcore chemical engineering or materials development projects. I like building stuff but it's just not realistic if I'm not at least 50% part time, and I can't really blame my clients for that. It's a back and forth conversation to figure out what you can provide. I'm disabled anyway so while this is frustrating I think it's probably just for the best sadly.
TLDR; Don't worry about your website as long as you have one and a company domain email address so you come off as doing this as a thing rather than using your aol email address ;-) But your first few clients will probably be from friends of friends or luck, so make sure to do a great job for them and make clear that you're open to and appreciative of referrals.
I've been doing consulting on and off for over a decade (with a few full time jobs along the way) and in that time I have found two clients as inbound leads due to my website. On the other hand, calling people or emailing friends or asking people I've worked with in the past if they know anyone who might need help has generated enough leads to easily sustain a small business.
Work really hard to make sure your first few clients are extremely happy, but don't do that by undercharging. Charge your old annual salary divided by 1000 or so, or at least what you think a typical salary for you would be if your old job paid market rates if it didn't.
Get your first few clients to write you a testimonial and agree to be references for you so that future clients can read what they said and ask them about you to get over the "new consultant" hump.
Those first few clients will be probably your best resource for new work -- people change jobs all the time so make sure people at your clients' companies know your name and what you contributed. They'll move to new jobs or have friends who ask them for recommendations and if they think of you you're in a really good spot.
That said, my website is terrible and I don't think it matters. I am busy but not swamped and I'm happy with the stuff I'm working on though my one big regret is that being remote-only limits my ability to help with more hardcore chemical engineering or materials development projects. I like building stuff but it's just not realistic if I'm not at least 50% part time, and I can't really blame my clients for that. It's a back and forth conversation to figure out what you can provide. I'm disabled anyway so while this is frustrating I think it's probably just for the best sadly.
TLDR; Don't worry about your website as long as you have one and a company domain email address so you come off as doing this as a thing rather than using your aol email address ;-) But your first few clients will probably be from friends of friends or luck, so make sure to do a great job for them and make clear that you're open to and appreciative of referrals.