Maintaining Business Standards As A Freelancer
Share Freelancing is very different to the majority of other businesses due to its innately personal involvement and attachment to every aspect of the business. Maintaining objectivity and a decisive decision process can be hard as your personal feelings begin to creep into the equation.
5 Free Non-Disclosure Agreements
Share Non disclosure Agreements are something that comes up at some point in time. Especially, say you are outsourcing a part of a project to another freelancer or design agency. Over time – I have compiled the following samples that helped me create my own tailored NDA. Thanks to their authors. If an download errors pop-up, please [...]
Does a successful freelancer have to be a good sales person?
Share When starting out, when your down in the trenches fighting against the colossal agencies and your fellow freelancing kin, do you have to be a good sales person in order to secure projects? Do you feel freelancers need to be sales orientated? Are you a good sales person? The internet has given clients information [...]
Factors To Consider When Pricing For A Project
Share One of the things I suffered from in the beginning when pricing clients is often forgetting to bill for all aspects of a project and thus half way through I was feeling cheated or clients were commenting on how remarkably low my prices where in comparison to other quotes they had received. We all [...]
Should You Find a Niche To Stand Out From The Pack?
Share This is a question that often comes up in my head, in my daily attempts at plotting on how to take over the design universe.. that surely it must be easy to top google and take over all the clients in the world if I find a niche. However, starting out, one might not [...]
Long Term Freelancing Success – Part 1 – Dedication
Share Hi all, welcome to what I hope to be a series about some factors I think will be key to long term success..The first is to address your working discipline. Read many interviews of freelancers and a common answer to ‘what do you love about being a freelancer?’ – one of the expected answers [...]
Competing Against The Agency – The Freelancer’s Epic Battle
Share As a ‘noob’ to the freelance design industry in what I would consider a truly professional manner; I was somewhat naive as to how hard it would be to find clients. After the initial shock, I found myself confronted with one monumental competitor that seemed like Goliath; leaving me feeling like David (without his [...]
When Your Client Wants To Become The Designer
Share Every now and then you receive a client who gets involved in your end of the deal, and is questioning / making firm suggestions about directions to take. This could be due to their eagerness, misunderstanding of professional boundaries or personality; but it needs to be addressed when they begin to intrude too much [...]
Your Quote is too high! – Charging/Negotiating for design work
Share It is inevitable and if it hasn’t happened to yourself yet, it is not far round the corner especially in the economic times were in. Quite often, a potential client will challenge you on your pricing. i.e your rate per hour, total price etc The first time it happened to us, we were hit [...]
7 Things To Consider When Starting As A Freelance Designer
Share Many just pick up and go when entering the freelancing world, but to ensure things go smoothly for everybody involved, there are a few considerations. Setting up a small studio, office or dedicated work area within your household; keeping the font police off your heels, invoicing and paying correct taxes etc are vital. Being [...]
5 Little Tips for Designers
Share These are more focused on just getting into what we perceive as good habits, and its always best to egt into good habits from early on! Some of these are somewhat obvious, maybe even dumb but its easy to forget the simple things. Hope they help. 1) Ensure that your client is pleased with [...]
Free Business Plan, Projected Balances and Expenses Templates
Share When we first began, a friend sent over some very nice business plan, asset, balance sheet, started up expenses etc type templates. You can use, edit these at your own discretion. Unfortunately, I do not know and cannot ascertain who created them, so am unable to give credit, where its due as these templates are [...]
When Meeting A Client as a freelance designer…
Share When first starting out, the prospect of going to meet a client to discuss the project and work through the nitty gritty details can be a little daunting. This little list is just some things to make sure you have the predictable bases covered: Firstly, I am just going to say remember that they [...]
What is Usability?
Share During my web travels, I have seen the term usability thrown around everywhere and although on the face of things, its an easy concept to grasp; I searched for an in-depth resource to explain the term, its applications and examples. Then I came across this, give it time, takes a good 2 minutes to [...]
10 Resources to Help You Decide What To Charge for Design Work
Share As website designers , we know all to well how difficult it can be to competitively price your work; we compiled the following list of resources to help us in our endeavors. 1) Design Talkboard: ‘How much to charge for Graphic Design’ in reality, freelance designers will need to research carefully and develop a [...]
Using Humour Effectively in Design
We went on a short trip to amsterdam, and stayed in, probably the worst hotel in Europe. (that anchor text is adding to their advertising, trust me!) It wasn’t an exaggeration to suggest that our room resembled a prison in every way, except for the bars. However, the budget hotel embraced it’s flaws instead of trying to cover them up – using humour in their advertisments, they successfuly turned what should have been the worst aspect of any hotel, into its biggest selling points.
Copyright Your Artwork
As artists and creative minds it is becoming ever more important to make sure you copyright your work! This protects you from infringement, criminal clients and a host of other problems that can arise when you realise someone has stolen your work. We are about to produce a poster for mass sale through various outlets, so we have managed to find out the following on copyright in the UK. If you have anything to add or correct, let us know!!!
10 Great Free SEO Tools and Resources
Share Great basic to intermediate SEO Tools Hi all. In my efforts to search engine optimise websites for myself and various clients i’ve compiled a little list of free SEO analysing tools that I use. Hope you find them useful. 1) SEOmoz | SEO Cheat Sheet This wonderful PDF courtesy of Danny Dover contains every [...]
Long Term Freelancing Success – Part 2 – Marketing
Share Welcome to the second installment of this series – Marketing. You can view the other parts here: Long Term Freelancing Success. Marketing is one of the key elements of any business and as a freelancer it should be a huge part of your strategy towards growth and success. So in this post I’m going [...]
Dec 13, 2009 | Categories: Commentary, Freelancing, Resources | Tags: Business, Freelance, freelancesuccess, Marketing | 10 Comments »