Nowadays everyone has probably heard of someone who works from home. By taking advantage of the Internet, one can work quietly at home, being able to communicate with clients throughout the world. The internet has certainly opened countless opportunities for freelancers around the world.
Nowadays everyone has probably heard of someone who works from home. By taking advantage of the Internet, one can work quietly at home, being able to communicate with clients throughout the world. The internet has certainly opened countless opportunities for freelancers around the world in professional web design.
Certainly for graphic designers, the first characteristic that it comes to mind is freedom! And nothing can beat working as a freelancer, being your own boss, and having the most utmost creative freedom that you can get.
Nevertheless, starting your own freelance career is never easy, as there are a lot of other aspects you need to take care of in order to be successful. Besides being independent and having the little entrepreneur devil inside you, here’s a small list of hints and tips that might just help you do that.
Build your Portfolio
Remember, it’s always quality ovary quantity. It’s better having a smaller portfolio with better quality than a large one with lesser quality. Don’t overbuild it!
Market Yourself
As a freelancer starting out, promoting your business services is certainly not an easy task. The most easy and convenient way is probably by showcasing your portfolio online through a website.
You can easily do this by using wordpress and using a portfolio dedicated template. Remember to keep it updated.
Expand your network
While starting out, you will probably not spend much money advertising yourself, whether online or on newspapers, magazines. Instead you can expand your network getting to know more people, find local clubs about design, attend design conferences, even meet other freelance designers in the field, it can never hurt. Sometimes your fellow freelance designers might be so cluttered with work they might pass some extra work. Even getting to know freelance web designers can be an advantage, you can form partnerships with them by supplying different services to accompany their own.
How to find Freelance Design jobs?
As mentioned above, probably word of mouth will be a big starting point, but there are countless online portals dedicated for finding freelance work, such as:
www.getafreelancer.com
www.ifreelance.com
www.99designs.com
www.freelanceuk.com
www.graphicdesignfreelancejobs.com
Learn some Business Principles
Being a freelancer also means you need to take care of the commercial side of business as well. There are several task that you might not have experienced working as a pure designer in a company. Things such as pitching to a client, quoting prices for projects, invoicing, declaring taxes etc that you’ll need to learn. Don’t worry all this things will evolve naturally once you start running your own business.
Transiting from a full-time job to freelancing is never an easy thing to do. Probably the easiest way is to start, is by working on some freelance projects on your free time while you are still working full-time. This way you can learn and experience the basics of it, giving you a head start when you transit. It would also let your portfolio grow slowly before you even launch your business.
Other tips:
- Be patient
- Don’t take criticism personally
- Take deadlines seriously
- Enjoy your work
5 Responses
These are very useful tips for a freelancing career.
Thanks a lot!
please continue the good work with your website !! don’t stop upload
I have really been thinking about starting out as freelance so thank for the article now i know a bit more
have you any other advice?
It’s really a great post..I would like to appreciate your work ，thank you
Good article!! Very interesting. Thanks!