September 17th, 2007
Work-from-home career opportunities in the web design field? Don’t waste time searching for freelance graphic design job postings. You can find more work if you present yourself as a business and contact companies direct.
Simply follow the tips in this article—you’ll find a step-by-step plan of action from targeting clients, to self-marketing, to getting ahead of the competition.
You really can make real money selling your own art work. So if you have an artistic talent, and you are looking for the latest home based business ideas to help you make BIG money, this article is your ultimate freelancers business resource.
In this article:
- How to start a freelance graphic design business from home
- How to boost your freelancing job opportunities
- How to frugally market your freelance artwork business
- How designers can offer full creative marketing agency services in less than six months
How to Start a Freelance Graphic Design Business
In the world of freelance, you don’t need to be the greatest artist who ever lived. You just need to know how to reach new clients.
In the following article, I’ll show you how to get highly-paid business by freelancing in the marketing communications sector. Why focus on this sector? Because it’s the most profitable.
Start with your portfolio
Starting a freelance artwork business is a bit like opening a shop. Your shop window is the work you present to clients in pitching meetings. So your first task is dress your shop window—by creating an impressive portfolio.
Gather together all your work. Include anything and everything you have done for past clients or at college. Then write captions that summarize the brief each piece of work responds to. Add any good feedback you received.
Buy a sturdy stand-up presentation folder and add your work to it. Devote one sleeve to one project. Add examples of your work and reinforce with captions so your prospective clients have something to read—and you have prompts to help you explain your work whilst pitching.
If you don’t have enough work to show in a portfolio (i.e. under ten projects), you may want to work on some simulated briefs—that is, make up a brief and produce a visual that responds to it. Prospective clients won’t care if the briefs are real or not, they just want to see how good your work is.
Build yourself a website
Unless you are a web-designer, creating your own website is not essential, although it does give you some advantages. A website will help you to communicate your portfolio via email without sending attachments (promotions controllers will be suspicious of emails with attachments from unknown addresses—a link to a website is preferable).
If you have no experience of designing websites, don’t be put off, you can buy inexpensive templates online (www.templateshome.com is a good place to start, where you can buy smart website templates for around $50), and buying a dot.com address and uploading it onto a website browser should cost no more than $50.
Summarize your services and your ‘unique offer’ on your home page (read on to find out how to establish your ‘unique offer’). Include all your contact details on a separate page, and the best of your portfolio on another page. Now you’re ready to roll.
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