Most important to consider for remote workers and a freelance economy:
1. Cultivate genuine connections with people you meet professionally and socially.
Someone in our networks is always asking for reference
on a designer, your connections & friends will recommend you.
2. IF you’re void working with creative temp agencies when you can some of them require businesses to pay a
“finders fee” if that business wants to hire you or work with you past your initial assignment. Once you have a body of work
that you can present to the client, you can do the work of the agency and sell your-self (and keep the markup).
3. Know when to offer gratis or discounted work. Often bartering or discounting your service fee it worth it. If it’s a business or organization that is growing, and you develop a working relationship with them as their trusted creative, when they are generating greater revenue, they more likely than not call on you and you’ll be able to at a point adjust your fee to the market rate.
4. When negotiating a fee, always start by asking what the budget for the project is. Straight away, you’ll know how much value is placed on design as a service. You can counter with “I don’t think I’ll be able to provide what you’re looking for at that rate” and see if they offer a rate more commensurate with your services and experience, and if the budget is just impossible, you can offer what could be achieved within that range.
5. For unknown contacts that don’t come with a recommendation, charge an consultation fee – which can be deducted from the total project fee (if they indeed choose to move forward with you as the creative on the project). You would be surprised at how little is understood about design, the time it takes to research and provide creative direction, and the time attributed to requested revisions. Often you spend a good amount of your time communicating about the project needs to build the brief so you can educate the client on the prices, agree on the rate or negotiate the fees – that’s time you don’t get paid for if you don’t charge.
6. In an offsite freelance economy, your online presence matters. Be Present! Unless you have an agent, you are your best advocate. You need to cultivate an online presence that gives an at-a-click introduction to who you are, what you do and what work you’ve done. Gone are the days of leafing through various portfolio sites to figure out what a creative has to offer, you should own your personal URL or that of your business name. Your work should be easy to access and not emailed to a client in a jumble of PDF attachments.
I have always managed my private design business while working in corporate. It’s kept my finger in the creative pie, and allowed me to maintain my creative identity separate from that of any brands that I was managing professionally. Working both sides (hiring freelancers and acting as a freelancer) has enabled me to better manage both professional and personal freelance efforts.
