Each week I get two or three requests for design work. They come sometimes from contacts, but more often than not they come from random people. Sometimes they even come from web-famous people or well-known companies. What is interesting about this though is that I no longer freelance, advertise for work or even have a portfolio.

Actually it can be pretty hard to contact me, though I did finally put up a little website for myself two weeks ago.

Although these days I turn away all this work, for some years I did in fact work as a freelance designer and happily always had more work than I could do – despite being inclined to overwork.

So how do you get web design jobs? Or any other type of job? Here are some things that have worked for me. Continue Reading

In light of the recent Tuts+ Premium compromise, we’ve been auditing our systems to make sure they all have good practices around account and password storage. Because our FreelanceSwitch system was connected to an older version of BBPress, it was storing some accounts using a simple hash (not a good practice). Newer accounts, and ones which have had a password reset in recent times, had better security (a better hash, and a per user salt).

So to be certain that everyone is up to date, we have reset all user passwords on the job board and forums. Users will need to update their password using the Reset Password Form.

To be clear, this is just a precaution to improve general security on FreelanceSwitch.

We’re sorry for the inconvenience this will cause users. If you have any questions or run into any problems, don’t hesitate to contact Support.

Part guesswork, part experience, part number crunching – how ever you look at it, determining your price is a difficult task. Here are nine factors to take into consideration when pricing your services:

1. Your Costs

If your rate doesn’t include enough just to break-even, you’re heading for trouble. The best thing to do is sum up all your costs and divide by the number of hours you think you can bill a year. Whatever you do, DON’T think you can bill every hour. You must account for sick days, holidays, hours working on the business, hours with no work and so on.

Also make sure you factor in all the hidden costs of your business like insurance, invoices that never get paid for one reason or another, and everyone’s favourite – taxes.

2. Your Profit

Somewhat related to your costs, you should always consider how much money you are trying to make above breaking even. This is business after all.

3. Market Demand

If what you do is in high demand, then you should be aiming to make your services more expensive. Conversely if there’s hardly any work around, you’ll need to cheapen up if you hope to compete.

Signs that demand is high include too much work coming in, other freelancers being overloaded and people telling you they’ve been struggling to find someone to do the job. Signs that demand is low include finding yourself competing to win jobs, a shortage of work and fellow freelancers reentering the workforce. Continue Reading

Working as a contractor–or freelancing as it is often termed–is both a great stepping stone to running your own business and a viable career in itself. For the uninitiated, there can be numerous hurdles to overcome on the way to starting and having a successful freelancing career.

As a former freelancer myself and having employed more than a few, I have observed some of these hurdles firsthand. This article discusses some of the ins and outs of both freelancing and running a small business.

This article is also available in French. Pour nos chers lecteurs de la langue Francaise, je suis heureux de vous informer que vous pouvez lire une traduction complete de cet article: Le guide complet du débutant freelance. Continue Reading

Of all the many marketplaces we run here at Envato, the one I use the most myself is GraphicRiver. So I was very excited to get to pick out $500 of files from GraphicRiver and PhotoDune to include in a Graphic Designer Bundle which is now on sale for just $20!

The reason I love GraphicRiver is that while I can usually create (or recreate) most things myself, it saves me a lot of time and effort. And there are some really cool ideas, images and effects that can be combined to awesome effect. I don’t know what other designers think of the site, but for me personally, I love it! And I picked out a whole bunch of my favourite items for this bundle, not all of them though – so there’s still lots of reasons to go shopping! Continue Reading

It’s kinda crazy to think, but our little internet startup, Envato, has been on the air now for five years. We started back in 2006 as four very enthusiastic and totally green entrepreneurs with a shoestring budget and a love of the web. Fast forward five years and while we’re hopefully a little less green, we’re still incredibly passionate about Education, Marketplaces and the web! It’s been an amazing time and we’d like to share a look inside our Melbourne HQ offices, some stats about Envato and a big thank you to the community.

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It’s been almost five years since we launched Envato, the company behind this site and many others, and in that time we’ve built eight digital marketplaces for everything from WordPress Themes to Background Music. With our fifth birthday coming up this weekend, we’re excited to announce the beta launch of our ninth marketplace: PhotoDune for royalty free stock photos. Continue Reading

With our Freelance Mac App bundle past 1000 copies sold, I wanted to take a quick moment to highlight the fact that as part of the promotion we have partnered with SmashingMagazine to give away completely free copies of their eBook: “Successful Freelancing”. All you need to do is send out a super quick tweet promoting the bundle and you’ll get your own copy of the book which normally retails at $5. It’s that easy!

Thanks to the wonderful guys at Smashing for allowing us to run this neat little promotion, and thanks to the hundreds of people who’ve already taken advantage of this offer!

Every freelancer knows that a good tool can make a dramatic difference in productivity. And for freelancers productivity = earnings. That’s why I’m super excited to announce that the first ever AppStorm Freelance Mac App Bundle is now on sale and it’s packed full of Mac Apps, files and eBooks that is unbeatable value for freelancers!
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Two years ago we started a little side project to review and roundup apps. Being bloggers, a kick-ass WordPress setup was the natural way to go. My little brother threw in a great idea for a name, and we lucked out when a super talented blogger named David Appleyard showed up offering to run the project. Two years on and AppStorm has become a little powerhouse here at Envato, for Mac apps, Web apps, iPhone and iPad apps, and starting today, Windows and Android apps. Continue Reading

When you think of iOS apps for freelancing you probably think of Time Tracking and Invoicing right? That’s what I think of, and while there are a lot of great apps for doing precisely those two chores, there are in fact a lot of apps to help you do a lot of other things too. Like what?

How about an app for scanning in business cards for filing? Or an app to turn your iOS device into a flash drive? Or maybe an app to let you control your machine remotely from your iPhone? You can do all these things, and a heck of a lot more.

Over on our sister site iPhone.AppStorm we’ve collected 90 Awesome iOS Apps for Freelancers that include those examples and many, many more. Head over and check it out!

For four years the Envato Marketplaces have helped authors around the world earn an income selling their digital wares. Along the way we’ve grown from one marketplace to seven, with more on the way. We’ve gone from hundreds of members to hundreds of thousands. Items from our marketplaces have appeared in projects for companies big and small, all around the world. And most importantly of all, we’ve had thousands of authors cash out earnings, ranging from a bit of money for a big weekend to sums in the tens of thousands of dollars a month!

It’s been an amazing ride, and here at Envato along with our commitment to growing Tuts+ and FreelanceSwitch, we are completely committed to making our marketplaces the best around. That’s why I’m very excited today to announce that as of the end of September we are rolling out some dramatically improved rates for all our exclusive authors! Continue Reading