In this issue of Ask FreelanceSwitch, we look at an introduction to freelancing and contracts. Ask FreelanceSwitch is a regular column here that allows us to help beginners get a grip on freelancing. If you have a question about freelancing that you want answered, send an email to askfreelanceswitch@gmail.com.

Question 1

Dear Freelance Switch,
I am writing to you to request advice and tips on the following below:

• How does a freelancer set up their business?
• What tools and systems are needed?
• How do you market your freelance business?
• How long do you spend each day on finding customers and how do you find customers?
• How do you stick to your goals and achieve them?
• How to meet deadlines?
• How to be an organized person?

Some of my questions might sound too basic or simple to answer. I have become disabled and I cannot do full office hours. My profession was Microsoft.net Developer.

This is a big block of questions, most of which have been answered over the years on this site. I know searching back through the archives is overwhelming, though, so this seems like a perfect opportunity to pull out some of the best posts on FreelanceSwitch for these questions:

• Setting up your business: A Comprehensive Guide to Starting Your Freelance Career
• Tools and systems: The ROI for Project Management Tools
• Marketing: Build a Better Freelance Business with Strategic Branding
• Finding clients: Go Forth and Sell and How to Leverage Inbound Marketing to Make Clients Claw At Your Door
• Goals: Starting a Freelance Business in 2012: Planning Ahead
  
• Deadlines: Dealing With Procrastination
• Organization: Getting Ready for Next Year–Now

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I don’t know about you, but lately I’ve been hearing about some pretty serious social media snafus that have been so bad that people have lost their jobs over them.

Whether your Facebook page is set to private or not, nothing is ever really private on the Internet. It’s not just high school and college kids who have a hard time understanding that—it’s grown ups, too.

If you are like me, you have a personal Facebook page as well as one for your business. I have a LinkedIn page and I tweet using my business handle. Keeping your personal and business lives separate on social media sites can be hard, so here are some ways to make sure you are putting your best foot forward, instead of in your mouth. Continue Reading

A career in Freelance Illustration is much more than drawing pretty pictures. As much as you’d like to spend the entire day sitting in front of Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, you’ll also need to learn about selling yourself, keeping your portfolio fresh and, all the admin work we love to hate. It’s this work we love to hate that will define your success as an illustrator.

There are many different things you may wish to consider when thinking about entering into professional illustration, such as:

• The purpose of your illustration: Illustration itself covers many different areas. While drawing pretty pictures maybe one aspect, you need to be specific in your objectives.

  Are you wanting to illustrate for advertising campaigns? What about book covers? Maybe graphics to accompany news and magazine articles? Maybe graphics for a cocktail menu? How about diagrams for medical journals? And there are also illustrations for packaging? These are just the tip of the iceberg of the many avenues you could go down in finding a niche illustration market.

• The medium of your artwork: Sometimes the purpose of your illustration can depend on what medium your artwork will be rendered in. For instance, is the work going to be displayed on a CD cover? If so, maybe an illustration within Photoshop/raster based work will be fine. However if the work is going to be displayed on a billboard and you’re going to need a high resolution graphic, perhaps looking at vector work in Illustrator is what you need. If you’re unsure of the key differences of these mediums, check out this article on What is Vexel Art?, which goes into what raster and vector art is.

• Client vs Stock: There are several ways you could earn money as a freelance illustrator. The most obvious is via clients who commission you to create a tailored piece of artwork to their specifications. However there is another way you can earn money with illustration and that’s selling your illustrations via stock websites. There is a huge benefit of creating illustration stock and that is that you don’t have to deal direct with clients. So if selling yourself and hunting out clients isn’t your thing, then maybe this route is something you may want to consider.

  To find out more about this check out these articles on How I Make $2,000 Every Year Without Doing Very Much and the follow up article 9 Tips for Creating and Maximizing a Steady Income Stream by Selling Stock.

• Agency Representation: Illustration agencies act as a third party. They market your work through the relevant channels and are great for getting those household name clients. Bigger companies tend to target agencies due to the variety of talent on their books, experience and convenience.

  The benefits of being represented is that they will can handle contracts with clients and can help negotiate larger fees. However, they don’t do this for nothing and they will take a commission percentage from your fees. They may also ask you to cover costs for promoting your works to directories and marketing opportunities. For more, check out the article on Computer Arts: Finding an agent.

Advice from Talented Freelance Illustrators

I’m going to introduce you to five talented Freelance Illustrators. They’ll tell you how they got into freelancing and what advice they can give you on getting started in a career in Freelance Illustration.

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Want to make money on that app you created? You’ll have to spend money and time on marketing your app outside of app stores for success, according to a recent study conducted by App-Promo, a mobile app marketing company.

The First Annual Developer Survey was created to help understand how developers are really doing with their mobile apps.

I don’t know about you, but the amount of apps on the market is overwhelming! It seems everyone has an app these days. Perhaps you have made a business out of developing these apps for clients, or you are a client who is thinking about hiring someone to create an app for you— this post will help shed some light on the industry.

The study found that most developers are developing apps for the Apple iPhone (58%) and the iPad (54.5%). Nearly 49% of them developed apps for Android users. Most of the developers are pricing their apps as free (35.2%) or at $0.99 (30.7%). They are also employing revenue models outside of paid apps, like advertising. Because, really, it’s about making money. Continue Reading

Are you sick of seeing job ads for blogging that only offer $20 a post or less? Scanning the online job boards, you might think there are no good-paying blogging gigs.

But there are. I know because I’ve earned as much as $300 a blog post, and often get north of $100 a post.

What makes the difference? It’s all in the type of client you’re blogging for, and the type of business they have.

What sort of clients pay more for blog posts? Here is my guide for sleuthing out a better class of blogging client:

Ad-Click Model vs Lead-Generation Model

Most low-paid blogging offers come from online-only companies or content mills. These businesses all have the same way of making money: ad clicks.

The problem? This model doesn’t work well for most of the people who try it. So they don’t have a lot of money to spend. Even when the sites are able to attract big traffic, the strategy may not be profitable.

Instead, look for companies that sell a real product or service, usually in the physical world.

Their model is also reliant on throwing a ton of quickie, keyword-loaded content on their site, to drive traffic and create lots of pages for the ads. Because they need large numbers of posts with this strategy, each post can’t pay much.

Instead, look for companies that sell a real product or service, usually in the physical world. For instance, they sell cars, or insurance, or in-person consulting services. They are looking for blog posts that will draw in new leads and get them to join their email list, so they can sell to them later and turn them into customers.

Companies that pay for various forms of lead generation understand the value of a sophisticated, well-written blog post. When there’s a direct correlation between your blogging and their ability to build their marketing list and generate new revenue, companies are happy to pay a decent wage.

How can you connect with successful companies? Target companies you’d love to blog for and scan their company job board online for openings. Or reach out to them directly with a phone call or marketing email introducing yourself. Continue Reading

There’s a reason you see a smattering of women in red business suits in the crowd when you watch the State of the Union address on TV. Red is a power color, and these are powerful women!

The colors you choose to wear and even brand yourself with say a lot about you—individually and as a business.

I have very few business suits. My absolute favorite one is a gorgeous tangerine and hot pink brocade with a mandarin collar. It’s hot. It stands out from the crowd. It is not conservative. Whenever I wear it, I get lots of compliments. It’s sooooooo me!

But I’m not trying to blend in with everyone else around me. That’s not my M.O. I’m a freelance writer, editor, and entrepreneur. I like to have fun with color. I know what colors look good on me and I wear them as often as possible. Does that mean I have an abnormally large collection of bright green shirts? Yes, it does.

I really enjoyed reading this article on Inc.com about being color conscious. Wearing bold, brash colors might not be a great idea for someone who makes a living managing other peoples’ money. You don’t want your financial adviser to look quirky and brash. You want someone who presents themselves in a polished, even conservative manner. That’s why black, gray, and khaki are such popular, classic colors.

But what if you were creating an ad marketing campaign from scratch, or designing a new website? What would you want your designer to look like? I’m guessing the word “boring” doesn’t instantly come to mind. Which is why creative professionals need to be cognizant of color, whether it’s what they wear on their bodies or what is used on their websites.

Take a peek into your closet and at your website or marketing materials and notice what colors are most prevalent. Lets take a look at what those colors might say about you, according to the psychology of color: Continue Reading

Have you been wondering if you could be a freelance writer?

Well, despite all the rah-rah you hear on many freelance sites about just going for it, and all the excitement about the pluses of the freelance life — no boss, set your own hours, a variety of work — the plain fact is that not everybody can hack this lifestyle.

How do you know if it’s not for you? I’ve mentored a lot of writers, and at this point I have a pretty clear sense of who is going to make it and who will end up throwing in the towel and finding a day job again.

Here are my seven warning signs that you’re not cut out to be a freelance writer, and suggestions on how to overcome each of these obstacles:

1. You’re insecure. Deep down, you need to have confidence that you possess writing talent and will be able to find gigs. If you don’t really think you’ve got something to offer, neither will anyone else. If needed, work to build up your confidence. Look over past writing you’ve done and see what you’ve accomplished. Surround yourself with people who are bullish on your writing efforts. Look in the mirror every morning and say, “Damn, I’m good.” Repeat until you mean it.
2. You’re not self-disciplined. If you were home all day with no one looking over your shoulder, would you do your writing assignments and market your business — or would you stuff most of the contents of your fridge down your gullet, yack on Facebook IM, and watch reruns of Dancing with the Stars? When you’re a freelancer, you need the inner resolve to haul yourself into the chair, turn on the computer, and write. So meditate, do yoga…whatever it takes to develop some discipline, get some inner calm, and start to focus on what matters.

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Once a week, we feature a fantastic freelance-themed comic from the talented N.C. Winters. Why not also take a look at our comic archive? Continue Reading

Looking for a new client? The FreelanceSwitch job board is a great resource of freelance gigs and opportunities. These opportunities are in various fields, from development to writing to design, and come from a wide range of potential clients. The job board is hand-moderated by dedicated staff and volunteers from the freelance community.

Each week, we’ll feature a selection of the best job opportunities posted for the week. This week, we’re featuring jobs in E-commerce Development, Game Design, Graphic Design and more!

To apply for any of these jobs, simply pick up a FreelanceSwitch membership for an affordable $7 a month. See something you like? Join now!

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View engaging conference lectures, interesting how to discussions, and high quality freelance advice via video here on FreelanceSwitch.

This week we look at Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is. presented by graphic designer Chip Kidd. In this video we learn about the art of book cover design. Chip Kidd creates book covers that embody the book — and he does it with a wicked sense of humor. In one of the funniest talks from TED2012, he shows the art and deep thought of his cover designs. Continue Reading

An expo or a conference is a great way to network with other people who work in your industry, as well as a great place to reach a target market.

I co-own and edit a wedding magazine, so I’ve been to my fair share of bridal expos. And I’ve learned a lot from being surrounded by other vendors as well as dealing with attendees.

I found some excellent blog posts written by professional who have great advice on how to make the most of your time at a conference or expo. I’ve used some of their tips to illustrate my thoughts. If you’ll be attending a conference soon, then these tips are assembled just for you.

Do Your Research Before You Go

You might have to sign up to attend sessions in advance, so make sure to look up the topics and speakers ahead of time. The most popular sessions will fill up fast, so don’t wait to decide on what you want to attend on the day of the event—you might not get a seat!

A good strategy before conferences once you’ve seen the speaker and attendee list is to select the people you’d like to connect with. If you’re well established in the topic, perhaps you want to focus on making a few really strong and solid connections. If you’re just getting started and want to use the conference to get to know people, aim for a higher number. —Inc.com

Think about what you want to learn and take away from the conference, and plan your agenda accordingly. You aren’t going to be able to go to every session and meet every speaker—so make sure to make a list of priorities. Continue Reading

Savvy freelance editors often have a preternatural ability to zero in on dream clients and to steer clear from troublesome ones.

Ideal clients are those that are effortless to work with, straightforward and clear, and earn you the most money in a short period of time.

In contrast, challenging clients are usually those that ask you to work below your standard rate, demand a lot of changes mid-project, request frequent meetings, and seek to micromanage the way you work.

As a freelance editor, there are client situations you don’t want to find yourself in. When you sense a prospective client is going to be problematic, swerve quickly to avoid them.

1. Your client asks for unreasonable discounts.

If your client tries to talk you down from your standard rate, it can be fair to consider offering a discount if you think the project is interesting or could be an excellent addition to your portfolio.

But if you agree to an hourly rate and the client tries to undercut the proposed number of hours to pay you less, it demonstrates that he or she doesn’t understand the investment that is required on your part. Instead of offering an hourly rate, charge by the service or project. If the prospective client continues to balk during negotiations, it’s time to walk away. Learn a few pricing and client intake strategies to help you filter your client list. Continue Reading