Advice For The Self Employed Graphic Designer
by Nathan Pope. Average Reading Time: about 3 minutes.
I was recently helping a friend make the transition from graphic design hobbyist to self employed designer. As I was helping him I thought how useful this would be as a full fledged guide. These are my top 13 tips to being a self employed designer.
- Stay focused on the bigger picture
- Tell your friends and family about your choice
- Don’t stress about pricing
- Learn from your mistakes
- When you’re wrong, honestly admit to your fault
- Continue learning
- Write a blog
- Learn as much as you can about your clients
- You will occasionally work with people you don’t like
- Stay positive and be enjoyable to talk to
- Work hard and consistently
- Develop other revenue streams
- Keep the wheels in motion
Create a modern business plan and stick to it.
You never know what kind of connections they might have. The people close to you want you to succeed and may be able to help you get off your feet and hit the ground running.
You are going to lose potential clients because of your pricing. People determine how valuable you are based on your past work and the price of that work
Everyone makes them. Learn from your mistakes, and move on.
Sometimes your mistakes might affect other people. People want to know that you care about them. Be sure to be empathetic in your apology and try to not make the same mistakes again.
To get to the top and stay there you can’t stop learning about your field. You can become more knowledgeable by getting mentors, reading new design books, subscribing to inspirational blogs, or by taking design courses.
The readers you bring to your blog with become an invaluable source of knowledge and help. It serves to not only grow a community but it could also help you meet people that might become partners or potentially clients.
Engage them with topics about their industry. This not only helps to generate design ideas but it also helps you connect with them on a personal level.
It is a fact of business life. This is especially more common at the beginning of your career. Try to make the best of the situation and learn as much as you can from the project. You will not only be financially better off than when you started, you will have more knowledge and that is priceless. Some of that knowledge may just be learning how to spot potentially problematic clients.
As a self employed designer you are the entire face of your business. If people don’t enjoy talking to you they may decide to stop working with you entirely. It is up to you to make them happy.
If you make your clients happy they might refer you to their business parters and eventually you don’t have to worry about finding new work. The harder you work the quicker and better you end up becoming.
There may be some points in your career where the income stream dries up. Your main clients might not need work for a month or worse, you get too sick to work. The best way to work around this is create a passive income during your down times.
If you’re a web designer you might consider selling some website templates. If you are a graphic designer you could do things like sell custom type faces, work with stock photography, or you could even sell illustrated blog icons.
There is nothing quite like working for yourself. You get to set your own hours and eventually you get to choose the clients you end up working with. Just keep working hard at it.
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cool post. when you say to not stress about pricing, did you mean not to charge too much in order to keep potential customers?
I would like to think that as long as you price fairly but competitively for someone with your skillset and experience, you would be earning a fair amount. Unfortunately, this may not be the case for everyone and some people end up having to price themselves a bit lower they are comfortable with to get those initial clients.
One way to bypass this is to offer your services for free to worthy non profits and charities who may not be able to afford a graphic designer. These types of projects are usually a bit more flexible in the creative department and they might even lead to paid projects by introducing you to new business connections. At the very least you can put the pieces in your portfolio and show future potential clients the quality of work you produce.