5 things you need to know about freelancing graphic design

Pricing

As a freelancer you need to ensure you are pricing your products/services correctly. Selling yourself cheap does not pay the bills. Set out your day rates and fixed rates and don’t change them for anyone. Your prices not only reflect your work and the years it has taken you to achieve the level you are at, but also it covers holiday pay, sick pay and the amount of back and fourth emailing to the client. All of this needs to be taken into consideration while you are thinking about your rates.

Another factor to think about when you are working out your prices, is how much value is the design/product to the client? Will it make them an extra £5,000 a month? If the answer is yes, then selling your services cheap does not make sense. You also want to be valued for your time, whether that is working on the design, communicating with your client or even the time you spend just thinking about the design.

Working on yourself/your business

If you have just set out as a freelancer, or you’re even a few years in, you should be constantly wanting to learn new skills and tricks of the trade. What I have learnt in the last 6 months I have been a freelancer, is that there are so many tools and different softwares out there that you can use, to benefit you. Whether that is an online course or using YouTube to learn shortcuts in the software you already use. Udemy offer access to hundreds of thousands of great courses, filled with lectures, small projects and information, at affordable prices. Constant learning and growing as a freelancer is what it is all about!

While working on designing takes a main part of your time, also working to develop and improve your business is equally important. One small thing that is key for graphic designers, is keeping your social media and portfolio up to date with your latest projects. This allows you to build a network and connect with your target audience. It will also help you to keep up with the latest trends, especially on social media, helping you to generate organic growth to your platforms, thus getting more clients.

Landmark Labs has drastically helped me to keep all documentation together by creating templates in notion, that can be used for a variety of different things.

Landmark Labs provide templates in Notion to help with project management and business processes and these templates have been extremely beneficial to me. I am able to organise businesses I have contacted and keep a record of all projects I am and have been working on.

Client feedback

Your clients are the people you are talking to on a day to day basis. You don’t have co workers and or anyone else managing what you do. Gaining feedback from your clients is crucial. You want to know that they have enjoyed the process of working with you, like your products you have produced and it has overall been a successful and easy process for them to work with you. If you don’t gain this feedback, you may think the whole client through to completion of a design process is fine and nothing needs improving. In order to progress and improve as a freelancer, you need to gain feedback after every client. Ways you could do this is by sending a quick link to a 2 minute survery and ask them to fill out it. You could also include a feedback box on your website, and directly send a link to your clients, asking them about their experience with you.

Patience

This is one skill I have majorly improved on this year. Being patient as a freelancer is so important. If you are not a patient person, then maybe freelancing is not suited to you. Work does not just come to you, you have to actively look for it. Whether that is emailing businesses you want to work with and have a general interest in, or emailing design agencies to see if they have any access work you can work on. I’d say out of every 10 emails you send, you’ll probably get 1 reply, so don’t get disheartened when you don’t get a reply from every single business you have contacted. You also have to be aware that cold call emails can go straight to a businesses spam/ junk folder, so following up with another email 3-5 days later can be very beneficial to you and you should get more responses on that second email (this is knowledge through experience). So remaining patient and remembering your end goal will really help you when trying to find clients and developing your business. There are millions of businesses out there that need graphics designing for them, you just need to find the right ones for you.

Love what you do

Being a freelancer is not easy. But it is very fun and rewarding. Keep focused on why you wanted to become a freelancer in the beginning and remember that through your day to day processes. Not everyone is made to work 9-5 in a corporate job, some are made to work 50+ hours a week… but for themselves. As a freelancer you get freedom to work when you want and where you want, you are your own boss. Just remember that you have to put the work in, to get the work to come to you. Once you realise that and remain positive, it’ll become like a second nature to your every day life.