Category : Business

in Business, Freelancing

Episode 20 – Staying Organized as a Freelancer

I try so hard to stay organized on a daily basis. Keeping all my ducks in a row is what allows me to juggle way more projects than the typical freelancer. Despite all my efforts to keep my inbox clean, schedule calls ahead of time, run everything through my project management app, and other organizational methods; it seems like it can go to shit in a heart beat.

For me, this is usually the result of a client who refuses to use Basecamp once the project has been started. What happens next is like a monsoon in my inbox. Emails containing comments, feedback, files, copy, and other related materials come pouring in at an alarming rate. While some freelancers are used to organizing this way, I am not and it tends to throw off my whole system. Slowly my ducks are beginning to get out of line.

How Do You Stay Organized?

I’d like to hear your comments on how you keep your freelance work organized in a day to day manner. Any sort of tips and advice you can share would be great. Those of you that provide some of the best details I will contact directly for a follow up. Assuming there is enough participation on this post, expect a follow up in the next week or two with some more in depth information from your peers!

in Business, Clients, Freelancing

What I Have Learned About the 80/20 Rule

shutterstock_5345458Any good freelancer has surely hear the saying that 80% of your work will come from 20% of your clients. As a young freelancer, I found this saying to be far from true. In the beginning, it was more like 80% of my work came low paying clients I found on job boards and 20% of the time I wanted to shoot them in the face.

At the time, I couldn’t understand how this saying could be true. I rarely ever had repeat clients, let alone ones who would come back time and time again.

Looking back, I’m sure it to do with two things:

1. The quality of my work.
2. The quality of my clients.

Problem 1

Obviously when I started freelancing I wasn’t exactly the best designer. Granted I got better as the days passed, but I was still far from exceptional. This undoubtedly was part of the reason I didn’t get repeat clients. While most of my clients were happy with the end product, it wasn’t anything special enough for them to seek me out the next time they needed work.

The solution to this problem is only one that can happen over time. In order to be able to produce designs of a caliber that cause clients to seek you out, you need practice. Becoming an amazing designer like Elliot Jay Stocks or the guys over at Meta Labs won’t happen over night. Constantly designing and pushing yourself to up your game is the only way you will ever become a sought after designer. As such, it is the main way you will get 80% of your work from 20% of your clients.

Problem 2

Assuming you have had a dozen or so clients in your time as a freelancer, I am sure you have come across a variety of clients. Some of them good, others, not so much. I have learned that the sort of clients that fall into the 20% category are a certain type. Typically, that type are the ones who appreciate good design and are willing to pay for it. These types of clients are rarely found on job boards and classified sites.

So, that begs the question, where are these 20% of clients found? More than likely they are found through word of mouth referrals and through amazing work. As I said before, if you produce amazing work, clients will find you.

Looking Back

I make no claims to be an amazing designer, but I manage to make a decent living at it. Having worked my way up from nothing as most freelancers do, I realize now that the 80/20 rule is very much true. In fact, it is a very amazing thing. You usually end up with the majority of your work coming from those 20% of clients because the two of you get along and work very well together. So not only are having to look less for work, but you are getting to work with people who appreciate your designs and creativity.

in Business, Clients, Uncategorized, Video Posts

Episode 18 – Practice Writing Proposals

This is one of my shorter vidcasts, but an important one none the less. As your business grows and you start working with bigger companies, they are going to expect more from you than just a few emails and a contract. One essential element bigger clients expect is a formal proposal. If you have never written one of these, it can be a bit intimidating.

Waiting until you have a big name client ask for a proposal is a bad time write your first proposal.

Do yourself a favor and write a few practice ones first. Writing these practice proposals is a great way to learn what is expected in a proposal, feel more comfortable writing them, and maybe even get a job or two.

Writing these first few practice proposals will be time consuming, I can promise you that it will be well worth it. Not only will this skill help you land bigger clients, but it will probably help you land smaller clients too. Think about it, if you are after a small $2,000 job and you submit the client a well written, formal proposal, and all the other applicants just send in an email; who do you think the client will pick?

Just some thoughts I had today. What do you think?

in Business, Freelancing

Episode 17 – Accounting Basics for Creatives

This is one of my longer videos, so i will let it do most of the talking. No reason to bore you with a long video and a long post!

I’ll be honest, until recently, I knew very little about what I should be doing as far as bookkeeping, banking, and taxes go as a freelancer. I think it is safe to say that many freelancers feel this way. If you don’t, then you are a rare breed of super freelancer. Over the last few weeks however, I sought out to find an affordable and helpful CPA t help me get books in order.

In a 15 minute conversation with my CPA, I learned more than I had in 10 years of self study on the topic.

If you think hiring a CPA is to expensive, let me just say that its not. On top of that, it is money VERY WELL spent. Most CPA’s that specialize in working with small businesses and freelancers generally charge $50 to $75 a month for book keeping. Payroll services can usually be added for an additional $50 to $75.

If you have any questions about money and freelancing, I strongly encourage you to watch this video and seek out a local CPA in your area.

in Business, Video Posts

Episode 16 – Building a Feedback Community

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to listen to @CarlSmith talk at a local design group meet up I attended. If you aren’t familiar with Carl, he works at wicked cool company called nGen Works and is the mastermind behind Happy Webbies. But, enough about that guy…

Being the big usability expert that he is, he constantly mentioned getting feedback from his “pool of people” on various topics. He would poll the audience, so to speak, to see what the majority of people thought about a company name, a usability feature, layout, etc.

What an awesome idea I thought!

Now I can have a way to prove clients wrong when they are being idiots!

Ok, so there’s more to it than that, but that is certainly a perk. Whats great about this idea is that’s free to do and can do wonders for your work. Find as many people who are willing to give you feedback from time to time and add them to a list. Don’t just limit yourself to the design community though. In fact, the more your each outside of the community the better. It seems that a more diverse list of people from different backgrounds, ages, and internet skills would really improve the quality of feedback you get.

So, that’s it in a nutshell, watch the video for more details and share your comments below!

in Marketing, Video Posts

Episode 15 – How to Review Your Portfolio

Last week I talked a little bit about the importance of joining social media design sites like Behance and such. This got me thinking abut how to decide what work to put up on these sites. After all, if the point in joining these sort of sites is to get more work, it only makes sense that you should only post your best work on them.

That seems easy enough.

But, if you are anything like me, you constantly seem less than impressed by work you have done in the past. I’m always improving my skills as a designer, so I tend to look at my older work as sub par. No matter how good I may have thought the design was at the time, in retrospect I hate it.

That isn’t to say its a bad design now, I just seem to see all the flaws in it and how better it could be if I were to redesign the site today. So, how do you get over this dilemma?

The first place to start is just post what you think is the best of your worse work. The other is to poll random people or fellow designers. By polling non-creative types you can get a sense of what work of yours potential customers may be impressed with. By asking fellow designers, you are getting creative feedback that could help you improve your skills over time. Getting feedback from designers who you respect can really help you step up your game and become a better designer.

Portfolio Review Resources

Sometimes it is a lot harder than one might think to get feedback on their design. Lucky for us, in this digital age, there are a number of sites that can provide you with feedback on your design. It is important to note that you should take any feedback you get on your design on these sites with a grain of salt. There is no telling the skill level of a person based on their feedback. I mean, do you really want to take the advice of someone who designs things in MS Paint? Ok, maybe that’s a stretch, but you get the idea.

conceptConcept Feedback
Concept Feedback is a nice site that practically guarantees you will receive feedback on your design within a day or two of posting. It’s a great place to hear what other creatives think about your work.



designcritiqueDesign Critique
Uses Twitter as a tool to get reviews for your site or design. Seems ok, but reviews are limited to 145 characters.



feedbackarmyFeedback Army
This website cost money, but is pretty affordable. It is more based on usability, but seeing as how usability and good design go hand and hand, it seems like the site could be worthwhile.

How to Self Review

If for whatever reason you don’t want a public review of your portfolio or just can’t get any decent feedback, don’t fret. Self evaluation of your portfolio isn’t terribly complicated. I usually just ask myself a few questions when deciding what work to publish in my portfolio and online networks.

1. Does this design showcase my skills? – Ok, this one is kind of a given, but it’s still important. Don’t just add stuff to your portfolio for the sake of filling it up. Less is more in this case. It seems to me that 3 amazing designs are far better than 10+ sub-par designs.

2. What does the live version of this site look like? – Double check that your clients are still using your theme or that they haven’t broke it. If a would be client visits a site in your portfolio and its all jacked up thanks to your idiot client, it could reflect badly on you.

3. Is this a big name client? – A big name client can do wonders for your portfolio. Even if it’s a sub-par design, most people will overlook that aspect and just be impressed that so and so thought you were good enough to work with.

4. Do I want more work like this? – I think it is important to show off websites you enjoyed working on. For one, this will show through in the design. Second, it could lead to more similar work. Why not try to get jobs you actually like?

5. Does this design need explanation? – Sometimes a design can just need an explanation. Not because its a bad design, but some circumstances just call for it. These sort of designs probably aren’t the best ones to add to your portfolio.