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This might be the most important post i have written until now. Assuming you meet the minimum requirements to be able to work as a freelance designer via internet: you must know English, have a Paypal account, a quality online portfolio … What can we do to get a job?
As i said many times the promotion of your services is the key in this business, do not think that because you are very good people will come from now to ask you to work for them. IT'S THE BIGGEST MISTAKE YOU CAN MAKE.
This is the idea:
- Get the maximum possible people to visit our website.
- Have a good relationship with search engines.
- Trafic oriented to possible clients.
- Reusing clients: newsletter.
- Local publicity.
- Getting a good representative.
- Contacting companies directly.
1.- Get the maximum possible people to visit our website.
Why? Silly question, is not it? It's obvious that while more people visit our website the bigger the chances to get clients. ERROR !!!!
Let me give a little suspense … an example: SOSFactory a couple of months ago had 4000 visits per month, not long ago i got a link with a lot of traffic and now it has more than 25000, you would say the number of Clients has grown? … Well no, it's still the same. But the consumed bandwidth did grow, maybe soon i'll have to upgrade my hosting plan, which means investing more money. The idea is that until until a certain point, the quality of the traffic is more important than quantity.
The question in your head might be, then why do we want them to visit our website? Simple, if it has more visits it will increase the number of people talking about you, more people will link to your website (as long as you offer quality content) and this way you will get a better position in search engines (Google, Yahoo , Msn).
Example: we do mascots design, imagine i'm a visitor and when i see them i like them. If you have a website, in the links section you would put something like this: " mascot design " (it's a link to "SOSFactory" with some keywords: mascots design). If a lot of people do the same, Google will understand my website is about "mascot design", and that is an important website for those search terms, this way Google will put my website in the first results while searching "mascot design". This traffic is very important … depending on the search term there will be more or less competitors to appear in the first results.
How to get links:
- Get people to put links of your site offering free, original and funny content (tutorials, articles, games …)
- Putting yourself the links to your website (forums, blogs, directories, social networks …). Always with respect, eh? No SPAM.
- Ask your clients for links. It's voluntary, if it accepts, great.
- Exchanging them with other webmasters. It's heavy and barely has an effect.
- Buying massive links. As far as i know, it does not work well, it can even be bad for your business.
What you should never do:
- Using Flash, if you do, use it just a little … no complete Flash websites.
- Forget about welcome pages or pop-ups. 50% of your visitors will leave before 30 seconds … so you have to go directly to the point.
- Try that your website is not to heavy in graphics, the more text the better.
- Design your website below 1024x768px resolution.
- Never design just for one browser. It has to look good at least in Internet Explorer and Firefox.
2.- Have a good relationship with search engines
In english it's called SEO (search engine optimization), mainly for Google. There are thousands of forums, manuals and blogs dedicated to this so we will explain only the basics.
Appart from making us important thanks to links from other websites, we can also make Google understand better what's our site about, with this we increase chances of appearing in the first search results.
How can we accomplish this? Well, mainly with HTML code and our website strucure (and also the links we were talking about in the previous point):
Page title: It's about putting your keywords in the title; If you take a look at the source code of this page (in IExplorer: View> Source Code), you will see at the beginning something like this:
Meta Tags: the same for Meta Tags:
This tells the search engine what is your site about, so we have to put the keywords you want Google to search for your site. The more important ones are the ones that describe and keywords.
Titles "": the search engine recognizes with these tags relevant frases in the text of the website. We also have to put our keywords here.
Bold and Italics "" and "": we have to repeat the keywords in the content of the site putting them in bold and italics.
Density of the keywords in the text: we have to repeat our keywords in the content of our website.
Images: Google prefers text, but we can also optimize images. Mainly putting the keywords in the tag "Alt" and in the name of the file (example: my-keyword.jpg).
Website structure:
- From your website, Google will follow links to the rest of the pages inside the site, so it's good to have a sitemap to make it easier … if Google does not find the page is like if it does not exist.
- Name your titles as the keywords (example: my-website.com/my-keyword.html)
- Name the folders of your site as the keywords (example: my-website.com/my-keyword/my-keyword.html)
- Do not put your pages in a thousand folders, maximum 3 levels.
- Use your keywords to link between the pages inyour site.
- External links: link from your texts to pages with similar content to yours (not competitors, of course)
3.- Trafic oriented to possible clients
At first, until you have traffic from search engines (which usually take a while) or you are not very well known, this will be your mail resources source. It's simply about promotion in those sites where there are potencial clients.
Forums:
In forums there are two things to keep in mind: firstly being seen in job offers subforums, usually those are low budget jobs but they can help you build a good portfolio; On the other hand, you also need to be seen in the rest of the boards, where you might meet the best clients, help people and you will get good contacts.
Webhostingtalk.com: it's a forum dedicated to the hosting business (and other things), there are people with a lot of money and thousands of domains … which means they need lots of designs. It's free and in english. If you are starting, this is a good place to make a good portfolio, with some time you can get to clients with a higher level in this same forum.
Sitepoint.com: basically the same as the previous one.
Paid websites for freelance designers:
Getafreelancer.com: it's the tipical website where people post projects and you as a designer bid to get the job, everything's in there, decent jobs and garbage. The website is in english and it's pretty ugly and it goes for a% of the income.
Scriptlance.com: It's more focused to programmers, but there are also jobs for designers. It works like the previous one,% of the sales, but the website has a much better design, it's in english.
Elance: design jobs does not have a big budget, but there is a lot of work, if you are quick you can make a lot of money. They have a complicated system though, it's in english and very expensive, so it's more like an investment … if you are starting maybe you wont be able to afford this.
Art Communities:
It's the most risky way to search for a job, it's where 'bad' people come searching for young ones to use them. Remember to ask for a payment in advance … ALWAYS !!. The best thing is that you can find partners, and also inspiration and have a good time.
Deviantart: it's the art community with Capital Letters. The jobs board is not very serious, but the rest of the site is amazing, it has a great content and a good design … Website.
GFX artist: there are two kinds of job offers, the low budget clients and "projects" in the bad sense of the word, and job offers for businesses that require reclamation in the country of the offer. This is a bit more elite community, you need to host images in your server or pay for a suscription. We could say it's for more expert people.
Digital Webbing: if you are crazy enough to live from comics this is one of the best sites. I would never recommend to owe only to comics, as a fond is great, it helps to grow as an artist … it's not good as a business, unless you are a painter, and a well known one.
4.- Reusing clients: newsletter
Newsletters or subscriptions are a good marketing instrument, although it's also a double-edged weapon.
We are able to remind an old customer we are still available to do any job he wants … but you have to be careful, or it can be classified as SPAM. I guess there's no need to say that to be hired again you have to do a good work, as a freelance designer, reputation is very important
5. Local publicity
It's always useful to invest some money in printed material like posters, flyers, business cards … and leave them in stores related with computers. I do not think i need to say to put the URL of your portfolio in everything you print.
The inconvinient is that you might have to invest much more time in meetings with your clients.
The advantage is that you do not have the brutal competition that exists on the internet, particularly asian companies.
6.- Getting a good representative
Another option to be seen is hiring a representative, it will do all the promotion work for you in exchange of a% of the sales. Agents that are worth it are very requested, so if you do not have a good portfolio they wont work with you … maybe even if you have it.
Folioart.co.uk: they have artists with renown as Gez Fry or Jason Brooks, but others are mediocre.
Centralillustration.com: hey search for a bit more alternative artists.
Mendolaart.com: the artists of all styles, some of them are good, and some others are not.
Glasshousegraphics.com: representative mostly for comic artists. There lots of people, so they do not pay you much attention but you can try.
7.- Contacting the companies directly
Job websites:
This websites have job offers to work in a company, sometimes they also ask for freelance designers, but it's rare. Requirements are demanding, and you will have to go to live to the place the company is located. You will need a Curriculum and a presentation letter.
Coroflot.com: lots of job offers, particularly in United States. They have improved the site laately, now it looks like an artists social network.
Malakye.com: job offers exclusively for sport trademarks: Billabong, Rip Curl, Adio … Who does not want to work for trademarks like this? They have a very interesting newsletter where they give a lot of advices at the time to prepare your Curriculum.
Gamedev.net: job offers for the videogames sector.
Yellow pages: for spain, i guess that in the rest of the countries they might have similar services. If you want to see the hell in life, i advise you to work in Spain as a designer, thousands of job offers with ridiculous dishes asking for requirements not even 5 people could have together 🙂
Big companies offers:
The most direct road between two points in the straight line. Many companies offer jobs in their own website … it's just a matter of searching in the corporative sections, and being very good doing what you do.
Corporate.disney.go.com: i'm sure this ones seem familiar.
Pixar.com/companyinfo/jobs: if you have the lever to get in here, what are you doing reading this?
Mattel.com: if you like toys, working here is the best.
Blizzard.com/jobopp/: starcraft, world of warcraft, warcraft … who does not know this people?
Marvel.com/company: for the comic artists.
This kind of posts are 'heavy' and not many people read them … i'm conscious it's been made only for a few people, the ones who really want to live off design and are ready to work hard.
If what you want is a magical formula to sell logos for 10,000 US $, you are in the wrong site … if i knew that i would not be writing this article 🙂