So you want to be a freelancer, now what?

Despite the glamorous reputation, freelance design is no walk in the park. It takes an incredible work ethic, significant entrepreneurial prowess, and a little bit of insanity to pull it off effectively. This article will discuss how to effectively make a living as a freelancer (designer or otherwise). Since we are in fact a design blog, I’ll scatter in some well-designed freelancer sites along the way for inspiration.

David Jonsson

It Takes One to Know One

Before launching into my thoughts on being a freelancer, I should tell you that I am in fact a freelance designer. I’ve made my living for the past six years solely as a freelancer and plan on continuing to do so for years to come. This by no means makes me any sort of guru on the subject, but it does mean that I’ve experienced many of the joys and disasters that come with the territory. Therefore, today I’ll be speaking not as a supreme authority, but merely as someone who is eager to share what I’ve learned along the way.

Robert Ablan

Reality Check

If you’re thinking about getting into freelancing, let me burst your bubble a bit. When I talk to people about what I do, I often get the feeling that they imagine that I have the easiest job on Earth. Surely I must sleep in, sit in my boxers all day, work whenever I want, go on three hour lunches, take 15 sick days a month and still somehow manage to rake in exorbitant amounts of money. Unfortunately, all of these things couldn’t be further from the truth.

The key consideration that these assumptions leave out? Clients. You might work for yourself in a sense, but in reality, you work for your clients, which can be like having several competing bosses instead of just one. Being a freelancer means initiating and answering endless calls and emails, managing several projects simultaneously, and working all night to meet impossible deadlines that didn’t exist that morning. Most freelancers I know, strike that, all of the freelancers I know long ago gave up notions of working normal hours (forget 9-5, Monday through Friday).

Deciding what you want to do for a living is the biggest vocational decision you can make, the second is deciding how you’ll do it. Becoming a freelancer is a serious lifestyle decision that should not be made lightly. Think about all the perks of a “real job” such as a steady pay check, health insurance benefits, tax breaks, and paid vacations and kiss them goodbye. Suddenly you’ll be paying nearly double the taxes you used to, health insurance will cost a fortune, your paychecks will be uncertain from one month to the next, your yearly income will fluctuate immensely, and your vacations will be spent income-free.

Still want to be a freelancer? Excellent. Despite all the scary stuff above, I still think it’s one of the best jobs ever. Let’s dive into how to go about becoming a freelancer.

Rejected Robot

Getting Started: Tread Carefully

My best advice: go slow. Don’t go quitting your day job just yet (unless you don’t have one, then by all means jump in with both feet). Before telling your boss you can’t stand the site of his face, you need to get a feel for how much work you’ll be able to drum up on your own. To accomplish this, start a few side projects that you work on after hours. It’ll be stressful to search for extra work while working a full-time job but it’ll provide you with a much-needed glimpse into the freelancing lifestyle. The question then becomes, “Where Do I Get Freelance Work?” We’ll address that next.

Where to Find Work

Mega job sites like Monster and Hot Jobs are great places to begin, but I’ve had a pretty poor experience with them overall. Definitely give them a shot, but don’t put too much stock into them as a consistent source of income. Here are a few more sources that I’ve had some personal success with or know to yield good results. Remember, don’t think in either/or terms. Use these tools in conjunction with each other to ensure success.

Craigslist

This one is a bit obvious for some, but I want to stress that it’s among the best sources I’ve come across for finding and contacting potential employers. Most job boards will charge you or at the very least make you register, Craigslist just puts it all out there for anyone to see. If you’re interested in a job, just shoot an email to the provided email address. No hoops to jump through whatsoever.

I recommend creating a standard reply email that you can send out to all of the listings you’re interested in. Be sure to include your resume and a link to your online portfolio. Remember that each employer that puts a job out there will literally receive hundreds of replies. Try to stand out in any way that you can!

Google

This one seems incredibly obvious, but I want to be sure you know how to take full advantage of Google as a way to find work. Obviously, a great place to begin is to run a basic search looking for freelance jobs either in your area or that have a flexible location requirement. Something you might not have thought of though is using Google Maps. This technique occurred to me recently and has actually turned up some legitimate work.

Using Google Maps, search for businesses in your area that could possibly use your services. I searched for marketing agencies, printers, design firms, etc. When you click on a business, go to their website and locate their contact information. Then send them a brief but friendly email that introduces yourself and your work. Tell them you’re looking for freelance work and would be thrilled to work with their company. As with Craigslist, I encourage you to make a standard email that you can just send to all the businesses you find. Spend an afternoon doing this and you could be surprised how many leads you’ll snag. Don’t expect them to pour in all at once. The goal is to make a connection. It could literally be months before they need a freelancer, but your email might put you at the top of their list of potentials. Don’t necessarily stop at emails either, if you’re the personable sort, pick up the phone and make some calls. People are much more likely to hire a “real person” that they’ve actually spoken to than a mystery email man (or woman).

Twitter

Before you roll your eyes, hear me out. There is a thriving and remarkably active design community on Twitter. Making lasting connections on Twitter can open up a lot of opportunities down the road. But even better than connecting to all those designers, at least for our purposes, is the simple, built-in Twitter search feature. There are millions of people tweeting every day. Naturally, several of these people are mentioning that they are in the market for a freelancer. You need only find them and make contact. It’s a really personal way to connect with potential clients that actually works. Give it shot and you could be pleasantly surprised.

Smaller Job Boards

Small job boards may have fewer listings than the mega sites, but that can actually work to your advantage. Smaller sites will attract less traffic, meaning competition is likely to be greatly reduced. Here’s a few to check out:

• Freelance Switch
• Elance
• Krop
• oDesk

Anton Peck

Be Prepared

The steps outlined above already assume that you’ve taken significant steps towards preparing to be a freelancer. In case you haven’t let’s discuss those now.

Update Your Resume

Before heading out into the no man’s land of freelancing, update your resume to reflect that you’re not so much looking for a job as looking for more work (there’s a difference). You should come across as a confident professional actively seeking to increase your client base on a per job or long-term basis. Check out The Graphic Design Resume Guide for more information on how to stand out to potential clients.

Get Your Portfolio Out There

This comes in two forms. First, build yourself a custom website similar to those you see scattered throughout this article. A website is an unbeatably easy way to tell potential clients about who you are and what kind of work you do. It provides a convenient place to send people you meet as well as an easy way for clients to find you on their own. Before you start, check out our article on 10 Expert Tips for Designing a One Page Portfolio.

The second way of getting your portfolio out for the world to see is to sign up for all the free portfolio sites you can find. The more content on the web about you the better and these sites can provide a great way to boost your search-ability online. I have accounts on Coroflot, Krop, Sortfolio, Carbonmade and several more that I can’t even remember!

Work Out Billing and Invoicing

Before you take a single job you should know how you will be billing that client. Setup an invoicing system through Curdbee, Ballpark, Freshbooks, PayPal or any number of online alternatives. These tools take the pain out of the paperwork and are either free or very affordable.

Billy Tamplin

Form a Co-Op

If you know other freelancers, there’s no need to go it alone. Form a small alliance to share clients, contacts and resources with. The nature of freelancing is such that there will probably be times that you have more work than you can handle and other times when you’re playing on Facebook all day for lack of anything better to do. Working with a few other freelancers can create a mutually beneficial system where the involved parties help each other through these times.

Another thing that’s great about working with other people is… working with other people. Sitting in an office all day alone can get insanely boring after a few years. I drive 15 minutes every day just to work with another freelancer I know. Sometimes we work on the same project, sometimes not. Either way, it’s nice to have someone to complain to about that annoying client who keeps asking if you know how to use “Adobe.”

Diversify Your Skill Set

I found out the hard way that being a print-only freelancer doesn’t make it easy to pay the bills. As a result I’ve invested significant amounts of time expanding my skill set to include web design, 3D modeling, photography and writing. Even with that broad range I’m not finished. I try to set time aside every single week to work on improving a current skill or learning a new one. As your body of work expands to new areas, your potential client base will increase exponentially as you search for jobs in multiple related fields.

Like College, Only Free

If you can make the time, learning new creative skills is both easy and free. The internet presents you with an unending stream of quality tutorials for every skill you can dream up. Here’s a few sites (of hundreds) to get you on the path to becoming a bona-fide Renaissance man of freelance services.

• TutsPlus: Unmatched Photoshop, Web Design, Illustration, Photography, CG, Flash, After-Effects, and Audio Tutorials
• Fuel Brand Network: Articles and tutorials on branding, creativity, interface design, coding, blogging, writing, photography, motionography and more.
• Tutorialzine: Excellent web design tutorials
• Computer Arts: Tutorials on all things digital

If you want serious professional training, head over to Lynda and purchase a membership. It’ll cost you a few bucks but trust me it’s completely worth it. Their video tutorials will take you step-by-step through learning entire applications and disciplines inside and out (Photoshop, AfterEffects, LightRoom, DreamWeaver, Flash, etc).

Brian Hoff

Work Your Butt Off

My final piece of advice for making money as a freelancer is to work like you’ve never worked before on all of the above. If you don’t have any clients, don’t spend your days complaining about it. It drives me nuts to hear freelancers talk about being out of work and reaching new heights of awesomeness on Halo 3 in the same conversation. If this is you, your friends are too afraid to say it so I will: stop being lazy. You won’t find an ounce of work on your Xbox (unless you’re browsing job sites, but let’s face it, you aren’t). If you desperately need more income, spend every waking moment trying to get it. Take a break to battle your friends on remote planets when you’ve earned it.

If you land a few clients, the same advice applies. Work your tail off to convince them that you’re the best freelancer on the planet. Make it your mission to be so good that they tell all their friends about you and actively seek projects on your behalf (satisfied clients will do this!). One of the things my clients repeatedly tell me is that they can’t believe how “available” I am. What they mean by this is that when they call, I answer. When they email, I reply. Even if only to tell them that I’m swamped and will get back to them in a few days. Make it your primary goal to please the people who can provide you with a decent living. Draw stern boundaries and never take abuse, but bend over backwards when the situation calls for it.

The worst part about working like a maniac is figuring out how to manage all of this and still have a life. Can you be a good freelancer and still be a good husband/wife/mother/father/friend? Absolutely, but that’s another article.

Conclusion

I could fill a book with the things I’ve learned about freelancing in the past few years. However, the above information is at the heart of it all. It all boils down to a profound juggling act where you split your time between finding new work and managing current work. The perfect balance is different for everyone. Use the comments to let me know how you stay afloat as a freelancer. As I said before, I’m no authority on the subject and am as eager to learn from you as you are from me. Feel free to ask any specific questions you might have as well. I’ll try to help out in any way I can.

When you’re working with clients remotely it can sometimes be difficult to keep everyone happy and your project on track. Without the benefit of face-to-face meetings, it’s easy for a client to feel neglected or out of the loop.

The key to successful remote work relationships is frequent and honest communication and trust between both parties. The tips below will help improve your everyday interactions with clients, no matter how far away they may be.

Please note that this is part 2 of a series – part 1 outlined the first 5 steps for remote interactions with clients which you can read here.

Now, let’s look at 5 more tips that can help improve your relationship with your clients.

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6. Use Design Documentation

As you move through your design process, think about the many ways documentation can help to get you and your clients on the same page. Although documentation takes time up front to create, it can save you endless hours in unnecessary revisions caused by miscommunications. These documents also become natural check-points for approval and sign-off. Below are the web design documents I find most helpful:

• Creative briefs. A concise overview of the project that outlines the strategy around which you will design and develop the website. This should answer high-level questions such as why you are designing the site, who you are designing for, what the motivation behind the design will be, and what you hope to accomplish with the final product. It will act as a guide for all decision-making during the project, both for you and the client. Though you and your client may have talked at length about these issues, putting them on paper is always helpful. Any discrepancies between what they said and what you heard can then be cleared up before work starts.
• Sitemaps. Sometimes, a client comes to you with a very clear idea of what pages they want. It may be a small site with 5 pages, in which case a sitemap can be agreed upon without further documentation. For anything larger, a sitemap can help the client to visualize what pages are going to get created and how they will relate to each other. I have had many freelance clients bring me a sitemap they created on their own. While this is a nice starting point, I suggest taking a few minutes to review what they have produced and suggest any improvements you think will help the site. Your client is likely too close to the content to develop the most usable information architecture. This article from Boxes and Arrows will get you started – it includes a number of great ideas for quickly producing sitemap documents.
• Content matrix. Getting content is often one of the toughest hurdles to getting a website launched. A content matrix, usually an Excel spreadsheet, can greatly simplify the process of producing and migrating content for both you and the client. It should list each page of content and additional “micro-content” that might be needed such as taglines, related links, images, etc. As the content trickles in, you can check off each piece in the matrix and know at a glance what you’re missing. Keep it handy and refer to it during check-ins to remind clients what they need to provide in order to be ready for a timely launch.
• Wireframes. A wireframe is a simple visual representation of a web page. Geometric shapes are used to represent fundamental content chunks such as the navigation, content, feature areas, ads, etc. They help to show the relationship between content pieces – for instance, what piece will be most prominent on the page – without bringing aesthetic decisions like color and font style into the mix. This helps to keep the client from getting hung up on design issues too early in the process.
• Notes on mockups. Your design deliverables no doubt include a set of mockups. But how can you be sure that your client remembers (and translates to other parties) the ideas behind them? Adding an area for notes to each mockup – perhaps in a sidebar on the left or right – gives you a place to outline the thinking behind your design decisions. Tell your story successfully and client buy-in will be easier to get.

7. Avoid Assumptions

With meetings few and far between and communication somewhat limited, it’s very easy to assume you “know” what your client expects or wants without actually asking. As designers, we are trained to believe that we know what is best. While this is often true when it comes to design decisions, it’s not always true about other parts of the web design process.

If at any point you feel you don’t have enough information to make an accurate decision about a part of the project, resist the urge to make assumptions. Instead, stop and ask for feedback.  You’ll save yourself countless hours.

8. Be Accessible

When you are miles away, being accessible is incredibly important to maintain healthy client relationships. Make sure you’re quick to respond to emails and voicemails, and let your client know that they are welcome to contact you during business hours to discuss any questions or concerns they have. If you take days to respond to email or never answer their calls, they’ll start to wonder how far down they are on your priority list.

Clients need to know you take their project—and them—seriously. Being accessible makes it obvious that the work you’re doing for them is one of your top priorities.

9. Be Honest and Admit Mistakes

During the course of any project, no matter how great the communication is, there are bound to be a few things that go wrong or don’t meet client expectations. Most clients understand that setbacks are a natural part of the process. While your first reaction may be to cover up or make excuses for the mistake, it pays to be honest and carefully review the error (and the subsequent solution, which of course you took care of right away!) with your client.

You will continue to build trust and show that you can pinpoint and fix problems as they arise. Depending on the nature of the mistake, it might make sense to add more check-ins to avoid future problems.

10. Trust Your Instincts

You’ve heard it a thousand times before, but it’s important to trust your gut when working with clients remotely. Your intuition is a biological survival tool you shouldn’t ignore. Keep your feelers out and pay attention to that little voice in the back of your head. Even if everything appears to be moving smoothly, if you feel like something is off, you are probably right.

The best thing to do is address the issue directly, then move on. Simple as they seem, these proactive approaches to working remotely with clients can have a huge impact on the success of your projects. Incorporate a few into your workflow today and reap the benefits.

Written exclusively for WDD by Mindy Wagner.

What are some of the challenges you experience when working with clients remotely? Please share your comments below…

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1. 5 Things Your Clients Should Know
2. 7 Mistakes To Avoid On Your Next Job Application
3. Freelancing and the Power of Partnering
4. 10 Tips for Working With Clients Remotely: Part 1
5. 15 Online Financial Tools for Freelance Designers

Collaborating with clients you never meet face-to-face has become normal for most web workers. Ours is an industry where working remotely poses very few real obstacles — nearly every part of the web design process can be done from the comfort of a home office or coffee shop.

We’re lucky to have this flexibility, especially in tough economic times when a swanky office doesn’t fit in the business budget. Even if you do have an office, chances are you will land a few clients who aren’t located around the block. But you quickly discover that working remotely has its downsides.

Without face-to-face interaction it’s easy for major communication issues to develop… often without you knowing until it’s too late. Avoid a major meltdown with these simple tips.

1. Build Trust From The Start

A client’s trust will make or break a project. Without it you’ll spend endless hours explaining and defending your ideas. It’s easy to build trust when you’re meeting once a week to present your work and report your progress, but how do you do it with someone 10,000 miles away?

First, introduce yourself – and I don’t mean send them a link to your portfolio. I see designers skip this step all the time, but it’s essential. Before you dive in to any work, schedule a quick kickoff meeting. A video conference is ideal – I recommend Skype – but if they can’t manage it, a phone call will work almost as well. If you’re in different time zones, wake up nice and early (or go to bed very late) to accommodate them.

Going the video route? Make sure you’re dressed appropriately and your environment looks professional. When you get on the call, take a few minutes to introduce yourself and highlight your accomplishments the way you would if everyone was gathered around a conference table and you were standing at the front of the room. Even if they know you and your work, it’s a good reminder that you are a professional who does this for a living… someone who should be valued and trusted.

Another way to establish trust early in the process is to make the client feel involved. Ask probing questions and brainstorm with them before you propose any solutions. If you’re short on meeting time, send out questionnaires for them to fill out. When it comes time to present work, make sure your solutions reflect at least a few of their ideas and explain to them how the idea was incorporated. This shows that you’re listening. Like any human relationship, that is half the battle.

2. Write A Bulletproof Contract

I know way too many freelancers accepting work without a contract because there is nothing fun about crafting up that type of documentation. It’s stupid no matter what, but when you’re working remotely this is extremely dangerous. You might get away with it for years, but sooner or later you’ll run into a disaster that could have been avoided had you bothered to get sign-off on a few key points.

As a general rule of thumb, if I estimate spending more than 10 hours on a project I will craft a contract and get a client signature before I start working. It doesn’t have to be complex, but it should always include:

• A detailed scope of work. What exactly are you planning to provide the client? What isn’t included? Spend some time and make sure that it’s clear what they are paying for. When the client asks you where the forum is (you know, that one they forgot to mention they needed) you can simply show them that it was never part of the original scope they signed off on. Then you can add it on and charge accordingly.
• A list of deliverables. Will you be creating IA documents, wireframes, style guides, and user manuals for that slick new CMS? Will they get ownership of layered PSDs and all your original artwork or just the HTML, graphics and source files? Make a list to avoid miscommunications.
• A limit on revisions. When I first started freelancing, I failed to set a limit on revisions. 12 updates later it was clear what a big oversight this was. Clearly state how many revisions are included in your proposal and what your definition of “revision” is. (If, God forbid, they hate everything about the design and want you to start over, will you call it a revision?) Include an hourly rate for extra revision hours so that clients understand it doesn’t mean you won’t do them, it just means they’ll pay more.
• A plan for client delays. It’s not uncommon to finish a site completely on your end, then wait 4 months for the client to provide the content. If you’re contract says “final payment upon completion” you’re stuck in limbo until they get their act together. To avoid this, set deadlines on content and any other milestone that requires client approval or sign-off. State in the contract that if content (approval, etc.) hasn’t arrived by the deadline, the site will still be considered finished and payment is due.
• Payment terms. This one is a no-brainer! Half up front and half upon completion is common. If it’s a bigger project, tie payments to milestones so you’re not waiting months and months to collect a paycheck.

Not sure where to start? AIGA provides a Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services that you can customize for your needs.

3. Set Deadlines (And Enforce Them)

This is important for both sides. You already know you need deadlines to keep yourself on track, but you need to set them for the client as well. Asking for timely feedback keeps the project moving forward. Every time you produce something that requires feedback or sign-off, set a short-term deadline and make sure it’s documented in writing somewhere. If the client lets the deadlines slip repeatedly, they can’t complain when the project is delivered.

Having deadlines motivates clients to focus on your work, which may be one of a zillion projects sitting on their desk needing attention. It is also a subtle way of asking for (and getting) respect.

4. Communicate Clearly And Often

Since you’re not meeting face-to-face (and probably aren’t calling too much either) the limited interactions you do have are incredibly important. Make sure you craft your emails and messages carefully; realize that every word you write is amplified and your dry sense of humor isn’t going to come across very well. Best to just be straightforward.

Don’t inundate your clients with needless emails, but make sure you communicate enough to keep them feeling comfortable with your progress. Quick, regular check-ins help set everyone at ease. If you think the client is confused, pick up the phone and have a real conversation. You’ll be amazed how much can be cleared up in 2 minutes when you’re not trying to explain it over email.

Keep a copy of all your correspondence for future reference – you never know when you might need it.

5. Use Web Apps To Facilitate Communication

There are tons of great tools out there for online client collaboration. Pick the ones that work best for your process and use them religiously. Insist that your client uses them too.

I’ve run into quite a few clients who don’t want to be bothered logging in to a new tool – they would rather flood your inbox with email after email after email. Trouble is, email does little to keep everyone on the same page. Unless you have a dedicated project manager, get yourself a web-based project management tool. Make to-do lists, set milestones, and keep discussions in a public space where you can easily point back to them.

Basecamp is one of the most widely used web-based project management tools out there, and for good reason. It’s cheap, it’s easy to set up, it doesn’t have a bunch of extra whistles you don’t need, and clients find it intuitive which means they’ll actually be inclined to use it. It has to-do lists, milestones, a message center and a file repository and even time-tracking. Chances are it will cover most of your needs. There are plenty of other online project management tools out there if Basecamp isn’t your thing. Try huddle.net or wrike.com.

Additional online collaboration tools that you may find useful include:

• ConceptShare – Get feedback on your designs and live web pages. You can add notes to the concept pieces and so can your client.
• Adobe ConnectNow – A free, easy way to hold a virtual meeting. Screen share to present a PowerPoint, share concepts with your client or walk them through a live website. Use the video, audio or chat features to communicate while you’re presenting.
• BlinkSale – Send out bills and reminders in a more formal way. Takes some of the awkwardness out of hounding clients for money.

Follow these steps and you’re well on your way to avoiding major conflicts and keeping your project on track. Stay tuned for the second half of this article and 5 more ways to successfully work with clients remotely.

Written exclusively for WDD by Mindy Wagner.

What are some of the challenges you experience when working with a client remotely? Please share your comments below…

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Just as it is for big corporations, successful branding is essential to the success of a freelancing business and to just one self-employed web worker.

It is often times overlooked, most likely because many don’t realize the large benefits that can come from it.

The first thing we think of when we think “brand identity” is a good logo.

A good logo can do wonders for a self-employed freelancer, but branding identity goes far beyond that, into entire website development, content, business cards, and even into offline scenarios.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at ways to define a brand for something as unique as a freelancing business, and what one needs to do to get started on the right track to a successful brand.

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Before we get into the specifics, let’s take a look at how a brand can help any sort of business.

A good brand will lead to success now and in the future, and that is essential for a self-employed person that doesn’t ever want to be forced back into a 9-5 job. If created correctly, a good brand will:

• Create a memorable business
  This will make the clients want to come back to, creating user loyalty.
• Create a basis for the business to expand in new ways
  When launching a new project, a brand can be used to jump-start it successfully.
• A good brand confirms credibility
  This is top concern among many potential clients.
• A properly implemented brand will target the right clients
  This will help finding the right clients looking for exactly your style.

1. Define Your Business Goals

Before one even gets started in the design process of branding, one must define what they want the brand to communicate.

In order to do that, we must define a few specific things in general, the first being the freelancing business’s goals.

Beyond helping to develop a brand, defining business goals will help in a number of other ways.

For one, it will help visualize the ultimate goals of the business, helping smaller goals become more proactive in reaching the long-term accomplishments.

It will also keep you, as the leader of the business, on track, from personal self-management, to anyone you may be managing in the future.

Getting off track is why many businesses fail, and why many freelancers eventually go back to a day job they hate. Goals and a business plan will help you to stay on track.

Take some time aside to set goals properly. Write them down, detail them, and think about them critically. Goals can help plan the future of a freelancing career for years to come. Below are ten items to keep in mind when setting goals:

• Be specific
  Losing sight of where you’re going is an issue that comes from having no goals, but having unspecific goals will also create this problem.
• Create a business plan
  This should be a separate article in itself, but it is a great way to outline goals as well as include finances and tools into accomplishing those goals.
• Set short-term goals along with your long-term goals
  It’s easy to turn ultimate dreams into business goals, as we should, but shorter, more technical goals can track success better.
• Keep committed
  This is an obvious point, but think of lifestyle changes that will help you commit to the goals that are made. For example, if you would like to expand your skill set, set aside a time each day in your schedule to study.
• It may help to make goals public
  Make your freelancing business and goals associated with it as public as possible. If this means sharing with only friends and family, then so be it. It will help to motivate you to complete goals — keeping your business on track.
• Be realistic
  It’s ok to dream high, but don’t set unachievable goals for a time given.
• Have relevant goals
  If a goal ends up providing little or nothing to the growth of the business, then it is pointless. For example, don’t set a goal to take on another client each week that you can’t handle — this will likely only limit the time you have to grow and market the business in other ways. A relevant goal would be, for example, to expand to more than a 1-man (or 1-woman) operation.
• Create an action plan for each goal
  “I’d like to someday own my own design firm”, is just not good enough. Have a goal-by-goal plan to complete broader goals like this. In other words, make the goal actionable.
• Keep everything in line when working on a new goal.
  Reaching goals means business and lifestyle changes, so make sure your finances and other forms of security are still tightly in place throughout the process.
• Take a step back to analyze the progress
  Take what you’ve learned onto the next goal. As an example, if you’re trying to market your portfolio better, what marketing strategies worked? Which strategies didn’t work?

2. Define Your Target Audience

After defining business and career goals, you need to define who you’ll need to attract to keep the business alive.

These people are, of course, the clients. Who is your ideal client? Beyond clients, are you willing to work with others on group projects (i.e. developer and designer)? Who would that ideal partner be?

Target audiences are often more related to one that sells products, or to a blog or other form of website that relies heavily on its visitor count. However, selling services is no different. One must recognize this and take the necessary steps to define their target audience.

Both how a brand is designed visually and how it is presented professionally will lean towards a certain type of person.

This person should be someone you’d like to work with, as well as the type of person that will help your brand grow.

When seemingly ready to open up Illustrator and start on a logo design, wait one more second and get prepared for the visual aspect of the brand-to-be.

Below are some questions to ask about the target audience before jumping into the design phase of your brand.

What is your design style?

If it is more creative, you may want to appeal to groups that would need a creative website.

If it is more Web 2.0 and sleek, you’re going to want to appeal to business owners or vendors of “high-technology fields.”

Consulting agencies, app websites, and other sites of the like would be great targets.

To What Level Are you Willing to Help and Communicate?

It’s true; all clients have varying levels of understanding web technologies, and well, technology in general.

Do you want to attract a client that knows nothing of the web world, in which you will be responsible for providing an easy to maintain website? Or, would you rather communicate with a group of web professionals, sending out the final project to one client?

This can dig deeper into clients as well. Attracting a client, for example that is maintaining a site dedicated to some sort of technology may be easier to communicate with about technology if you prefer that.

Any other type of website that coincides with the “offline world” though may hold a client that would need a simpler website.

What work would you like to be responsible for?

Many of us don’t like all the work that comes from freelancing. Especially in the world of website creation, many clients want us to do it all — design, develop, market, and more.

If you specialize in one area though, it may be beneficial to have part of your target audience be those looking for partnership projects.

For example, if you are a designer, you may want to include web developers in your target audience so that they could contact you to partner up on a bigger project.

This way, whether you know how to or not, you wouldn’t be stuck with the coding and you can stick with what you love.

Define it on Paper

After asking these questions and researching a bit more, write out your target audience in a list.

Each item should not be a single-line type of person, like “Clients with a lot of web experience”, but rather a small very descriptive paragraph.

The more detailed the description, the more success you’ll have once it’s time to start the design process of the brand.

Further Resources

• Web Design, Ad Copy and Targeting your Target Audience
• Website Design – Identify Your Target Audience
• How to Market Your Small Business: Meet Customers Where They Are

3. The Business Name

Is it your own name, or a more formal and creative name?

This is often times a step overlooked, but it is incredibly relevant to the final goals of the website. If you plan to be the owner of a firm someday, or develop a team of web professionals in any other way, your given name as a brand may not be appropriate.

However, many freelancers chose to grow their business by always freelancing solo, while still outsourcing some of their work. There is a difference in each situation, and a personal name would thrive on this type of business.

Also, bigger names may attract bigger projects, while a personal name would attract many smaller clients. Depending on what you’d like to do in terms of work greatly depends on the brand’s name.

So, in the plainest sense: an alternative name would be more versatile, but your own name as a brand would be more personable and each would lead to a different type of client.

Image credit: Mark McGall, 72 Thinking

4. The Logo

The logo is the first step into the design process of the brand. It is the one graphic that your business will survive upon.

Your website, content, and all other design elements must compliment a brand’s logo, as well as work with it towards the ultimate goal of making the sale to the client.

Whether designing it yourself or hiring someone else to do it for you — you’ll need to be the one that decides how it will look.

Many times I get clients that let me have too much creative control when it comes to their brand design. While creative control is always appreciated, when it comes to a brand — that’s a bad choice.

Be sure to research and create a plan for the brand of your freelancing business so you can take control.

Everything mentioned so far in this article will come into play for the initial design phase of the brand.

The name is an obvious factor, but the target audience and business’s goals will also come into play. Keep a few questions in mind concerning all of this when beginning the logo design phase:

• What does the overall style of the logo need to be to attract the right audience?
• What type of colors should be used? As different types of colors provoke different emotions, this ties in greatly to the target audience.
• How versatile does it need to be? How will it grow with your freelancing as a business?
• Does it need to be formatted well with print material as well as web material?
• What shape does it need to be, generally (more rounded/square, or rectangular)? This has a lot to do with what materials you’ll be using it on and the format it will need to take when combined with content.

Some Examples

The above logo says “professional, fun, and personable”. Notice how the varying colors in the web design turn into a more playful approach, which in turn makes it more personable.

The smooth curves in both the font and the image portion of the logo also take the strict factor away, making him as a business person approachable.

This freelancer runs as a single freelancer, branding his business as him — most likely returning to him one-on-one clients with great communication and many smaller, more creative projects.

This brand is a group of designers working together under one website. The brand has a more generalized name, and even a more professional, company-like feel.

Furthermore, looking more into their portfolio, one can see that the image compliment on the logo highlights their design style: clean and sleek with a hint of outside-the-box creativity.

The abstraction of this logo tells the viewer right away about the style of this designer. Also, a bright color also plays into it. It is simple, effective, and portrays the designer’s intentions well.

Playful, light and super creative is what this brand is all about. The logo complimenting this brand is incredibly creative, and lacks a more formal look. That’s not to say it isn’t effective though. Its overall look is still professional while being quirky and original.

This is a single freelancer with a portfolio full of Web 2.0 material. The logo quickly reflects that, and the nature theme provides a calm, cool, and collected tone. The brand says professional and high-tech, but not rigid or boring.

This brand is the most classical of all the logos above. Along with it comes a business that is more traditional and formal. This likely creates more credibility for them as a team, rather than a single freelancer, allowing them to take on bigger clients.

5. Your Website Design, Business Card Design, and Everything Else

Now that you have a logo, you’ve gone through much of the design process for nearly everything else that will require design. It only takes a bit more planning to complete the design process.

If your brand is very personal, a hand-drawn website design may work well to compliment the logo and brand as a whole. If the brand is Web 2.0, you’ll want a sleek web design, sleek business card design, and sleek, high-end stationary and other printed material.

Because the rest of your design needs can be based primarily off of the logo design, most of the target audience and business goals implementation will come into place naturally.

Still, keep them in mind as you develop the brand further. Don’t lose sight of the goals, and always pertain to the original message you’ve planned for.

Examples Continued

This group keeps to their image with the rest of their design as professional yet creative.

The colors, wireframe, and work featured on this portfolio are all abstract, just as the logo is. It is also very clean, to the point, and has a lot of whitespace — again mimicking the logo and brand design.

The web design of this brand is the primary focus, and it is playful, personable, and approachable. It mixes very well with the logo and highlights the brand very well.

The web design is super clean and web 2.0, just as the logo is. Furthermore the design is laid out in a way that is systematized, letting visitors in on all the information necessary, which is a very professional, company-like approach.

This web design is very traditional, attracting clients that would like a straight approach to their web services. Like the logo and appeal to the brand, it is “gimmick-free” and professional. A high level of credibility is present in the web design as it is in the entire brand.

6. Write an Elevator Pitch

An elevator pitch is traditionally used offline when trying to sell your services in about 30 seconds or less.

Pre-planning a small speech to sell your stuff can help to include everything you need to, while still having a crafted pitch that is likely to sell.

However, as the technologies of web work expand each year, elevator pitches are becoming increasingly important for online freelancers as well.

An elevator pitch is very much a part of a brand. What is said in the pitch shares what you do, what your business does, and what you and your business can do for the person reading or hearing your pitch.

When a prospect asks what you do, you should not respond with, “I’m a freelance web designer” or “I’m a freelance writer”. Instead, this is a chance to say, in about 15-30 seconds, what you do in detail.

Nobody is interested in a “freelance web designer”, “freelance web developer” or a “freelance writer”.

What potential clients are interested in is “a web designer that focuses primarily on user-centric web designs that are both creative and professional” or “a web developer that creates website apps focused around users needs — apps that are designed to sell”.

Realistically, elevator pitches should be even better than the above. Furthermore, they can be used as an introduction to a portfolio, or used on the about page to help make sales there, too. To find out more about elevator pitches and how to write the perfect pitch, check out the resources below.

Further Resources

• Is Your Elevator Pitch a Home Run?
• The Writer’s Elevator Pitch
• Not Getting a Rise out of your Elevator Speech?
• Write an Elevator Pitch for Your Blog
• Elevator Pitch 101 – Intro To Writing a 30 Second Elevator Pitch

7. Write an About Page

Your about page is where clients and others who may want to work with you can get to know you, before having to make any sort of contact. It should reflect yourself, and the way you do business.

Is your brand fun, professional or to-the-point? Most likely, your brand so far has reflected your personality in its own sense already. It’s now up to you to write an about page that can “make the sale“.

If a person has become interested enough to check out the about page, you have somehow convinced them to become at least half-way interested in your services.

Hopefully, you’ve attracted the right person based from your declared target audience. If so, how would you talk to this person?

Content-wise, you’re going to want to keep to your original style. For example, if you want a more company-like approach, write more formally. For a more creative approach, be personable and fun.

Your career choice as a freelancer and the work you do probably already reflects your personality a great deal, so just being yourself is the best option when trying to find a writing style for the about page.

It is of utmost importance to not try to sound like anyone else — your own voice is what makes you different from every other freelancer on the planet.

After figuring in the writing style and how to approach the page, one must outline what to include. Below is a minimum:

• Your history in the field and what you do.
• Your professional experience, and possibly school experience if present.
  (A written résumé)
• Perhaps a link to a more formal resume.
• Contact information, or a link to the contact page.
• A relevant note to their problem, and how you can help them.
  (They need a website, you can make one for them.)

One may want to include other sections that further define their personality and business.

The more a potential client feels they know you, the more likely they’ll be to make contact because you and your business will seem more approachable. (Keep in mind though that it need not be a 10 page autobiography!)

Further Resources

• Your About Page Is a Robot
• How to Write Your “About Me” Page
• The 4 Essential Elements of an About Me Page
• Best Practices For Effective Design Of “About me”-Pages
• Five Tips (and a Bonus!) on How to Write a Fantastic About Page
• The Importance Of An “About Me” Page

8. Get Clients to Reach You

Now that you have a brand, it’s all about marketing and having clients find you.

You’ve created a target audience, identified business goals (both present and future goals), built the brand in a design sense around those two definition, and created content that helps sell your material.

This is all great, but at this point your brand is unknown and inactive. Don’t worry though — your brand is supposed to do the work for you, and given the time, it will.

Let people know about your brand by getting listed on job websites, doing guest posts, or leaving messages in forums. Generally, marketing is the same — but now you must market your brand as opposed to yourself.

Keeping Consistent

In my own experiences with branding, I’ve found myself re-branding and trying out new things.

It all came down to the fact that I had never taken the time to correctly brand my business, and specifically, that I had never taken the time to find my true target audience.

That forced me to revamp my brand to meet my needs as time went on. I could have avoided the whole mess if I would have taken the time in the beginning.

In the end, that has hurt my business because clients, readers, and other people that keep my business alive didn’t recognize me and my business after each revamp, and it also hurt my credibility.

It is essential to keep a brand consistent, for the reasons mentioned above, and for a number of other reasons. Once you lose the brand, you lose all of the benefits that come along with it. If you change a brand, even if it is being changes to better match goals today, it will have to start marketing from base zero once again.

Here are a few articles and tips on how to keep a brand consistent.

• Keeping Your Brand Consistent
• Is your online brand consistent?
• Keep Things Consistent – Basic Brand Management

Updating a Brand

As we change as professionals and as people, there is no doubt that we will want to change our brand too. We may grow into a design firm rather than a freelance web designer, or a web developer more so than a designer.

Much of the time a person will be focusing on one area of web work, only to find over time that their skill set and interests have expanded into something completely different.

• That’s fine; that’s life — we live, we grow, we change.
• The trick now is to not change your brand, but to upgrade it, and develop it further.
  This is where our initial goals step into place. With the correct planning of our goals in the first place, we were able to plan ahead for moving forward. Perhaps you were a single, lonely freelancer back in the day you created your brand, but now you’ve finally got a team together as a firm, just as one of your goals stated. If you planned the brand around that goal successfully, you may only need to make a few tweaks, while still making your brand recognizable and overall, the same.
• To upgrade a brand, keep a few things consistent: the name, the style, and the main color combination.
  The name is the most recognizable part of a brand, so that is something you will never want to change. The overall style is very tightly knit into your target audience, and in order to keep your current client base, you’ll want to keep that. Lastly, color is one of the most memorable aspects visually, and most likely is the driving force visual for your brand. Keep this, and you keep the tone and memorable factor of your brand.

Further Resources

• How to Get Clients to Come to You
• 8 Brilliant Freelance Job Boards to Help You Get More Clients
• Getting the Freelance Gigs to Come to You — Your Resume and Portfolio

Wrapping Up

Brand creation is definitely an art in itself, and takes a lot of time to plan.

Don’t rush through this essential step of a freelancing career — having a brand can not only benefit you as a web professional, but also avoid fallbacks and can aid as a form of security.

No matter how big your business is — how big your client base, your team, or your popularity is — develop a plan, a brand around it if you haven’t already.

Then, stick to it, be consistent. It may also be helpful to take a step back if you already have a brand to analyze it. Can it be upgraded or further developed? Are you missing anything essential to your brand thus far?

There are, of course, many more tips and suggestion that could be mentioned, and much of it is a matter of personal experiences.

Written exclusively for WDD by Kayla Knight.

Please share any further tips or experiences you’ve had with branding as a freelancer. What have you learned from your own mistakes?

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