Design crowd is a online business which is used a lot by the creative and digital media sector, and is a good place for freelancers to make money, it is where designers can upload there designs to clients and get payed for it if they are chosen, as they can use this aswell as being employed to another person, it is a good way of making extra money and gain better experience.
Another good place to find jobs is GumTree, it is another way for designers to find jobs suitable to media as Gumtree has its own Media, Design and Creative jobs section, this is another good place for potential creative and digital media designers to come and look for work, it is a good place for freelancers to go on for extra jobs along side their day to day duties.When promoting yourself as a designer you have to be good at what you do and good at marketing and presenting yourself, to get noticed you have to offer things that others wouldn't to stand a chance, doing a design for someone to an excellent standard will make that person recommend you to other people for more jobs and that is where your business starts and you start getting recognised, once you are getting more and more business the next is creating business cards for yourself, business cards are great for people who are walking about as within a business card it tells you all the information that you need in order to contact you and such just within a small card.
Creating a online portfolio is a creative and interactive way for potential clients to view your work, it is easier than sending all your work in an email, as clients are a bit spectacle when it comes to emails from people they are not familiar with and it is much easier putting all your work within one site.
When managing your budget you have to think about your pay per hour to clients, and bills such as electricity, phone bills you may run up talking the the client, Internet etc, and the amount of hours it will take you, when putting a quote to a potential client think about all this and make a good quote for examples for a poster £6 over 12 hours or so to complete and add in printing costs to the quote then the client is bound to pick you. All freelancers have a excel spreadsheet which records all of the costs they have to do a certain job and to keep on track of what to quote and keep a record of what they have done, this is a good way as it is quick and secure and if it is on a computer it won't get lost like paper would.
Freelancers work isn't all consistent in pay and the cash-flow won't be very well, as when an opportunity occurs your not sure if you will be chosen so you have to manage your money effectively and know what you can spend or not, as you never know when you will have money coming in, this is why a spreadsheet is a good way of keeping your money records all in one place.
When taking on projects with certain deadlines you have to make chances to your own lifestyle to fit in the work that is needed to be done, for example if you normally go out for a walk on a morning and have lazying afternoons, you will have to make sacristies to meet the deadline so maybe no walk or cutting down the hours of the walk and cutting the lazy afternoons out to complete what needs to be done.
Don't make overpriced quotes like I did, thinking about your money is key for job opportunities, as you want to make sure you have enough for a profit margin but not too much that it is over priced, make your quotes reasonable and time scale to realistic. as I have learnt with my first quote of putting in too high of a price, if I had made this smaller with a printing opportunities I probably would of had a good chance is getting this. It is good that I can learn for this so I don't make the same mistake twice so when the next one comes I know exactly how to work out my money and time correctly.
When putting in for a job you have to sell yourself, tell them what you are capable of doing, show previous work this will land you a chance at making it.
Receiving feedback on your designs is always something that you should have, such websites such as design crowd have a feedback response, this helps you get feedback from any job you have posted for, however there is a button where people who can't be bothered to give feedback just put nothing and an automatic feedback, this is not good for designers as it does not tell them what they did right or wrong so in future will not be able to chance what they did in order to make the design right. Many designers post designs up on social networking sites such as Facebook which is really popular and everyone goes on so you are bound to receive feedback on there, like I did it helped me as it told me what i was doing right with the design.When managing supplier contracts it is important when managing a contract that the file consists of the final contract, other documents relating to the contract, all changes that have been done to the contract, certificates of insurance and any extensions to the contract. You have to make sure that the contract meets the legal, regulatory and organisational requirements and make sure you look over the contract at least twice so you have a clear understanding of what you are signing and what you get out of this.
When communicating with other parties make sure you speak clearly and project your voice this is a good thing as people can understand what you are saying, don't just say nothing if you are unsure about anything you have to speak up and ask them to explain again so that understand everything fully, because if you don't understand fully and just accept anything you could put yourself in a situation that effects your cash-flow and business.
Once a contract has been signed, keep it in a safe place that you will find it, maybe a storage folder or even scanning into the computer will store if safe with all the rest of your work as losing this could be crucial as the other party in the contract may try to breach this contract and you will have no evidence to say otherwise.
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