Posts Tagged ‘graphic design’

Well, part three is finally here. (Yay!) In this section of the series, “The Freelancer’s Guide, we’ll speak about how to gain repeat clients, or “regulars” as you might call them.

When your in a position where you have a client or two, (or three! ) that come to you with work every month, every other week, or even five or 6 times a month, you are greatly benefiting from this “relationship”. Why? Well, it’s not only because you have a lot of work, equaling a lot of revenue, but it’s due to the fact that you now have a steady income. Everyone knows that freelancing is a risky business, due to the fact that you may have too many jobs to take on one month, and absolutely nothing the next three months. This makes it tough and stressful, because you never, ever know when you will have work.

This is where having regular clients comes in handy.

When you have these repeat clients, you have something to fall back on really. It gives you more “job security” if you will, as you know, “Well, I haven’t had a job in three weeks, but I know Bill has that project I’ll be working on.” In some situations, a repeat client won’t help you. So what if you get one $50 banner job each month from them, you still need more to live off of. Right? Well that’s the beauty of having “regulars”, not a “regular”.

You see, when your in a situation where you have, say, five clients that bring you 3 jobs a month, each worth, $125 on average, that’s $375 per client, times five, equaling $1875. Now imagine you have 10 clients bringing you the same quantity of work each month, and you are making $3750 per month, and that’s just from the clients you know will bring you work. Then factor in a few other jobs, and your looking at around $4,000 a month if you play your cards right. That’s how having repeat clients will help you.

But enough about why you should have repeat clients, let’s talk about how to get repeat clients.

Gaining a repeat Client

I’m going to be honest with you, it’s not easy.

If a client can find someone who will work $5 cheaper, and their work is of similar quality, your off the MSN list.

So how can you achieve being a clients “go to” man, and their only choice? How do you get a client to only turn to you, and not even get price quotes from other freelancers? Let’s talk about how.

When you have a client that you see is bringing you fairly steady work, speak to them about it. Mention to them that you would like form a better business relationship with them.

Something that I have done that brings in more and more work is this.

Tell them that you have a pricing chart, and that if they bring 5 jobs or more to you a month, they get, say a 5% discount, and if they bring 10 or more, a 10% discount.

Do things like this, and maybe doing them a favor here and there, and bam!, you’ve got a repeat client.

It’s a pretty simple thing, but it will really help you, as I spoke about above.

Also, what you can do is be real friendly with them, always giving them “special treatment” if you will, and you will form a trust. This trust is extremely beneficial, as they will start viewing you as “their” graphic designer, not just some graphics dude that does my banners. When you reach this point, your pretty much locked in, and you will have a much more steady stream of jobs, therefore creating a steady income.

Well, that will conclude Part Three of the series, “The Freelancer’s Guide” and I hope you really liked it, and will use the tips. Any suggestions you have, I would love to see them in the comments, so feel free. Also, stick around for Part Four, in which I will be bringing out how to deal with clients. Audios!

*NOTE* I know that I speak more specifically about graphic design, and not other freelancing work. But please try to keep in mind that these techniques apply in all aspects of freelance work, not just graphic design. My reason for speaking more of graphic design is that designing is my strong point, and what I do the most when I freelance. *NOTE*

In Part one of this series, “The Freelancer’s Guide”, we talked about how to find jobs.

Today we”ll go into the second point I spoke about, and the next obvious step in freelancing. We will talk about “How to land a job“.

How can I land the job?

Once you find a job, unless your at the point when people come to you for work directly, or you have some great connections, it’s going to be tough to some extent to land a job. We’ll talk about 5 ways in which you can do that.

1. Outbid the others

When you start off, I’m sure you won’t have a problem taking $5-10 PayPal cash to take care of a logo that will take you 30 minutes. So when someone bids $20 on a job, say you’ll do $15! You’ll already have an advantage over them that way. Of course, don’t sell yourself too short! This is a problem that I struggled with when I first started freelancing. I refused to work cheap, and wanted as much as the big boys. But of course, if someone was willing to spend that much, they wouldn’t have gone with the big dogs. Also, look at it this way. You can view the first few (5-10, not first 2) as just tests. To learn how to deal with the clients, meet deadlines, etc. Also, any and all small or large projects, whether you worked cheap or not, will build your portfolio. This way you are more trusted. So don’t feel bad if you worked a little cheap for the first couple jobs, it’ll help you out in the end.

2. Be Friendly

I will be talking about this in more detail in a later part of this series, but it’s very important, so I’ll make mention of it here as well. If you are not friendly to both the person looking for the job to be done, or the other freelancers looking to take the job, people will not trust you, and you will most likely not end up with the job.

3. Have a Portfolio

I know that it’s going to be hard or impossible to do this at first, but why not try and mock up just a few of your own ideas, and set up a quick portfolio? This way, your clients will have something to take a look at before they trust “dsingrz194″ with their business’s logo.

4. Follow up

Even if you send a PM or email regarding a job and don’t hear back immediately, send another. Now, do not be annoying and ask over and over, but if you don’t hear back in 2-3 days, shoot another email, just to follow up with them and see if the position has been filled or if they are still looking. People really love an ambitious freelancer.

5. Don’t ask for full upfront Payment

I know this is an oddly specific point, but it’s true. If you ask for full upfront payment, especially if you are new to freelancing, you will scare off the potential client, as this is a way that “fake” freelancers scam some out of their hard earned money. If anything ask for 25% or maybe even 50% upfront payment, and make sure that you offer a refund of that deposit if the client is not happy with the product. Once you get larger, you may be able to say “25% upfront, 10% non refundable” or something of the like.

Those are pretty much the 5 most basic and important ways to land the job, and I hope you all can use them. In part three we’ll talk about how to gain repeat clients, or “regulars”. So Subscribe to the RSS Feed and don’t miss it!