Self-Promotion Tips for Creative Freelancers
Self promotion is the practice of telling potential clients about what you do. With it you build your brand, engage prospects and find clients. As a
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ARTICLES.
Tips and Insights on Mission, Mindset, Mechanics, and Marketing for Freelance Creatives
Which is Better for Self-Promotion: Email or Mailers?
Self-promotion is an ordinary and necessary aspect of doing business as an independent creative professional. Unlike social media marketing, self-promotion campaigns are targeted to contacts
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Creative Freedom Through Setting Boundaries
Working with clients can be likened to a downhill race: The designer moves along in her process and picks up momentum as she heads toward the finish line, and all
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The Value of the Design Brief
Recently, I met with a start-up business. As we discussed the scope of work and began putting the design brief together, it became clear that
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Creativity and Change
Creative thinking requires us to cease from thinking as we always have. This is neither automatic nor easy because we automatically default to doing that which requires the least amount of effort.
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How Brands Are Built
People connect with brands the same way they connect with people. Brands cannot be developed and maintained without design. Branding is not design, but it
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Don’t Cry When A Client Leaves
How we can best respond when client relationships end? Here’s a professional, non-emotional approach you can take when a client informs you they’re leaving or have left.
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The 7 Basic Elements of Your Brand Strategy
Simply creating graphic assets and promotional materials is not enough to manage your brand. You need a strategy — a plan, method, or series of actions for obtaining a specific goal or result. Here are 7 basic elements to get started.
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5 Stages of Customer Loyalty
To be meaningful, design needs to connect on five successive levels of significance…
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Show Your Work: How Sharing Your Process Increases Your Value
When a client is looking for a creative firm, process and procedures are not obvious priorities in evaluating performance. The prospect is going to look
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Discovery Isn’t Strategy
A mistake freelance creatives can easily make is to diagnose and strategize with a prospective client before they become an actual client. This often happens
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From the Client’s Point of View
From the client’s point of view, there are two crucial criteria in deciding what designer is awarded the project: 1. Does the creative understand what’s
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Spec Work Is Gambling
Working on spec directly contradicts good business practices and does not even promise payment for work performed.
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Working Late: 5 Essential Boundaries for Freelancers
From time to time I’ll fire off an email to a client during the late evening or early morning hours. Occasionally, an immediate response comes back
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How To Handle Special Requests From Clients
I was asked about how to deal with unusual requests. Once someone finds out you are a designer, writer, photographer… any type of creative, you
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Contracts Protect the Freelancer and the Client
As I write this article I’m in the middle of a contract negotiation involving copyright and licensing of one of my character designs. I worked with
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How To Choose Good Clients
Good clients are integral to successful freelance projects and to your career overall. Beyond the project itself, a referral or recommendation from the right client can open doors
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Twelve Books To Boost Your Creative Business
It’s widely acknowledged that there is a direct correlation between reading and success. But it’s not the amount you read, it’s what you read. There’s
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The Importance of Knowing Why
How many people set goals and never achieve them? How many creatives start a business and then watch it fizzle out Are you someone who,
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Do Freelancers Need Business Insurance?
One thing that’s great about flying solo as a freelancer is all the freedom you have in who you work with, where, when and how
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Property Rights
Although it’s a common assumption, clients are not automatically entitled to a designer’s working files. The tools, preliminary concepts and layouts remain the property of
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I Didn’t Get the Job
When you’re in business for yourself and you are regularly seeking new clients and projects, you will come across all types of prospects in your
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When It’s Time To Let Go
Being effective involves doing the right thing at the right time in the right place.
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How Long Does It Take to Succeed as a Freelancer?
How do you measure success? How long will it take to succeed as a freelancer? This is a common question among freelancers, and I believe
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