The first challenge anyone who wants to freelance or work for themselves will run into is the difficulty of juggling marketing themselves with focusing on what they do. Many sell one job, set to work on it, and then don’t seek another job until they’re done. This results in periods of feast or famine and excessive stress between jobs.
While you could split your time between marketing and working, a better solution is to collaborate with others who can refer work to you. Once you get sufficient clients and build a substantial portfolio you will stay busy all the time. The other advantage of having someone else recommend you is that they can offer their honest opinion and reasons for recommending you.
The best recommendations come from someone you have done work for because they can comment on your communication skills, timeliness, ability to translate their idea into a deliverable, conflict resolution and about their overall experience working with you. These are important factors when hiring someone and they are not easily conveyed by your portfolio. Many are highly talented but difficult to communicate or work with.
The very best Web sites require a collaboration of individual specialists. Each brings different skills to a project. Derek Semmler and I have launched several new blogs. We work well together because he has the technical skills installing and upgrading WordPress and working with data feeds I lack. I have the marketing experience and usability background he hasn’t developed yet. We constantly learn from each other.
We have an opportunity to offer someone more talented than we are in creating logos and adding more compelling, advanced graphics to WordPress blogs. The greatest benefit they will receive is our ability to recommend them for future work. I am always on Twitter, FriendFeed, cliKball, send my Tweets to Del.icio.us and when my new PC arrives hope to be active again at StumbleUpon.
I am often in a position to recommend the very best specialists directly to clients and to answer online requests with specific recommendations and timely responses complete with links to portfolios. Business owners often do not understand the importance of logos and design and are reluctant to pay for quality work. That is where I come in. I know what is important and who is the very best. I also know who to recommend if they don’t need the very best or spending that amount is not economically feasible for them.
The more I know about a consultant’s prices, way of working, and talents the better I can match them with a particular client. It is rare for someone I have personally recommended not to be hired at their desired rate because I only recommend the best fit and ensure potential clients clearly understand the benefits of a particular offering and why it is worth the cost.
Besides the personal recommendations and mentions and replies on Social Networking sites, anyone collaborating with us will have a link placed in the footer of each site they have worked on with appropriate anchor text. Each footer could eventually have a separate link for Hosting, WordPress, Logo, Graphic Design and Graphics used within Posts. These links provide incoming links to your site from every page of ours. The faster our traffic grows the more that will benefit you. Here is the most recent Compete site profile showing our unique visitors:
I know this graphic is not easy to read. The latest period shown highlighted is for April 2009 and shows 13,478 unique visitors.
All of our blogs use the Thesis Theme on the WordPress platform. Except for this one our blogs are brand new and have no incomes. Derek still works for an employer and I give away almost all of my time promoting others so there is no budget for hiring graphics work done. I believe that ongoing promotion and recommendations I can offer are far more valuable than the equivalent money would be and hope one or more talented graphic artists will be interested.
I also have extensive experience in usability, ecommerce, and Web design which I will gladly share with anyone – and especially with any graphic designers interested in collaborating with us. Imagine having an Internet Strategist handy to consult with on an ongoing basis. Would site review skills come in handy? Have you ever had a question while designing a site and weren’t sure where to find the answer? Now you do.
As you may notice this blog needs a Logo suitable to be used as an Avatar / Gravatar and Favicon. It should probably resemble at least in general concept (the upward trend line) the Avatar I am currently using. This blog has the most traffic and is in the best position to recommend your work. That is only real need here; however, I am open to any other ideas a designer may have and have some of my own you’re welcome to consider. One idea is a map theme – possibly a variation of the parchment look posted by Curious Cat Creations.
Our new blog PSPLiving (PSPLiving) is about living healthy for less and will include anything related to that subject including:
- Specifically what to avoid (food and personal products such as shampoos, soaps, etc.)
- How to acquire organic produce locally for less than you spend now
- Product recommendations and how to determine what products are truly healthy and which are just standard toxic-laced products jumping on the bandwagon to make money off the unsuspecting
- Cooking tips that save you time and money
Another brand new blog is GrokHorses (GrokHorses) Grok means to understand profoundly and intuitively. This blog will cover anything related to horses and share three decades of knowledge. I highly suspect it will expand to have writers passionate about their sub-niche of the horse world.
We also have a Gift related blog at ExecGiftsBlog (ExecGifts) that we use to communicate with buyers and affiliates of Executive Gift Shoppe. There are so many gift blogs and stores that I include this blog here in case a designer would like to establish a clientele in this niche. We are actively recruiting affiliates and there is likely to be related design work as they build new niche gift stores.
All three of these blogs have Thesis installed and are a beautiful white palette just waiting for a designer to really shine. Although I have some ideas the designer will have freedom of expression as long as their design does not detract from the substance of each blog. The same designer is welcome to do an entire design including logo or one designer can provide a logo and another other design elements. One designer could work on more than one or different designers could be chosen.
They will be fully optimized for SEO and community building and already have associated Twitter accounts. People do tend to hire consultants who operate in the niche they know best so if you’d love to become “the” designer for any of the many sub-niches these two sites will incorporate here is your change to show off.
If you’ve seen my work here and elsewhere you know that I research and bring together enormous amounts of information. This means sites I create become huge attractors for everything in the niches in which they operate. They end up being highly trafficed sites with many incoming links and very high visibility – all good things for the designers who collaborate with us. I hope they’ll read this and we’ll hear from them. If you or anyone you know might be interested please do pass our proposal along. Thank you.
Are you looking for a great logo or graphic designer too? Here are some whose work has caught our eye:
- David Airey – (DavidAirey) – considered one of the best for those with the budget
- The Design Cubicle – Brian Hoff – (behoff) – his site provides an impressive amount of research on this subject
- Difference By Design – Synergy Logo – click on logos, promotions or illustrations to page through their portfolio
- Just Creative Design – Jacob Cass – (justcreative) – understated designs for serious businesses
- Logo Perfecto – Philip Brunner (LogoPerfecto) – click on the link that says random to see 37 designs
- LogoPond – Identity Inspiration – a showcase collection of logos from different designers
- LogosforWebsites – Bargain priced logo and graphic design
- Nick Pearson – recommended by app103 – creator of the really cute DonationCoder mascot at wtfCody.
- Nineteen Eight-One – Joshua Geiger – (_1981_) – logo portfolio, testimonials, get a quote
- RussoGraffix – April Russo – (app103) – April creates graphics, has programming skills and creates applications
LOGO and GRAPHIC DESIGN:
- Logo Design Love – extensive reference information and resources for logo designers – see their popular posts including 85 of the best logo design resources
- 15 Logo Design Tutorials with Illustrator (Integrity Lance)
- Constructing the Perfect Logo (devlounge)
- How to Design a Logo (JustCreativeDesign)
- 16 Unveiled Logo Design Processes (The Design Cubicle)
- When is a “bad” logo design actually “good” (Logo Design Love)
- 40+ Amazing 3D Typographic Designs (childimar.com)
- What’s Your Logo (Jayme Passiotive)
- 16 Useful Blogs for Web Design and Inspiration (Jon Bishop)
Related articles by Zemanta
- 14 Ways To Juggle Freelancing While Working Full Time (sitepoint.com)
- A few essentials for the freelancer (tc.eserver.org)
