LESSONS LEARNED FROM 2 YEARS AS A FREELANCE DESIGNER

The beginning of June marks two years since I began freelancing full time. It’s hard to believe that two years have flown by already, even if those years coincide with the hazy time-warp of the pandemic. I wrote a blog post about lessons learned after 6 months, so I thought I’d update with new thoughts that have come to the surface as the business has grown.

The best way to get more work is to do a good job with your current clients.

It’s no secret that word of mouth from past clients is far more effective than reaching out to people yourself. It’s also much easier to work with repeat clients than to find a new client for each project. I would guess that about 60% of my work is for repeat clients. This also has the added benefit of more efficient onboarding, pricing, and process since the client already knows what to expect from me, and I have an idea of their taste and communication style. Also, if I’m in a busy period, I try to prioritize existing clients over taking on new ones. 

Meet the universe halfway.

When I first started working for myself, the idea of constantly having to rustle up work felt daunting. However, I have been pleasantly surprised to learn that I haven’t had to do it very often. After a brief period of reaching out to potential clients when I first started, I’ve found that the work trickles in without too much outreach. There have been several moments when I’ve looked ahead a few weeks and thought that it’s time to search for new work, only to find an inquiry in my inbox the next day. In those moments, I feel like the universe is on my side. To help this trend along, my philosophy is to meet the universe halfway. That means sharing my work, saying yes to new opportunities whether they’re social or work-related, and taking small steps that bring me closer to longer-term goals. And yes, it also means reaching out to potential clients from time to time to get things moving again. 

Social media is not the work.

As a designer/illustrator, it can be easy to get caught up on the hampster wheel of feeding the social media algorithms. Likes and follows and appreciative comments can feel like a measure of success for your work, but of course the true measure of success is:

• Does your work meet the goals of the brief?
• Is the client happy with the result? Are you happy with the result? 

That being said, building a social media presence can be helpful to growing a design/illustration business. Like most small businesses, my goal is not to become a social media influencer, but rather to build legitimacy, remind people I exist, and connect with other creatives, organizations, and businesses. Despite my sometimes jaded view of social media, connecting with people on Instagram has led to new work and new friendships. 

So how do you engage with social media in a way that feels manageable? I try to post something once every week or two. Slow and steady does yield results with time! Occasionally, I still feel stressed when I’m busy with client work and don’t have time to prepare a post. In those moments, I need to remind myself that social media takes a back seat to the real work, and if I’m too busy with real work, something is going well.

Pricing gets easier, but it can still be a challenge.

More experience brings more confidence with pricing your work, but even designers who’ve been in the biz for much longer than I have report that they still struggle with this aspect. There are a few reasons for this:

• If you’re using a fixed rate for the project, you want to make sure that the scope is specific and you have an accurate idea of how long it will take so that you don’t wind up working for free or a lower hourly rate. 
• Clients, especially ones unaccustomed to working with designers, often don’t understand that this work takes time. Some people see a logo and think that it must take an hour or two to create on the computer. They don’t consider the time spent finding out the client’s needs/goals, honing in on the right mood, exploring multiple directions, color schemes and fonts, sketching, iterating, fine-tuning, sizing, exporting, etc. 

Often, after I send off an estimate, I worry that it is simultaneously too high and too low. Strategies that help me with these concerns are:

• Basing hourly rates on real life. I calculate my hourly rate by considering my monthly expenses plus savings each month. Then I divide this by a reasonable goal of billable hours/month. Remember that as a freelancer, not all your work is billable and you have to cover business expenses, so your hourly rate will likely be higher than a full-time employee doing a similar job. Also, this hourly rate is not set in stone. It can change as you gain more experience and clients just as it would in a regular job. 
• Tracking hours for accurate estimates. Keeping track of hours from past projects helps me make an educated guess as to how long a project will take. If I came in over budget the last time, I know to adjust moving forward. I use Toggl, but there are many similar services that help you keep track of time. 
• Putting it in perspective. When imposter syndrome strikes, I find it helpful to remember that designers/illustrators are skilled providers of a service, and the fact that that service is in a creative field doesn’t make it less valuable. Sometimes it’s helpful to compare to skilled workers in other fields—if you were an electrician or building contractor, would this amount seem reasonable? Similarly, you could consider if the client were to do the project in-house, how much they would be likely to pay a full-time employee including benefits. These comparisons can help put pricing in perspective, both for designers and clients.

Growth and change go hand in hand.

Finally, as I’ve worked on honing my own process, new opportunities for collaboration have come up which will involve revisiting processes and working in new ways. I think it’s super helpful to get out of your own bubble from time to time, so I look forward to learning from these experiences. I expect the next two years will bring many more changes, but growth and change are two of the things I find most exciting about the path I’m on.