Hey I was wondering if anyone knew of a ligitimate website that posted freelance graphic job opportunities. I work as the full-time graphics/communications assistant at my church but eventually I'd like to be able to just have an income through freelance stuff so I can be home with my family. Is there any such site that I could get into now in preparation for stepping away from a full-time position eventually? Thanks.
6 comments
Besides that, there are a number of places where you can sell stock photography & illustrations, or crowdsourcing sites, but neither of these are good as a successful business model.
Also, always ask your clients to recommend you to others.
Check out some of the listings here:
http://www.youthedesigner.com/2008/04/21/10-great-places-to-find-graphic-design-jobs/
I know many people who get invited to crowdspring projects and get selected, but spec work isn't for everyone—especially if the competition is over 50 artists. You can usually tell, though.
There are particular skills that allow you to resell art for residual. This would include stock photography, WordPress themes, templated AE projects and HTML/CSS site templates. You can get a lot of action with this approach on some of the paid sites.
Join. After formal launch, offer to do design gigs. You will get paid
when someone picks your gig offer.
For example, you can make a Photoshop Template or a Video Template
and then just change text / images as per Buyer requirement. You can
sell same template to multiple clients with minor changes. Our
motto is to help people to convert skills to cash.
I love that you are looking for away to work and be with your family, very commendable.
I also agree everyone above that nothing is as good as building a network.
Here are some ways that I think, will guarantee enough work for you.
1. Go to every graphic design/web design/printing company in your surrounding area and let them know your available for outsourcing. Every establishing firm I know of has more work than they can handle and they are more than happy(relieved even) to have a go-to to send extra work to. If you had as little as 5 firms that know you personally I'm confident you'll have at least 20-30 hours of work a week. Do it now!
2. If you like working for churches go to every established one you can think of and offer them a retainer. Something like $500 dollars a month. Most church projects are turnkey so if you said your retainer is work up to 20 hours a month (medium churches will never use that much) and you got 5-10 churches(no that hard I promise!!! :-) ) you've raised your bottom line by $3-$5,000 dollars and you get the joy of doing kingdom work!
3. Save 10-20% of everything you make and use it for advertising. http://beaconads.com/ is amazing and they will put you in front of great leaders in the christian world. So you will by affect look like your aligned with them.
Forgive me if you've already done this, but I think its healthy to decide what you want your bottom line to be. Having a family can be expensive, right? So for instance if you know it takes $6,500 for you family to live a month then its helpful to continue to offer retainers/contracts with businesses until your bottom-line is met. If you don't you'll go from month to month with some kind of roll-coaster syndrome and I'd hate for you to go through that!
One last quick tip about the design firms. They see you as a "need" not the other way around. So when you offer them an hourly rate remember you have the leveraging power not them. Always offer 10%-15% percent more then you need so you can negotiate it and still appear like a compromising person that looks for a win-win. If it goes below what you need for your monthly bottom-line kindly walk away. They'll call you back if you did a good job!
If you want help planning goals let me know! I'd be more than happy to help! I'm excited for you.