How to Write Your Website

Part 1 of “Utilizing Your Website to Sell your Freelance Design Services”

Your website is quite obviously your online portfolio. But the copy and structure of your website can also help you to drum up new business. When a potential client types your URL into their browser, they are not just looking to take a gallery tour of your past work, they want to know what you can offer them.

In this article I reveal 5 tips to make your website work a little harder for you. Take this advice and you should find more hits to your site resulting in new graphic design assignments.

PART 1:
How to Write Your Website

1. Make it easy to find relevant samples of work
Think about who you are targeting and then think about how you can categorize your portfolio for maximum accessibility. The greater the variety of different clients you target, the more general your categories should be. For example, if you’re targeting different sectors, you may want to segment your portfolio into a menu like this:

- Marketing and advertising
- Products and packaging
- Publishing
- Engineering

If you are targeting just one specific sector (such as marketing departments), you may want a menu like this:

- Advertisements
- Brochures, leaflets and flyers
- Websites
- Point of Sale design

Set up multiple website pages and break up your portfolio into these categories. Then link each category heading to the relevant page of your portfolio, so browsers can find what they want by clicking through. Remember, people are online to save time, so respect it.

2. Be specific about additional services you offer
As you have seen, the type of services you offer should dictate the structure of your website and how you present your portfolio.

But you may not be able to sample everything in your repertoire. Maybe you offer additional services that cannot easily be demonstrated in a portfolio. Maybe there are areas of design you are competent in but don’t have anything to show (in which case it’s a good idea to work on a mock-brief for the sake of expanding your portfolio).

This kind of information is too important to leave out, so make sure you include it in your homepage copy. Remember that busy people won’t necessarily ‘read’ your website, they are more likely to scan it for useful information. So don’t embed your additional services in lines of prose, elevate them to the top and set them into a list, like this

Other services I offer …
- Design concept development
- Design consultation
- Archiving

List everything you are prepared to offer to new clients. If you have other contacts who specialize in different areas of the artwork business, it’s a good idea to list their services too, like this.

Ask me about …
- Illustration
- 3D design
- Animated websites and presentations
- Photography
- Copywriting

This not only helps you establish yourself as a core contact for your clients, it will also encourage your friends to list you as one of their contacts, helping you to find more work.

If your list of services is looking thin on the ground, you may want to consider adding a few more strings to your bow. Here’s just a few more services you can offer without needing extra training:

Offer a proofreading service.
Clients often fear seeing mistakes when it’s too late to rectify them, especially in printed publicity. For $250 you can enrol yourself in a decent one-day proofreading course, or just print out the common proof-reading symbols and tutorials from the web. Then you can offer a service that will come as a relief to many clients.

Set up a good FTP site.
Clients in international companies often need to share design files with colleagues all over the world, where sending disks takes valuable time. Even big Fortune 500 companies may have archaic IT departments, where files stored on internal FTP sites may only have a limited retention time before they are automatically deleted to save space. If you can provide an easy way of transferring and sharing files, clients will want to know about it.

Set up an archive for your clients.
Store everything you receive and do for your clients. Then they can count on you for images and past files at any time, instead of going to expensive repro agencies. This boosts your chances of getting hired over someone less organized.

Archive all the royalty free images you use.
Over time, you’ll have a bank of royalty free photos that you can use in your graphic design assignments. Save your clients money on images, and you’ll be their designer of choice.

Offer a photography service.
Your design assignments may call for specific photos you can take yourself without the help of a freelance photographer. In most cases, you don’t need expensive equipment, just need a decent digital camera and a few good lights. Read up on your photography, buy the bare minimum, and offer ‘photography’ as one of your additional services.

Offer a copywriting service.
Copywriting is a necessary skill to have in order to promote your freelance services, so it makes sense that you spend some time brushing up on the craft.

It’s also the perfect service to integrate into your design offer, especially if you design for the marketing sector. In the promotions arena, design and copywriting go hand-in-hand. Offering copywriting not only saves your clients time and money, it also promises better results because one person is handling both the “look” and the “voice” of the publicity.

Most designers are put off from copywriting, but unlike other forms of writing, it’s easy to learn. My free tutorial takes you through the first steps (and shows you how to write good self-promotion copy in the process).

If you’d like to learn more about copywriting, keep an eye on my forthcoming blog entries, and check out my e-book at www.copywriting-designers.com.

3. Give a brief summary of each item in your portfolio.
Obviously, browsers will be more interested in seeing your work than reading about it. But it’s often helpful for clients to know what the original brief was, who the design was targeted at, and what the results were. This gives them a sense of how well you can respond to a brief. So with each sample of work, add a caption that summarizes:

- Who it’s for – How does the look of the design respond to the taste/needs of the target audience? What age are the target audience? Male or female? Nationality? Social demographic? What do they want to know?

- What the design needed to achieve – What was the purpose of the design? To sell? To inform? To instruct? Were there any special requirements in the brief that informed how this should be achieved?

- The result – Did your design help your client to achieve his/her goals? If so, can you add any specific or statistical information as to how it did this? Can you add any good testimonials from your client?

4. Personalize your introduction copy.
Your website will need some introduction copy to head-up your homepage. Too many designers waste this opportunity by writing inappropriate copy about themselves. ‘Me, Me, Me’ copy isn’t very attention-grabbing—your potential clients want to know what you can do for them.

To do this, you need to build a picture of your potential clients. What kind of work are they in? What can you do to help them do their job better? What are they looking for in a designer? You need to know what will appeal to them in order to whet their appetites for your work, so do your research.

When you come to write your introduction copy, be sure to use the word ‘you’ as much as possible. This helps to establish a friendly tone of voice that speaks to the individual not the audience.

5. Think about your offer.
As mentioned above, prospective clients want to know what you can do for them. To address this, you need to know what their needs are, then say how your service responds to those needs.

Start by drawing up a features/benefits table for yourself (exemplified below), then use this information to inform your homepage copy.

Example of ‘features’ and ‘benefits’:

Feature
I specialize in print, web, 3D, and Flash design.
Benefit
I work across media, so you get one consistent look for your whole campaign, with everything in on time.

Feature
I use state of the art computing equipment.
Benefit
I have the best equipment, so you can be sure your project will run smoothly right up to finished piece.

Feature
I have international customers.
Benefit
My design has global appeal, so you get more effective promotions in your overseas markets.

Feature
I include proof-reading as part of my service.
Benefit
My free proof reading service saves you time and money, and gives you the confidence that your finished publicity will be free from costly mistakes.

For more help on identifying your features and benefits, take my free tutorial.

The above article is adapted from my new book The Freelance Designer’s Self-Marketing Handbook, available for download at www.marketing-designers.com.

Shaun Crowley has worked as a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant, and currently works as a communications manager for a major UK publishing company. He is the author of The Freelance Designer’s Self-Marketing Handbook and 100 Copywriting Tips for Designers and Other Freelance Artists.

Copyright (c) 2007 Shaun Crowley Publications

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How To Start a Freelance Graphic Design Business

Looking for graphic design freelancing job opportunities? Work-from-home career opportunities in the web design field?  Don’t waste time searching for freelance graphic design job postings. You can find more work if you present yourself as a business and contact companies direct. 

In the world of freelance, you don’t need to be the greatest artist who ever lived. You just need to know how to reach new clients. In the following article I’ll show you how to get highly-paid business by freelancing in the marketing communications sector.

So if you are currently working or studying as a designer and you want to go your own way, simply follow the tips below. You’ll find a step-by-step plan of action from targeting clients, to self-marketing, to getting ahead of the freelance competition.

Start with your portfolio
Starting a freelance artwork business is a bit like opening a shop. Your shop window is the work you present to clients in pitching meetings. So your first task is dress your shop window—by creating an impressive portfolio.

Gather together all your work. Include anything and everything you have done for past clients or at college. Then write captions that summarize the brief that each piece of work responds to. Add any good feedback you received.

Buy a sturdy stand-up presentation folder and add your work to it. Devote one sleeve to one project. Add examples of your work and reinforce with captions so your prospective clients have something to read—and you have prompts to help you explain your work whilst pitching.

If you don’t have enough work to show in a portfolio (i.e. under ten projects), you may want to work on some simulated briefs—that is, make up a brief and produce a visual that responds to it. Prospective clients won’t care if the briefs are real or not, they just want to see how good your work is.

Build yourself a website
Unless you are a web-designer, creating your own website is not essential, although it does give you some advantages. A website will help you to communicate your portfolio via email without sending attachments (promotions controllers will be suspicious of emails with attachments from unknown addresses—a link to a website is preferable).

If you have no experience of designing websites, don’t be put off, you can buy inexpensive templates online (www.templateshome.com is a good place to start, where you can buy smart website templates for around $50), and buying a dot.com address and uploading it onto a website browser should cost no more than $50.

Summarize your services and your ‘unique offer’ on your home page. Include all your contact details on a separate page, and the best of your portfolio on another page. Now you’re ready to roll.

How to frugally market your business

Once you have arranged your portfolio, you need to design some publicity for yourself. There are two essential items you need, luckily they are not expensive to produce. They are business cards and mailer postcards.

Get the most out of your business cards
Business cards are your most important publicity items. They tell people how to contact you (don’t rely on email signatures—clients will wipe off your emails without hesitation and will not be able to contact you when a job comes up).

Executives normally keep vendor business cards in a case or card-box. Make sure you’re in it. And make sure your card has ALL your details: mailing address, telephone, cell phone number, email, and (if applicable) website address.

Your business card should be smart, clean, and easy-to-read. Don’t be too flamboyant. I know a designer who had his details printed from left-to-right on one side, and his details printed backwards from right-to-left on the other side. Whilst filing it away, his biggest potential client clipped it onto a backer card inside out. When she called upon it later she couldn’t make sense of it. Consequently she trashed the card and called another designer.

Print plenty of cards. An extra thousand won’t break the bank. Give several cards to new prospective clients at meetings (they may give them to their colleagues), and if you have existing clients or contacts, make sure they are well stocked with your cards so they can recommend you. Add a few cards in with your invoices. Leave a few cards in company reception areas, at sports clubs, and anywhere where your prospective clients are likely to congregate. Get them in people’s hands.

Market yourself with mailer-postcards
You may want to print some mailer postcards at the same time you print your business cards. Mailer postcards are a great way to show off your creative talents and get noticed. In an age when executives are familiar with receiving emails from scouting freelancers, postcards received through snail-mail are a novel and memorable way to sell your freelance services.

Showcase your best visual/visuals on side one, then write some marketing copy to sell your services on side two (and remember to include your full contact details). Your copy should focus on the benefits your clients will get from using you. For guidance on writing a persuasive mailer postcard take this free tutorial.

Think about who you are targeting
While you are waiting for your cards to print, you need to research the kind of companies to target for freelance work. Aim high; large corporations with multiple departments make better leads than small or medium-sized businesses. The work you get from a big company is likely to be more lucrative and on-going. You may also get internal recommendations across departments. One company can be a client for life and effectively pay off your mortgage.

Do a Google search for all the big companies who have offices within a reasonable driving distance, and examine each website for contacts. Build yourself a database of contacts in a spreadsheet including the names, titles, email addresses, mail addresses, and telephone numbers of all key sales and marketing contacts within your target companies.

Follow a rigid marketing strategy
Start by sending out your postcards to all the addresses on your database. A week after drop-date, send each of your contacts a personalized email asking if they use freelancers and requesting a meeting to discuss your offer. Include a link to your website so contacts can view your portfolio. If you don’t have a website, ask your contact to reply for samples of your work, then send a maximum of three pdfs or jpegs that total under 2MB (anything over this will be deleted when inboxes get crammed).

There are three things to consider when you are sending emails to prospective clients on your database. First, always send personalized emails to one contact at a time. Never send a round-robin. Second, keep your first email short and polite, asking for permission to send over some samples. Never attach visuals to your introductory email, your email will be deleted as spam. Third, set up an automatic email signature, so your prospective clients can quickly access your contact details. Although most people use business cards to find vendor addresses, some people use email to look up contacts.

Follow up your email with a phone call the next day to get the contacts’ feedback to your samples. Ask if the department uses freelancers and what creative requirements the department has. If your contact regularly uses freelancers, request a meeting to discuss your full portfolio. If your contact doesn’t use freelancers, ask for another contact within the organization who does. Use your database to keep track of all the people you have contacted and when you contacted them, so you know which people to follow up on and when.

Contact plenty of people, and the law of averages states you’ll get plenty of meetings booked.

Present yourself as client-focused whilst pitching
The key to a successful pitching meeting is to be well-prepared and client-focused. Before you travel to the company office, examine the company’s website so you know what kind of brief your contact would give you if you get lucky. Tailor your portfolio for the company by ordering your most relevant work first (that’s why you should use retractable sleeves in your portfolio, allocating one project to one sleeve).

At the meeting, make sure your pitch is relevant. Ask to see the company’s existing publicity, then talk about your most similar graphic design assignments.

Give your prospective client enough information to help them see what you can do for them. With each item of work you present, summarize the original brief, say how you creatively interpreted the brief, and give a sense of how effective the project was. Don’t go into a full project analysis unless asked, and don’t assume your prospective client will want to know the intricacies of your portfolio.

At the end of your meeting, ask if you can meet colleagues in the same department, ask for contacts in other departments, and hand out plenty of business cards. When you get home, send a thank-you email to your contact, reminding them to keep you in mind, and update your activities in your database so you know when to contact them next.

Be persistent
It’s important to remain visible. Promotions controllers are more likely to outsource work to people they meet in person. Pretend that you will be in the area one day and ask to ‘pop in’ for a brief chat—you may have more luck arranging informal ad-hoc meetings than formal put-it-in-your-diary meetings. When you visit a company, remember to take your portfolio and plenty of business cards. You never know who you might meet.

You’ll find that prospective clients often say things like “I have no projects at the moment, but I’ll keep you in mind”. Don’t get frustrated, and certainly don’t beg for work on the phone. Just make a note in your database to keep track of responses, then send reminder emails to contacts every month, just so they really do keep you in mind. Give them a phone call every couple of months; sooner or later they will give you work.

Freelance graphic design pricing

Typical publicity designers earn between $40 and $75 per hour (£25-£40). If you’re good you should think about charging $50 per hour, then look to increase by $5 each year depending on your situation.

Clients will often ask you to quote on a project. Estimate the total number of hours you’ll spend working on the first proof, add an extra hour-per-page for artwork corrections, then add another two hours for likely time-additions such as downloading large files for print. Remember to charge for any time you spend working on the project, including downloading and disk burning time. (Unlike freelance copywriters, designers don’t usually charge for meeting time.)

If you have fixed a price and the client changes the original brief spec half-way through the graphic design assignment, tell your client that you will bill an additional hourly rate for any extra time you spend.

Shaun Crowley has worked as a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant, and currently works as a communications manager for a major UK publishing company. His new book 100 Copywriting Tips for Designers and Other Freelance Artists is available for download at www.copywriting-designers.com

Copywright (c) 2006 Shaun Crowley Publications

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