A book I found very helpful when freelanced for awhile in the wake of 9/11 - Cameron S. Foote's "The Business Side Of Creativity." It's available at a discount at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. It's got a lot of helpful no nonsense advice, and some points I found critical are:
Put together a business plan, including a roadmap with benchmarks you need to accomplish, as well as figuring what you need to charge rather than what the rate for particular jobs might be. Something I found out the hard way - don't waste time on badly paying jobs; a company that isn't going to pay what you're worth isn't worth having, and a company that nickels and dimes you going in has a good chance of looking for every opportunity to chisel something off the bill. Get a good % upfront for each fee based project (I shot for 50%, but for highly paying jobs with reputable clients that pay on time, I'd accept 33%. Build in a kill fee to your rates, as well as charges for overtime, more iterations, etc. Don't transfer rights or use of your work until you've got the final payment in hand. Sketch out marketing plans as part of your business plan, and a lot depends on your specialty, the type of companies you'll be pitching, who you know and/or who you might team up with, and how you best sell yourself. Don't do any spec work - even as part of a proposal. Know when to walk away when a client is difficult, is demanding too much of your time for too little money if it's a fee rather than an hourly, or isn't a good payer. Most important - have a good lawyer, and don't ever use boilerplate contracts - they need to stand up to state and local laws to hold up in court. And be prepared to go to court or yank work for bad payers. Ask the list when you need business advice, there are lot of use here who are, or have, freelanced. HTH, Marilyn On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 2:26 PM, erpdesigner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'm at the point where I am looking for a job, but also doing a lot of > contract/freelance work. In regards to the job front I'm not finding what I > want or I find something and the position gets put on hold. > > I'm trying to figure out how to turn my freelance work into a sustainable > business, something that can provide me with a steady stream of revenue and > income. When I was younger, I tried freelancing but didn't turn it into a > sustainable business. I was not charging enough for services nor was I at a > point where I really understood how to run a business (nor did I really want > to). > > I think the biggest issues for me are 1) marketing myself 2) business > development and 3) contract rates. > > Can anybody share their experience of how they went from freelancer and > built themselves a business? I'd be interested to hear people's stories. > What are the pain points, how did you solve them? > > -Wendy > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
