Freelancing for Beginners

1. Trailer: Hey, my name is Jeremy and I'm a designer and illustrator from Sydney, Australia. I've been freelancing for the past four years now and I want to share with you some tips and tricks that are going to help you. In this class, we'll be talking about pricing based on value, I will talking about attracting clients, promoting and marketing yourself. How to gain passive income streams. I'll be also showing you some tools that I use to help me be more effective and make a workflow a lot easier, and I'll also be showing you some other extra tips and bonus tips and templates that I use when I'm dealing with clients and working on new projects. In this class we'll be doing a project and in that class project we're going to be doing an identity system on a fake brand and this is going to help us build a portfolio pace so that you can put in your website or your Instagram and it's going to really help be used as a case study to start to attract clients. Let's get stuck into it. Click enroll today and let's start learning. 2. Pros & Cons of Freelancing: So what is freelancing? If we look back to the Middle Ages, they used to hire out mercenaries and soldiers to do some work. They would pay them just to do the job and they call them freelancers. So you can see where we've come. We've come a long way and with the Internet and technology, it's so much easier now to work from anywhere in the world. It's awesome and a lot of people are doing it now, and I think it's a lot more rewarding and a lot more fun. I recently read a study saying that by 2027, the US workforce, 50 percent will be working as freelancers. That's pretty crazy if you think about it, that's half of it. So you can see it's very popular now and I reckon you should do it too. No matter if you're a beginner or intermediate, you're going to learn so many things. There's so many benefits and it's a lot more rewarding and you can learn how to run a business as well. So I recommend, trying it out, tests the waters. Even if you're doing it part-time or full-time, It doesn't matter. Just like give it a go. So the basics of freelancing is, there's no a middle man. You're going to work directly with a client. Unless you're working with an agency. Then you work with the art director and to work through that project. But majority of the time you can work directly with the client and you don't have to be a logo designer or illustrator. You can do freelance writing, freelance photography. Like there's so many different dynamics to it. It's in all industries that people are freelancing. So you can give it a go and try it that's really awesome. I started doing freelancing in 2014, when I was doing my Bachelor of Design and I started doing small jobs like 20 bucks here and there. I even had free work for friends, just a practicing get my skills up. Eventually I started full-time freelancing halfway through 2016 and I finished my degree and I quit my part-time job and I did that for about a year and a half working full-time freelance. I made some money I learnt lessons and I want to share with you tips and tricks that I've learned along the way. I'm still freelancing today, part-time at the moment. But I've learned so many things of the past four years that can really help you and give you a kick start to make sure you're going to freelance and be successful. So I want to share with you some pros and cons of freelancing and that's the benefits that I've learnt and experienced in my personal business. So pros is that it's flexible. You can work literally anywhere in the world. I know some people who traveled in vans and have a little MacBook Pro and they do the work from Hawaii or wherever they are on holiday. But that's certain people you know but you can work anywhere and whatever time you want. If you want to work in the day, if you want to work in the night, it's up to you. Maybe you want to hit the gym at lunch, that's what I do, it's so much fun and more freedom to work in this flexibility. So it's really good. Number two is selective projects. If you're looking in-house or with an agency, you might not get that freedom to choose what projects you work on because you have to work with certain big clients. But if it's just by yourself, you get to choose what project you want to work on. If you don't like a certain industry or the person seems off to work with, then you don't have to, you can say no, you don't have to say yes to them. So that's one benefit of freelancing. Number three is you make more income over time obviously as you get more experience and as you get better, you can charge more and when you find your niche, and you specialize in something, then you can charge more. But when you start, you might just be learning and choosing what path to take. That's okay, but you can still make some side income for now if you're going to do part-time. Which is still really good. Number four is that, it's more fulfilling. So it's a high risk, high reward. You don't have a set salary every year. It's based on client work and doing products and other things. But at the moment, you start of doing client work, which is okay. But it's a lot more fulfilling when you finish that project and the client's happy. It's such a good feeling and because you're the one that assume all work and putting in the effort, the strategy and thinking, then you feel like you've done a lot more, so is a lot more fulfilling in your eyes. Number five is that you have more control. So because you're offering the service and it's your business, you have more control over it. You choose the work you do, you choose the niche, you choose who you work with. You do your website design, your online presence, you do all the social, that's all you. So you have a lot more control, even over the finances and everything. So it can be a lot more responsibilities which I'm going to go into now, which is the cons. With a long responsibility, sometimes it can be overwhelming, especially if you're young or just starting out. The responsibilities can be a lot. So you have to take care of the marketing, You have to do client relationships. You got to do the creative work. You got to do accounting. You got to do everything literally, and it's all you. The pressure is on you. So you've got to step up and it doesn't matter if you're young. I started when I was young. But you're going to take the responsibilities and be willing to go the extra mile and put in the effort and got to learn how to do these things properly. Use plugins, use tools, online resources. There's so many that's going to help you make to show your workflow is effective. Number two is inconsistent work. So every month you not going to get the same amount of clients. It can be up and down a little bit. It's like you got to establish products and passive income and things like that, which I'll talk about in another video, but what we're going to do is you got to make sure that you're always attracting clients and that can be a little hard for some people, especially if you're not proactive or if you don't have good portfolio, then it can be hard to get these clients. So you may not always have the same clients every month, unless you have like a retainer. Which means you have a contract with one company and they are always giving you work every month consistently. That's really good to have. But initially it can be a little bit harder. Number three is increased expenses. So you've got to cover the costs of your inner printing, your Adobe subscription, your rent, food all those other things, you got to pay for that. The good thing is if you're a student or of you are a sole trader and you have a business number, you can claim it and you'll get a cheap-up and you get money back, which is cool. But upfront, you may have to invest in these things in your storage space in the computer. So you got to take that into account when you're jumping into freelance. Number four is that you have to find clients. I believe in attracting clients and there's certain ways to do that, which is what I'll talk about. But, you have to constantly be proactive, promoting and marketing yourself, but also reaching out to people in professional manner and also attracting clients through doing good work, good portfolio, doing case studies to attract those clients. So you're going to make sure you're always on the go and always building relationships, networking and creating friendships with people. Number five is, you can be a bit lonely. If you're working by yourself, then obviously you're not going to be collaborating. The good thing about being in the agency is that you have your creative director right next to you and you can always ask them questions. For me, when I used to work in agency, I found that helpful. I could just literally ask them any question and I can learn or if I was stuck with something they could help me out. So that's one thing. So if you are doing freelancing, you might just have to rely on online communities. There's Slack communities. There's Facebook groups that you can go on that can really help you, benefit you, So that's just five cons, five pros, and that's the benefits. 3. Attracting Clients: What's the key to attracting clients in gaining new work? Number 1 is establish credibility. Because you're just starting out, you may not have a good portfolio, you may not have good influence and an online presence. So you're going to work for that, and the way you do that is through building credibility. Number 1 is you can do case studies, you can teach, you can share your process, pro-bono projects, you can also do side projects as well. These things are going to help me establish credibility. Not only that, but it can produce content via writing or doing a v-log or a video. All these will help you attract clients because it's not about just finding clients, go to attract them. You attract them by being an influencer, by having that space and that dynamic voice in the Internet and online and, and even in your local environment. It's very important. With case studies you can do fake projects if you actually don't have real clients yet. So you can go and brave box and they give you fake briefs. You can do a fake project. What you should do is go online, post pictures of how you came up with the idea and share that process. You know clients love seeing the process, how you thought of the idea, how you came from the strategy, from the sketch, the research to the formulas idea and how it would actually impact and be useful. They love seeing that. Even if it's unfinished work just post it, don't focus on perfection, focus on action, focused on doing and posting that because it's going to benefit you. Once you're confident you can start teaching, you can do tutorials, you can share videos, you can help others around you and don't be afraid, you know, everyone has something to offer, everyone has something to give. Everyone has a technique they learned or a tip they've learnt from someone else. So you can teach and help others as well. You can also do side projects. Like, for example, maybe you like a certain TV show or something. Maybe you can do an icon set based on that. Maybe there's a movie out and you can do a fake poster. Do something that's going to relate to your design work that you're doing about. Also that's going to get engagement and it's going to relate with other people. It's also going to get more attraction, which is really good. So focus on side projects and that's something that's going to build you up and something that you can actually post on your portfolio as well and that's going to be very important. You can also do pro-bono work. If you don't know any non-profits that you can work with, maybe just do one for a local business or friends. That's going to help you develop your communication skills by talking to them via client relationships. It's also going to help benefit your design work and help you grow your portfolio. That's one way you can do it. So that's Number 1. Number 2 is the three important pillars, and they are; client work, teaching and products. You want to focus on client work first and build your portfolio and make sure it's on point. Then secondly, you can start teaching. Once you start sharing your process and teaching others and helping others, then you can get into products. Products will help you make more money, will help you establish your authority in the industry and show that you have experienced and you're actually producing something that others can use and others can buy a few, even if it's not paid, it can be a freebie. That's okay. It's going to show you that you know what you're doing and you're a professional and people like that. Number 3 is, do good work. You have to make sure your work is on point, that it's a 100 percent the best work that you can do. It doesn't have to be perfect, but make sure it's the best that you can do that you're putting in the hours, you're putting in the effort, you're putting in the hard work, makes sure that it's really good, make sure you use high-quality mock-ups, makes sure that the vectors are precise and the colors are good. Make sure that it looks really good, especially the images that you save and put online. Make sure that it's effective and it's clear and its understanding and concise and that it's going to look really good and make it look like a professional. Number 4 is that you can take the direct approach. Everyone's a bit different. But the number one thing is that everything is about friendships and relationships with people. Because if you think about it, it's all about referrals. That's the main way you're going to get clients, is through referrals, through people, through your friends, through your family, through local businesses. There's also some creative ways you can approach this as well. Instead of just going cold calling them or sending an email, what you can do is actually go into Google Maps, search some businesses around in your local area, it could be a mechanic, a pizza shop across, whatever. Look at their branding or their identity. This is example if you're a logo designer or identity designer, and what you're going to do is re-branded for them. Treat it like a root project, right? Once you've done that, go into the store or send a message or something, and go build rapport with that person and show them what you've done and pitch that design to them. You can say like, "This will really benefit you." Talk about how it's going to help them. You can say, "I can do a full identity for you." This is just half an identity or whatever. I just got like a piece of it or a glimpse of it. Then you can say, you know, "We can work together and build this out and it's actually going to benefit your business. Let's start a conversation." That's one way you can do it and that's a really direct approach. It may not be the purge people want, but it's going to be simple and easier. Or you can just go ask your friends, go online, ask them for work, show them what you can do. But I remember hearing this cool story that my friend is a web designer and you are a designer. What he did, he saw this new startup and its website wasn't looking too good. It didn't have nice illustrations and the design layout was a bit worked. So what he did is he redesigned it and did the homepage and everything and then what happened, he showed it to them. Had a meeting with them and then the in the event, they ended up hiring him and now he's working for that company. These are simple things you can do to attract clients, not just finding clients but attracting them to your services and your business and it's going to help you get new work and make some money. 4. Value Based Pricing: There are two main ways that you can price your work; it's either hourly or value-based pricing. There is other methods, but these are the two main ones, that I've used. The best way is using value-based pricing. You don't want to do hourly, because the problem with hourly is that, you're going to get a set fee per hour, and the thing is, the project might not go as long as you expect, and the hours might be shorter, so you're getting less work. Not only that, but over time, you might get bored, or the project might drag on, or what happens is, the client might want to add more deliverables or add new scope of work to it, and you're still getting that same pay. The better thing to do is to use value-based pricing. Once you've attracted the clients, then you have a questionnaire, and you bring the client on board to your process, and then, you have a discovery phase, where you discover the value, you ask the right questions, and you get to know their business. From there, you go to quoting the project, and then, you have the delivering of the project in a package, and you're giving it to the client. That's the main process of value-based pricing. Once you attract your clients, through teaching, for giving value, for doing your best work, and doing case studies, once you've done that, then, what happens? You'll get a client to your website, so make sure you have a website or an Instagram. You might get a direct message, but most people will go through a form. You want to use a form. For my website, I use WordPress, and I use the Divi theme, it comes with the form. Another cool thing is called Typeform. It is free, but you can upgrade, and it gives you a nice layout, where they can just quickly type the answers, and it's got a nice page design, where they can also focus on answering those questions, and then, you'll get an e-mail from that. Once you have the form, what it does is, you want to ask the right questions on that form, because you want to filter out bad clients. What happens, you don't want to get people who don't really care, who are not really serious, they might just be testing the waters or something, you want to make sure that you're getting clients that are willing to pay, and are wanting you, so as they want to work with you, you don't just want people that are just mocking around. The thing is, you got to ask good questions and have a decent form, have between like 5-10 questions, and make sure that it's going to help you understand their business, and understand their context, and why they're coming to you. You want to ask simple questions like, what does your business do? Do you have a website? Who is your target market? Are you currently in the market right now? Where will the design be applied to? Is it going to be digital or is it going to be print? Why did you come to me, specifically? Asking those first, as basic questions, and to get that core information out, that's going to help you start the conversation, and once you get into the e-mail or a phone call, then you start expanding and asking higher-value questions. That's what happens when you come to the discovery phase. You want to uncover the value. The thing is, the client uncovers the value, not you. By asking high-value questions, it's going to help the client see from a different perspective, see the value that they're receiving, and it's going to help you understand their business, so you can design a logo or an illustration or something to solve their problem. Because the clients come to you for a problem. You're not just delivering an asset or brand graphics or a logo. It's more than that. You are solving a problem. You're giving them a story. You start asking questions that are high-value, so you'll say things like, so what if you got 100 clients, within this next month? What would that mean for your business? If you were able to earn $100 extra, per week, from the design, how'd that mean? But where do you see yourself in the next five years? How will these design benefit your business? Start asking questions along that nature, so to help them start bringing out the gold out them and start seeing the value. From that, you want to quote, so when you're quoting the project, what I do, is you do it in tiers. You want to have it in a package. You don't just want to have, oh, this is it, and put it on a white PDF, that's like bland. You want to make sure it's in packages. You can have, for example, bronze, silver, and gold. What that could mean is that, say, the first package is a logo and a business card, the second package is social media branding and some other print assets, and then, maybe, the third package is a full branding and maybe, a simple website. You're going to start thinking in packages, so that, you're giving an option to the client on, how fast they want to grow? Where are they seated on that frame? That's what I do, and it gives them an opportunity to see what you can do, what your capabilities are. But you never want to go over three options. Just have three tiers max, but have at least, one or two, to get them started. You want to outline the scope of work, the deliverables that you're offering, and then, you just want to have a set price, based on the value. The price should be a fraction of the value they are receiving. For example, if Mike came to me and said, they want a t-shirt design. Think about it. If I say, I'll do 50 bucks for a design, but then, they use that design and print a million t-shirts, and sell that for a $, and I'm only charging 50 bucks, they making $1 million. That may not be over a short period of time, but it could be over a year, for example. They're going to make a million, I'm making 50 bucks, so you're going to think about the value of that design. What's the fraction of that in the overall outcome that they're going to receive? You're going to price based on that. You got to use value-based pricing, it's a lot more better. Some other tips that are really good, especially, if a client tries to negotiate you, never negotiate on the price, always just negotiate on the deliverables. If they can't afford the higher package or whatever, you want to decrease the deliverables and decrease the price, to match those deliverables that you brought it down to. Never scheme on price, because that's going to devalue your work, and it's going to make design not look that good, either, for other people. Another cool tip is that, you want to underpromise and overdeliver. For example, if I say, oh, I'll get that logo in a week, but I give it to them in two days, they're going to be like, oh, wow, I did a good job. You're putting that seed in their mind, that you're going to go over and above. It helps them to see, he's putting in more effort, so you want to make sure that is on point. Another thing is that, when they're negotiating, always price a little higher, in case, they go for the lower tiers or a lower price, and what happens is, because you've put a little bit of buffer, then, when you drop it down, you're not really losing that much money, and what happens is, the client's going to feel like they've got a discount and they got a benefit, so it's a win-win situation. You feel good, the client is happy, and that's what you want. Those are just a few tips, but there's so much more to value-based pricing. The best thing to do is practice and start working on it with clients 5. Promoting & Marketing Yourself: Marketing and promoting your work is just as important as attracting new clients. The first thing you want to do is niche down. You've heard the saying, "You'd be a jack of all trades, but a master of none." I believe in being a master of something. Being really good and specializing because if you specialize, you can charge more and you'll be in-demand. Because if you do a certain technical style, not many people do it like that. People going to know that you're the best at that and they're going to hire you for that. Once you do that, they'll know that you're really good at that thing and they're going to most likely hire you. You're going to be seen as professional, if you can just do really good at your craft and you can focus. It's easier then focusing on one thing than doing so many different things. When I started, I used to do like a bit of branding, a bit of logos, a bit of photography, photo manipulation, brochure design and fliers and things like that, and print design. But I didn't want to do all of that. Yes, you can do it internally in your own business and for the client work, but you want to just show that one thing. That leads me onto the second point. You want to curate. Curation is pretty much posting the work you want to do. It's posting a certain style. If you're a logo designer, just post logos. Don't post a picture of the pizza you ate last night or your dog or your cat. You can if you want, but I don't recommend it. Just post everything that's related with that topic or genre that you're focusing on. For instance, I do logo design and illustration. All I do is post logo designing illustration. People, when they see your feed, they know, "Okay, he's that guy, he is that logo guy. That's what he does." They can see it right away. You don't want to make them think for 20 seconds, 30 seconds, what does he do?" You want to make it as easy as possible, straight away, when they see it they're going to know, that's what he does." You want to gain people's attention. You only got like five seconds because people's attention span is decreasing because of social media and things. You got to be really quick and you want to grab the attention as soon as possible when they see your profile on Instagram or LinkedIn or wherever it is. Number three is doing blog posts and leveraging blogs. A way to do this. What I did is I did two on blog posts. I did one on mallow coat and I did one on import design. One of them actually got over 300 shares and that got a lot of traffic to my website and my Instagram page. Which boosted my followers and increased the chances of me getting clients. Write for blogs, even if it's for free. Which is what I did, that's totally good. You want to do that because then it will get more attraction and people can see it. Not only does it help you improve your writing skills, but it's going to help you build those relationships with those blogs and there's foundation so you can do more writing in the future. Another thing you can do is on Instagram, you want to look for blogs that are related to your niche. For example, a logo design. There is some blogs, such as like Logo Inspirations, Logo New, Logo Place, things like that. You want to make sure you use the hashtag and the tags. Because if you do really good work and you post it and tag them, they can feature you. You want to make sure you get featured. Get featured online, on blogs, wherever you can, because the thing is they have so many people. They have a big audience, like thousands and thousands of people that can see your work. That's a quicker way to build your following, build your audience and build your influence and the best way to promote yourself. Number four is giveaway freebies. Some examples of this. You can give away e-books. You can give away a checklist or like a toolkit. You can give away free products, an icon pack, a further pack. Whatever it is, just give away free stuff. You got to give content. You're going to give value. Don't think I'm losing money or what if they didn't like it or whatever." No, just give it away for free, do something good. Put your links in there, and when you do it, you can post it to sites. For example, I did a logo pack for on credit market as one of my products. I went to freebiesbug.com. Look them up and they post freebies, design products and stuff like that. I sent my sample through and what happened, I got over 5000 downloads and that got traffic to my site. Not only that, you want to put your links in the product that you give. Don't just do a text document, make a PDF. Make it look nice and put your links to your website or Instagram or to the full pack of the product. That's going to send people there and you're going to get a lot more views and people are going to see what you're doing. That's just some tips on giving freebies. Number five is you want to make sure you're branding is consistent. Have you're right display picture on all the platforms. Make sure the blending, the color scheme, the topography, the logos are all the same, and that it looks good and professional. What people see on different platforms are like, I know that it's you. They can tell, "Okay, That's him." They can clearly tell your branding. For instance, I'm on YouTube, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Instagram and Twitter. Those are my main platforms that are focus on and it's worked really well for me. It just depends on what works for you. You don't have to go on every platform just focus on a few and be the best at that. Dominate that platform and do the best that you can. 6. 5 ways to make Passive Income: It's very important as a freelancer to diversify your income and have passive income streams, so you have multiple cash flow coming in. You can't always just rely on client work because client work can be inconsistent. Number 1 thing to do is sell products. If you are a logo designer, sell logo templates, sell badge templates. It can be like a theme pack, maybe an adventure pack or something like that. If you're an icon designer you can do an icon set. It's up to you, like you can control that. You can determine what you're going to put out but make sure it's things that are time saving. Things that are going to help people. Always ask questions to other designers what they face, like their frustrations, their pains. If there's something that's annoying them and illustrate how can you help them? How can you fix that by creating a product that's going to make their workflow a lot more easier? Just think of ways how you can sell products. There's four main sites that are really good. There's Creative Market, Society6, Redbubble, and Etsy. Those are the main sites to sell things. Society6 and Redbubble are a bit different, you post a design and the design goes on like a pillow, a phone case, a bag or whatever, and you just focus on the design and you get a percentage based on what they buy and stuff. It's really interesting and it's really good way to make some extra money. Number 2 is stock graphics. You've got sites like Freepik, Flaticon and Shutterstock where you can actually just design vector graphics, and then you can make money of that. You get a percentage back, but it's pretty dynamic. You really have control over that and you can make some extra money. Think about some sites that you can go on that's so stock graphics. Try and look in the footer or the header for links that say where to submit or sign up as an affiliate, and that's what really going to help you make money from that. Number 3 is you want to write tutorials. Some blogs pay for tutorials. Think about ways Hugin tutorial on a specific illustration or design or something, and you can get like a 100 bucks from that. It's pretty decent if you're doing one a week or a month or whatever, it's another income. Number 4 is you want to teach courses. Three best sides is Udemy, Skillshare and Teachable. Teachable is a good plugin to implement on your own site. But if you want to just do it on someone else's platform, go for Skillshare or Udemy. You can post courses on there, you can control the price, you can control the content, and the outline of the course. It's really, really good. Even if you're just a beginner, just teach something basic. If not, you can do it down the track when you have a lot more experience and yeah, by crazy video again you can literally just get like a phone tripod and just have some decent lighting. Use your iPhone and have some good audio, you can get one, there's zero redbytes, 40 bucks. That's really, really good. You could just teach and sell a course and people will be interested and you're going to learn from it and you can make some money. Number 5 is coaching. This applies to people who are like intermediates or professionals that have been in the industry awhile, experience and you can actually train others. You've learned a lot by experience. You can start teaching people under you by doing one-on-one sessions. You can do coaching and you can share crytips, you can share techniques, you can share your process, things like that. That's really going to benefit within the context of that conversation that you're having with that person. That one-on-one session, that's really going to be really good. Number 6 is affiliate marketing. You can sign up with affiliate programs for example, Amazon. I'm pretty sure eBay does it and Book Depository, just to name a few. There's so many sites that do it. What happens is if there's a product that you really use, then for your own business and freelance work, you can put those links on your website and you can actually get 5 percent, 10 percent from that when people go to your site and buy. That's just another extra way to make some extra income. But yeah, it might be a bit technical for some people but that's okay. Just focus on the easier ways to make money first. Even though there's so many different ways, these are some ways I've used and it has really helped me. 7. Freelancer Tools : I'm going to show you some freelance tools that I use to help my workflow be more efficient and help me when I'm working on projects with clients. Number 1 is Briefbox. Because you may not have clients at the moment, it's good to build some case studies and build some fake projects on your portfolio. Briefbox gives you briefs. Some are free, but if you pay, you can get some pro briefs, but you can just try the free ones for now and just start to do those practice projects. Then if you do a really good job, you can even use that and put on your portfolio. You can see here some of the designs, some of the resources, and it's super useful and it's free so check it out and start building a portfolio up with that. If I'm not using colors and I'm finding it online, I usually go in Dribble in Pinterest and I also do some other exploring and build own pallets. But this is a cool tool to generate palettes and the cool thing is, it shows you the hex codes and it can save the image as a PNG or PDF and literally just drop it into Illustrator. That's why I like it super easy and quick. But I also use Adobe Color CC as well as you can see here. They've got a lot of pellets and I save it into my credit Clouds library and it is jumping to Illustrator or Photoshop and the colors are all there. If I'm looking for mockups or in a design templates, I usually go on credit market. I create some products as well in here myself and also it's a good way to make some passive income, but you can also find useful resources. If you're looking for like illustrations and you have a project that needs a certain hand-drawn effect, you can just come here and pay for it. It's going to save you time when working with your clients and utilizing those effects. If you want other mockups, free ones you can go and GraphicBurger. They got cool mockups. They got packaging mock-ups as well. You can see here this is pretty cool. You can download that and get a PSD. I also like another site called FreebiesBurger as well. See that's pretty cool. You've got FreebiesBurger as well. These have a lot of digital mockups as well, you can see a lot iPhones, a lot of laptop, top of stuff, UI, web stuff, even packaging and cool mockups. Those are free, so check them out. Unsplash is the best site for free stock photos. They're royalty free and high resolution. If you ever want to slap a logo and image and just show you how it's going to look. If you're doing a flyer or something like that, you can get photos from here. Take advantage of that. They're free and they useful. If I'm working with contracts and doing invoicing and things like that, I use Hello Bonsai. I've used this. Other people use FreshBooks, that's pretty good too, it just depends. I've used this before and I find it very useful, very easy to use. The UI is nice, the design is nice and simple. But if I'm not using the SNR, just usually have my own proposal or my own little contract. It doesn't have to be complicated. It can be really, really simple. That takes me to GoProspero. It's run by Ran-Sago. It's an awesome little tool. It literally creates a proposal for you that allows you to print off as a PDF. You can also send the link to your client and they can sign it really easily. It's super useful and it's pretty affordable as well. $8 a month. You can do a trial. I like this simple. The client can understand it and process it very quickly. Toggl is a good tool, if you want to track your time. Sometimes when you're young, Obviously you're learning and it can take you long to do some certain things so you want to try and see how long you're taking, maybe to do the research or design a logo and overtime you want to see how you can improve that and speed it up. Because the quicker you can do things, you know, the more money you're going to make because it will take you less time. I'd been using Milanote as well. You can see here I used to use Trello, but I'm using this in the moment. It's cool and simple. You can create a board and I can go into these boards and you can literally put images straight from Unsplash. I can upload templates as well. You've got template here. I can add to-do list and just type design, and you can add notes. It's so useful and you can type and create lists and lines, and things like, it's just really awesome. I like it. It's free, but you can also get more space. I can also export this as a PDF, so this tool is pretty cool and it's very useful. If you want to find font signal and pixel surplus. They've got Freebies, but they also sell bundles as well. Definitely check that out. Fontfabric as well for free funds. These are high-quality ones, you can also go and like the font and font square but, you want better quality ones, so these websites I like. If you want to purchase fonts, the best place to go is Design Cuts. As you can see, they produce these bundles and you can get all these really nice fonts and it's always different every time, it can be most script fonts or sans serif or serif fonts. It's really charging $29. They do new bundles every month. Definetely check them out, and if you have the money invest in some fonts. On email, because if you're going to get a lot of emails in clients and you're getting leads obviously go starting up. It might be a little bit here and there but over time you want to make sure you're managing a Gmail and the cool thing about the CRM tool is it manages all your leads coming through. It has blocks of color and it shows you, who's a new lead, who is a client that you've just closed the project and you've won or maybe the person didn't want to work with you. If I'm working with headlines, there's a cool tool called on CoSchedule Code Headline Analyzer. I can type in a headline how to design, for example, and analyze the headline. Obviously it's a definite tool, but it's actually helpful and I'll show you how to create nice headlines. You can see here 68 score. It shows you the percentage of the balance of words you're using and it also gives you tips and a analysis of it. It's good, it is going to improve how you write titles because you got to write things that are going to gain people's attention and not just something too simple. I use WordPress for my websites. Squarespace is really good as well, but I use this thing called Devi, and it's a premium theme. You got to pay for it, but it's super useful. It's got a visual buildup. There's no coding and it's just amazing, like it's flexible and it's just really powerful. It's really good for building websites for your clients or for yourself. But if I want to keep it simple, just go Squarespace or Wix. For printing, I use MOO print. They've got great quality paper and you can get a free sample pack, and it's amazing. They do business cards, your stickers, all the basic stuff, but it's super useful and high-quality and it's not that expensive. Definitely check it out. If I'm looking for inspiration or I need feedback or help. I go on Slack channels. I have a few Slack channels that I go in and I can just post my designs or if I need some advice or something, then I'll go on there. Definitely look on the web for that. I also use PaperSizes.io. If I'm not sure on sizing, then it gives you all the sizing here, which is typically you can click on it and you can see that. If you're doing print work or whatever, then you can, if you need a business card size, you can check it. It's really useful, really quick to use. 8. Design Templates: When working on projects and with freelance work, you always want to be efficient. It's key to have templates and not always create things from scratch. You want to develop a template. I'll be uploading these to the class projects so you can use these templates as you want. You can see you've got your key information. You've got the name. What it is, you got the day, your logo, your colors, your typography, all within here. Then you can see here, I put the goals in the moodboard and guiding the client you're working with them and guiding them through the process. Talking about the words that you discussed, the traits, the characteristics, the personality, and also identifying their target and guiding them through that. Obviously you can add some more slides here. This is a basic template that I use, but I always add to it. You can see here I've got the three different options. Obviously can put more details, and you can see here, I like to put the concept in the page there and use gray. Always use gray if it's like a secondary element. Its just for hierarchy and also it stays out of the way, so they can focus on the design and the mockups. I'll have the design layout here, all the different ones, and then I'll have mockups, and then I'll do the same for the two other options for the design. I have also a proposal template that I use. You can see here, similar design, similar layout. You can see offering the packages as we discussed. So flat-rate pricing, value-based pricing, and then it got some terms here. As you can see, very basic, very simple, doesn't have to be complicated. Then once again, you got information to do the quote, and once you do that, you can send that off. Just keeping it simple, using boxes, using clean strokes, and just having all your information. Making it neat, making it simple to understand and to look at. Then we have a style guide as well that I like to use as part of the package. You have the style guide with the logo, the color palette, using some topography as well. The logo usage, you know what to do, don't stretch it, don't distort it, don't add colors and strokes and effects and things like that. Then examples of usage. If there is photography or there is an elements, or patterns, or graphics, then you can add them here. You can show them how to use it or what not to do. Because usually the style guide goes to the next designer. It's not necessarily going to be used by the owner or the client. But it's good to have this. The brand will be consistent and the messaging will be consistent. These are just simple templates. You can elaborate, you can expand on them, but that is something that I use. I also have these go-to mockups that I love using, its branding showcase generator. I bought these ages ago on a bundle of site, I think they have them on credit market as well. You can see here that they are just super awesome pre-made templates, and I can just go ahead and add the branding for that site. Obviously, I don't always use the pre-made ones, but these are super helpful and save time. But there's also other parts where you can actually add your own. If I just go back, I can actually open up these here and use individual items that I want, they're really high quality to high quality pack. 9. Scheduling Calls: So I want to show you the software that I use to book my client in with the call. It's a really great program and it's not that expensive. But there's also a free version. It's called Calendly. You can see if you go to calendly.com, you can check it out how it works. It's very easy. You can share links. If I discard the pricing here, it's really easy to do. So you can test out the free version. I'm using just the normal premium version because that's pretty much all I need. So you can definitely check at calendly. The other one that I would suggest as well, if you don't like calendly, you can use Acuity scheduling. So you can see here, it's really clean Program and software, really easy to book consultations and book clients in. It all connects with your Google Calendar the same as calendly as well. You can also use integration so with these other tools here, connect to the PayPal and stuff like that. I think the pricing is a little bit more. You can see it's got a free version and then it starts going up from $15 a month. I feel like calendly is cheaper and it does the job really well. It connects to Google as well. So if I just go into my calendly back and you can see I've got event types. So you can create an event type by clicking "New event type". Right? You can see a one-on-one or group call. So if I create one, I can start to play around and call it like client consults 30 minutes or whatever. I can set the location description. I can set the event link as well and also the event color as well. Then once you click next, you can select the different times and things like that. You guys can check it out and test it. If I click on here, I can set my time, so I can maybe I want to change it to like 10:00 AM to 04:00 PM, my time. I can say apply to all Mondays and that's going to apply it to every single Monday on my calendar. Then you can change it for each day. You can just apply it to the one certain day. Maybe you have a holiday, maybe you are not available, so I can turn it off for that day. It's really, really cool to use. Then you can click next. Then you've got some other things as well. If you want to add questions to it, you can do that. Notifications confirmation page and you can collect payments. So if it's a consult call that people pay maybe a $100 or something, you can add a payment by a stripe or PayPal. Obviously you have to connect that. So I'm just going to go back to my homepage here, so you can see we just added that new event type there. I can actually delete it or add it to my website or I can change it up. If I do go to my website, you can see I've actually added my calendly right into my contact page. So instead of using a questionnaire, I use this, and they can literally click it and then I can select the time and book it, which is really easy to do. So the cool thing is I can click the little cog and click "Add to my website" and you can embed it. You can add it as a popup or even pop-up text. So that's how I do it and then I'll add the code that it gives me by copying it into my back end and it'll give me this box. The cool thing is it just converts it. Another cool thing as well as that, I can just copy the link. So if someone messaged me on an Instagram or LinkedIn, I can just copy paste that in. You can see here I've got some three different ones. So each is for a different purpose, one for coaching, one for a client meeting, one for just a quick call. I can see my scheduled events. So right now I've got to call this on 30th May. This really cool to check out. Another cool thing to do as well I recommend is you can download calendly onto your Google Chrome. So you can see here, you can download it. Then once I get to my Google Chrome, you can see on the right-hand side, I can click on it and it's going to pop up on my right-hand side. You can also edit the event types, you can add a new meeting, I can literally copy the link right here, so I don't actually have to log in to calendly. I can just be doing whatever I want. Click the link and it's going to copy and I can just paste it. I can also add a single-use link or add times to an e-mail there. So it's really easy to use and I feel like it's really. 10. Client Email Example: I want to show you a few examples of how I respond to clients. It's good to be professional and know what you're doing because you're the professional, people are going to pay you for your service, so you need to really make sure that you're speaking in the right tone. You can see here one of my friends referred me to a client, so he introduced me via an e-mail. You can see he sent my website and he said, "This is Jeremy." But first he rang me and said, "I have a client that you might be able to help." He sent me that and then I just responded really simply. You want to keep e-mails very concise. You don't have to blubber on. I have to say, "Nice to meet you, I'll be happy to jump on a call to help you with your project." That's really cool and then they respond, "I'm available for this time." Then from that what we can do is I can call them over the phone if it's a local client. If it's an oversees client, then I would probably have to book a Calendly. I'll go to my Calendly link and I would copy paste this, copy into an e-mail. Then you can see, "Sure, looking forward to your call," and that's pretty much it. It's really simple way of responding especially if you're being introduced by a client or a credit director. I just want to keep it clear and book a call so you can have a chat with them. Another example is from Lasse, this was from Curly Heaven which is Bagheri Hair. I did a project with them. You can see she's like, "Hey, I found you on YouTube. I was looking how to do a logo bla, bla, bla. I'm interesting in hiring you bla, bla, bla, looking to rebrand my company." Awesome I'm like, "Hey, how are you? Here is my website, you can check out my work. Can we organize a time to chat about your business? I'm based in Sydney." She's in US, so I just made that clear. I'm breaking it down, keeping it simple. Not going more than like five lines of text here and focusing on booking that call. Then you can see she was kind of busy, so I was like, "Hope you had a great week so far. Just wanted to follow up that you received the previous e-mail. Can we jump on a call? When would be a good fit for you? What day is best?" I'm constantly negotiating and working at a great time for us that we can jump on a call. That's an automated e-mail. Then she goes, "Sure, I'm available these times, Saturdays 7:00 PM or 8:00 AM this time, etc. Then I'm like, "Sweet" and then we ended up scheduling that call and kept it real easy. Then you can see here I sent through a Zoom link. I typically use Zoom for my calls as well. It's really, really, really key to make sure that you're professional, you're focusing on organizing that call as well just to make it really good. 11. Client Work Example: I want to quickly show you an example of a client that I worked with lancing. It's for a small business and she was looking to expand into elect products. She actually sells beauty stuff and styling creams for like Kelly hair, and wigs and stuff like that. I'm going to show you some of the processes on how I went about doing this. The first thing is first, I'm just going to go through the PDFs. But like the style scapes, presentation, logo, our visions, and the little style guide. Also, I'll just show you basically. Obviously my process is constantly adapting and growing, so it's not going to look the same as this. As I work with new clients, I'm always working on new templates and stuff. You can see that it is 2019. I'm just going through it. First step, I'd like to go through a brand strategy or brand discovery. The word strategy, pretty much a discovery is not strategy. Strategy is more about business and marketing. Just forget the word brand strategy, just think of it as brand discovery and this is what I did. Just going through like the timeline here, refining brand values. I'm just going through these quickly. I'm not going to spend too much time on it. But you can see refining the brand values and it is the top five. This helps us the internal part of the brand. Then some of the brand benefits and features. I like to discuss what are the top five features and top five benefits of the product. This is really especially if it's a product not really a service, but you can change it to a service. But typically that's what I do. Working on brand attributes as well, you really want to highlight each attribute in the columns and, then this helps you create your positioning statement, as you can see here. They come with the positioning statement and this is for like the internal brand. I like to do a brand matrix I just call like brand vibe. You put different elements on the end. Typically it's like historical, like vintage, retro and then all of a sudden is like modern. Then playful and opposite of playful is like serious. Typically , I've got some pictures of other brands and put them there and selected where we want it to be. Then you'll do user profiles or user a personas. It's your ideal target. Who are they trying to target? Obviously you might have a couple of people that you do. This is the most basic type of user profile. There's demographics, the background, the needs and solutions that we provide. Then you create this user profiles story. You can just get a free image of unsplash and then just make up a story that relates with the information that you put out there. Let me do another one and, then I had another person there as well. As you can see Julie Martin. I always end it with thanks, and then my contact details. Once you do the brand discovery, then you go into style scapes. You want to have a nice branding and template stuff. You want to recap on the goal all the time. Always recap on the main goal of the project. If it's a brand identity, your goal could be to bring more brand awareness, to increase I've brand perception, make it seem like a high quality brands. Other things it might be a more practical or qualitative thing where, it's like we want to increase leads on our lead page or get more conversions through, having a clear identity and things like that. I just recap on the brand values as well, the attributes, positioning statement, and then on to the style scapes. Then I go through present the style scapes one-by-one. Asking questions like, what resonates with, what are you leaning more towards? What stands out to you? What are the things that you just don't like? I'm so things like that. You want to try and ask those questions to draw out what elements of standing up so that when you do a revision on it. We can combine some elements. I usually present maybe two or three, typically, as you can see there, and then have them on next to each other like this. Then they can compare it in their mind like okay, this is what we want to lean more towards. From this, you pick the first style scapes. This are more clean, minimal, simple style. Then onto the first logo or presentation. Logo one. Once again recapping on the goal, attributes, positioning and then the style scapes as well. Then once and then the post sign is say you're saying okay. You're reminding the clients that this is what we've done, where we've come from, this is who our target is, this is our goals. Then when you present, it's all objective. Nothing is going to be subjective, so they can't object it pretty much. So primary logo and then presented it like this, once again at simple, minimal clean look, just keeping it really, really clean. Then showing some elements here on how I built it, a color palette, some different secondary marks, patterns, even topography, business card, T-Shirt, some beauty products, and then direction two. As you can see here, love heart, I like this one. Very clean once again, visiting the color palette and some different versions, patterns, the topography, some mark ups, and then compare them at the end. Typically that's what I do to present a logo. Obviously my presentations are getting better and better as well. Once that happens and you go through visions, and then with the visions you can see some of the original and then the revised version. You can see that so you're presenting it, you're breaking it down for the client, no assumptions, you just showing them. Then once again, the secondary marks see, some examples of social media stuff. They can do an Instagram incorporating patterns in that logo and stuff, showing the colors black and white and nothing that was really cool. Then they wanted, I think the pink one. I'll show you that it is the final version? The pink and the crane, you can see that some markups, so it's good show markups. That was really cool and then just the logo got is pretty simple. It was a basic on because it's just for the logo and it's a smaller clients. I didn't have to do a full big guide but you can see the colors, codes, the logo usage and what not to do. That's pretty much how I presented Bagheri hair. Obviously I've got other recent ones that I've done as well. But this is just a short view of how you should present the logo process, especially if you're looking at like a freelance client, small businesses and obviously if they're bigger budget, bigger business, you want to make sure that your templates and everything is that like a lot more extensive and intensified. 12. How to deliver files example: So, I'll just show you a quick example of how I deliver the files. So, I have a delivery folder or package folder, and I double-click that. You can see here, I keep it very clean. I keep it named and numbered, so I have one, two, three, four, five, six. I have the logo, the posters, social media posts, email icons, and the period templates. So I'll double-click on Logo, as you can see I double-click in here. It's got all the versions that they required. As you can see that it also has the Illustrator file and a transparent PNG. So if I double-click that, they can use that. So you can see also the reverse. This is a different vision of the old caps version. But obviously, you will have a color version and you'll have multiple versions in the Logo package. If I go back out, poster, as you can see that the poster designs are for a digital version and a print version as well. You can see the different sizes there. You want to save a different folder for each different size. Then you put it in there, the social media posts as well. So you can see the posts here and the diagram. So I'm saving everything separately and then some other images here for LinkedIn. I'm clearly naming everything and keeping it very simple. Email and signature there. Go back on the icons by themselves. So you can see, I'm saving it. It goes small, one color and then put the color, and then I put the icon there, so you can see the icons are saved. So they can use them individually for certain posts. I go back. I've got the templates as well, so you can see the PDF templates there and, obviously, they're edible templates. That's why there were some dates in there, but, typically, that's how I would deliver them. Put them in neat folders, and then I'd go to Dropbox. So you can see if I click on this, I've clearly named a folder which I shared with the client and it's all those folders that I've already gotten in this client folder. I pretty much upload it to Dropbox like this and then I pretty much share a link. So if I go back, I can click share here, so I can go share, and then I can type in the email. I'll copy the link, and email it to the client, and send it off. Typically, that's how I leave out the files. If you don't use Dropbox, you can literally use Google Drive, it's the same type of thing. It just looks a bit different. 13. Bonus Tips: Here's some tips for success. Number one is you want to have self-education. You want to make sure that you're consuming content on videos, you're reading books, and then just read books on design. I have some logo design books that it's cool. It's got inspiration, they're really good. Whatever you're interested in, if you're interested in photopography, get books based on that. But you also want to read books on like entrepreneurship and marketing. That's really good to put in the effort. Don't be lazy. Read the books, educate yourself. I used to always watch YouTube tutorials and gone lynda.com and now even Skillshare. I used to consume content and learn a lot of things from others because other people have knowledge to nab experience. I want to learn everything I can about freelancing and about doing the best design I can. That's very important. Number two is organization. Makes sure everything's organized. I'm talking about your computer, your files, your photos, or your naming system. Keep in neat and tidy and keep making simple in yourself. Make sure that it's easy to outline everything, even when you're taking your client through your design process, makes sure that it's clear and easy to understand. You know, you don't have to have crazy contracts and proposals. It can be like a one-page thing, like that's what I do. It can be simple. It doesn't have to be over complicated. Number three is word of mouth is very important. You're mainly going to get work form referral. Do your best work, even if it's for a friend or someone you know. Tell them to refer you, give them business card. Makes sure that it's easy to contact and make sure you deliver the best work you can so that when they tell others, you're going to get more clients from them. Number four is getting involved in online groups. There's a fair few slack channels and Facebook groups and in even private forums, some of them you have to pay for like a membership, but really get involved in them and they're going to really help you out because you're going to be able to ask questions, talk to other designers that can help you grow and you're really going to find solutions to things that you need help with. Number five is never to contest sites. Sites like nineonenine designs, it devalues design. You don't want to waste your time on a contest when there's like 50 other people submitting a design, it's less likely you'll get accepted. It's pointless. Rather spend your time on case studies and doing side projects or pro bono work or practice work, just focus on that and build your portfolio up that way. Number six is know your value. You want to know your worth, you know, you don't want to devalued your design work. You don't always want to do too much free work. Because if you say, "Yeah, I'll do for free," and then project drags on and you're being treated unfairly. That's not going to be good on you, you'll get discouraged. So you don't want to do too much freeway because people can abuse that. I don't recommend doing with for your mom and your parents and your very close family because it can be awkward, especially be trying to charge them. There is a weak dynamic there. Like, yeah, you can help them out, but just be cautious because it can be annoying and frustrating or working with them. Especially if they didn't understand design and know the value of it, then it can be weird. 14. Learn More on Skillshare: If you enjoyed the class you are going to leave or view, you can click on this button at the bottom right, click that and leave a positive comment. If you do have feedback, I'm happy to hear it because I want to grow and make better classes for you guys. Then once you've done that, you can go and click on the follow me button here in the top left corner. Then you can click on my profile to see some awesome classes. I have a logo design, texturing, branding, and plenty of other stuff to help you learn and grow as a designer.