Internet Mumpreneurs - Online Marketing Tips For Home & Internet Based Businesses

Freelance graphic design is a very popular choice for startups for good reason; the start up costs are relatively low, it’s a flexible career choice for creative types, if you are good you can command an excellent income, and no qualifications are required to become a successful graphic design freelancer.

Starting a career as a freelance graphic designer is easy enough…becoming successful and well paid at it is altogether a different matter and freelancers fall by the wayside on a daily basis through lack of work.

The advice below aims to help you understand your first steps and point you in the right direction for a profitable career in the creative arts.

Starting a graphic design service is absolutely perfect for mums who want to run a business from home around their children. If you market yourself online and obtain clients that are comfortable with Internet technology almost all client communication can be via email (so no harm done if the children are noisy)

In addition all work; whether that be the actual design or your administration and marketing, can be do at any time of the day or night….making it a 100% flexible career choice for parents who need or want to work around the needs of their children.

LEGALITIES & FIRST STEPS
1. UK law requires you to register as self employed with the tax office (the Inland Revenue), and failure to do so once you start taking payment from clients will lead to stiff fines.

Even if you are not based in the UK, it’s likely that you will need to register as self employed with the tax office of the country you are resident in.

2. You will need insurance to protect yourself and your clients; you will need to acquire ‘Professional Indemnity’ insurance, and if you plan to have clients visit your work/premises you will also need ‘Public Liability’ insurance as well.

3. You will need a computer of decent quality that in an ideal world has a powerful processor to handle multiple large programmes open at the same time, a good sized monitor (min 19inch), a fair quality graphics card, and the revelant professional design software. You will also need a dedicated telephone line.

Most importantly above all else, even if you are on a rickety machine, don’t be tempted to skimp on inferior design software at lower prices, you really do need the best design software even if you can’t afford the best computer hard ware.

4. You will need an office space. This can be in your home if necessary/desired, I work from home through choice, as do many freelancers, and always have done but I do have my own separate office in my home.

5. As soon as you launch you will need to use paper based accounting books and/or software and make sure you record each amount of ‘income’ for the business, and each amount you spend for business purposes and what it was spent on.

Ensure each item is dated, and ensure you collect and retain all receipts for money spent, you will need to retain these for several years.

6. Open a business bank account where you will deposit any money earned, and use for business expenses. Hire a book keeper and/or accountant to help you stay out of trouble with the tax office.

7. Obviously it goes without saying that before you start charging customers for your services, you will need some sort of knowledge, talent and experience in the field of graphic design; you can either to go college and/or university to learn this, or you can teach yourself - either is fine. I’m self taught.

HOW TO MARKET YOURSELF ONLINE
My advice is restricted to the sort of freelance business that obtains it’s clients via the Internet, a common business model in today’s internet age, as this how I have operated my business. I can’t really offer any advice for those who want a more ‘bricks and mortar’ style of business where they may visit with clients face to face for instance.

My business has been specifically engineered to run in such a way that I can work with my children in the room with me without telephone calls with clients being an issue and without the need to arrange childcare so that I can go to client meetings.

1. First of all ensure you have a neat, professional, easy to navigate website to contain your portfolio and information about services. A lot of designers get hung up on having a website that is ‘the most incredibly cool and beautiful website ever seen’ - it needs to be attractive, but most important is that it is effective at converting website vistors and this is about more than just beauty.

2. Networking with other businesses, and the best online networking for a graphic designer is at graphic design without a shadow of a doubt. Not only can you gain clients by networking properly at this platform, but you will also gain invaluable advice and friendship from other business owners.

3. Search engine optimisation of your website. (Follow the advice at www.trulyace/searchengineoptimisation.html)

4. Article marketing (google this term to find out more) - article marketing is essentially another component of search engine optimisation.

IMPORTANT NOTE ON MARKETING/ADVERTISING FOR FREELANCERS
This is important; do not pay to be placed in any online or offline directories (especially not the paper based Yellow Pages no matter how much the sales team try to convince you) this will not get you clients, or certainly not enough clients for it to be worth the cost of the advertising. Advertising very rarely works for this sort of business unless you have the huge advertising budget of a brand name - I’ve never heard any other freelancer say differently in over five years.

OPERATIONAL ADVICE/PRACTICALITIES
Once you actually start;

1. Never touch pen to paper/mouse to screen without first taking 50% deposit off the client. (Although if you have no portfolio you might have to do the first few without a deposit to land the first few jobs to get some good samples in your portfolio).

If you do, I guarantee you will regret it.

The professional business owners that will be your customers will not be surprised by your request for a deposit, it is common practice in the design industry and so don’t be afraid to ask for one.

Any business owner who doesn’t want to give you one is a bad debt risk. To be clear; a bad debt is where you work hard for someone and then they don’t pay you.

2. Ensure that what you are offering the client is fully laid out in writing, in great detail before they accept offer, including payment terms, cost (and what they receive exactly for that cost) and copyright terms.

This (failure to outline detailed terms and conditions covering all aspects of a project) is one major area that trips up new freelancers and can result in unpaid final invoices and nothing to back your case up with in court because you didn’t give the customer any formal terms before you started the project and took the deposit.

Terms and Conditions can be outlined in an email as long as they are clear, the customer accepts your offer and the terms tied to that offer, and you take a deposit from them. This is then classed as contract in the eyes of the law provided those three events transpire.

3. Treat your customers very well, avoid errors, and never be late with an agreed deadline even if it kills you to be on time - don’t agree to deadlines that you cannot realistically achieve. Under promise and over deliver…an old motto, but an accurate one.

Referrals to other businesses from your current clients will make up a good percentage of your work, unless of course you don’t get any because you aren’t treating your customers well. In which case you will probably loose them as well anyway in addition to not receiving any referral business.

4. Offer the client more than one way of paying you, you need to make it very easy and painless for them to start a new project with you, these can include cheque in the post, online payment (www.paypal.com or www.worldpay.com if you can afford it, which does look more professional than Paypal I guarantee you), and perhaps by direct transfer to your business account as another option.

To obtain more detailed advice on starting your own business visit;

www.businesslink.gov.uk

The Tax Office

and if you are a ‘young un’ (18-30yrs old)…The Princes Trust

DISCLAIMER:
The information on this page is for general guidance purposes based on my own personal experiences only and does not constitute legal advice. When starting out in business we advise that you obtain formal advice by getting in touch with qualified business advisors and legal professionals.

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