I’m freelancing as a textile / product designer. I have 20+ years of experience as a design director / senior CAD manager and have designed home furnishings, and apparel textiles. I am also skilled in product development. What is the best way to market my skills? How can I reach out to prospective clients in a positive way, and in what arenas? Email? Linked in? Should I price per design / collection / or by the hour? It’s a new world now, companies are trying to make up what they have lost these past few months and I want to be reasonable in my pricing.
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Should their be a FREELANCE category? That would keep all of the freelance discussions in one place.
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That would be great.
I also like this idea.
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Hi,
Not sure if the freelance area has opened yet but wanted to leave an answer for ya!
I’ve been mostly freelancing my career since 2008 collapse hit and enjoyed the highs and lows of it. Have you ever freelanced through an agency? That’s part of how I started to get a better idea of how things worked at the beginning. These days building a network has gotten a little difficult as the networking on sites like LinkedIn doesn’t seem to have people as open as they like to think they are but it’s not impossible. You can join groups on LinkedIn and introduce yourself and your business. I still cold email people with some level of success. As for the pricing I always like to give 2 options: 1. Per hour and 2. Project fee (could be per design depending your set up). Just trying to open up the conversation here and I’m open to the dialogue! Happy 4th everyone!
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Hi all just moving this over to the freelance topic header!
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Great insight!
love to learn more about which agency did you use to start with?
Agree with two price options. I often provided this for my clients. When offering a flat rate, be very clear on what is included and what is not. For example, I would include one round of comments for edits/updates, after that it would incur an additional charge.
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These days the agency you may start with doesn’t matter as much as finding the right agent within this agencies. Many of whom I started with are no longer in my field.
It can be a bit like finding the needle in a haytsack. Sorry that it doesn’t help.
It’s tough to find freelance right now but when people are able to shop again hopefully manufacturers will begin to make more product.Current Skills are important too
It is tough but still doable. Hate saying that I recently turned down (more like rejected) a freelance/remote job but sometimes you have to do that. Someone that failed me before on a big project almost 2 years to the date reached out to me for some work. After a month of chatting he set up a zoom chat with others to put work on my table. Mind you we hadn’t even agreed on the terms of payment. He just threw out “what if he paid me for 40/50 hours at my rate. He also kept stating I would be his highest paid employee if he paid me the whole months wages since he pays everyone in his state cheaper.” Basically trying to pay me 1 week out of 4 weeks in a month. Then in the meeting mentions I needed to order samples (to knock off) and if needed I could use his credit card. I was slightly confused if I heard correctly and emailed him afterwards. He still didn’t answer my pay rate concerns nor did he give me his credit card while saying yes to the items needed to be ordered. That total by the way was $800. Yes I could return but still I don’t know him well enough to do him any favors. I wrote him back telling him that none of this sat well with me and that we were done.
Just a lil extra here. He mentioned how I would be paid higher than the others during the zoom meeting for all to hear. SMH
@DNM_73 good call to walk away from that. I learned the hard way to listen to my gut and say no it feels wrong, no natter how badly I might need the work.
The announcing your rate to the entire call and the credit card thing rang alarm bells for me.
I would worry he’d use your rate as continued leverage to pressure you into doing more work than had been agreed upon.
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sounds like a terrible person!
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