Where do you invest your time as a freelance logo designer?
To me, being a freelance designer means ‘Freedom’. Having the ability to choose what projects you work on, and also being in a position to say no to particular projects.
Ofcourse, having these benefits takes years of work in order to have this leverage. Being free is great, however, what you do with your freedom is more than having the ability to ‘take it easy’.
Time management is crucial especially when your own boss. You have to make the right decisions when it comes to allocating your time.
As a freelancer, have you considered time to be more valuable than money? Do you protect your time? Are you investing your time towards vital areas of your business?
In this blog post, discover where you as a freelance logo designer should invest your time:
Client Work - This pays the bills so it needs to be priority. Make great work for them to return and tell their friends and family.
The Business Side of things - This is crucial and a good chunk of your time should be spent on this, Its also important to be aware of your breakeven.
Content Creation - A form of marketing which contributes highly to the amount of clients your business brings in
Practice and learning - keep creating! I’ts important to stay sharp, always learning new techniques. But most importantly, the study of shapes, which will show through your work.
Client Work
As a freelance logo designer, if your lucky enough, you may have realised the majority of your time is spent creating logos. This should be the case as client work is considered a ‘priority task A’.
As a business, tasks such as these will be important in order to keep the business running.
Completing client work to the best of your ability is a fundermental investment of your time.
Doing a great job on client projects may result in returning clients, which over time gives stability for your business. Not only may the client return, but also refer you to other potential clients within their network.
Producing quality client work has a knock on effect and a healthy cycle for your business. However, this is assuming your targeting the audience YOU want to work with, and working on the projects YOU want to work on. For more on this area, feel free to read ‘How to get the clients you want’.
Showing the great work that you produced is certainly another valuable investment to your business. We will go over this later when it comes to ‘Content Creation’.
The Business Side
Yes your business consists of creating things. And no it doesn’t mean ignore the business side…
Its awesome getting a lot of clients, but can be daunting when you have to deal with all the paper work.
This includes invoices and contracts. This can get tedious but there are tools out there to help you out as a freelancer.
Here’s a list to admin and other business tools I use to run my freelance logo design business:
Xero - Accounting software that organises all my business transactions
Logo Package Express® - Exports all files clients may need
Slack - Messaging platform for teams allowing great communication for projects
If you don’t do this or spend a good amount of your time in this area, It may be a huge problem down the line.
Taxes, bad clients and worst case scenario; law suits. Avoid this at all cost and make a conscious effort with this area.
Accounting software is important and which you may want to get hold of this as soon as you can. I your starting out, I understand the costs may not be feasible, in this case insure your keeping a log of everything especially business transactions.
This can be done freely in excel or apple numbers.
Something that is overlooked by freelances is your ‘Breakeven’. This is essential for your business to remain open, also allowing you to know what prices to charge and when it can be increased/decreased (if necessary).
The growth of your business is not purely based on skill. Infact, I truly believe a large amount is based on how you think as a business owner.
Content Creation
Content creation steers clients in your direction. Its later then your responsibility to close the deal.
You may have heard me mention this countless of times, but platforms such as Instagram and Behance are great places for logo designers to live on. To get the most out of Behance, discover the importance of a feature here.
Or, if you use instagram to, discover if it’s important for designers to grow their following?
It’s free marketing that can make up a huge portion of your businesses revenue. I experience this first hand, and Behance contributes towards 70%-90% of my freelance logo design business revenue.
Instagram is also great. This is another platform that you’re able to hit two birds with one stone; growing a following and gaining new clients.
Content creation is an area that every designer should consider spending there time on. It goes hand in hand with the growth of your business.
Client Work, The Business Side and Content Creation should be an endless cycle for a healthy business as a freelance logo designer.
Practice & Learning
It’s easy to get lost in the source of the ‘CBC Cycle’ and forget about your craft…
As a freelance logo designer, your are a highly skilled specialist. Therefore, it’s important to keep it that way by developing and improving your style of work.
This is mainly done through investing time towards courses, books or simply your time.
The truth is, sacrifice is necessary when it comes to being a freelancer. Do the things others are not willing to do.
Never overlook this and try to dedicate a few hours a week into this area. My favourite places for learning resources are TheFutur on YouTube and their online content/courses.
In a nutshell, as a freelance logo designer, there may be seasons where you have a lot of time on your hands. And other seasons when you don’t have any at all.
Identity these seasons and make effective decisions that will propel your business forward. Also taking into consideration your financial situation. When you have no clients and your eager to bring some in, get active on social media. The clients however don’t come instantly so its crucial to remain active regardless on your situation in order to have clients in the pipeline.
However, if you have no clients but you're not in any need of work, and you have money in the bank to pay the bills, then you may consider updating your portfolio.
This allows you to lure in better clients over time and hopefully high-paying clients. This does depend on if you're actually getting better or not; hence why its also crucial to take time out for practice & learning.