The type of contacts you would have would be first a designer if you were a client/developer who would need someone to design the product or if you were a designer/client then you would need contact with a developer to make you can take them drawing and produce a fully functioning product. you may also need contact with financial company because you may have to borrow money to buy a new pc to keep up with the demand also you may need to buy software programs which can cost up to £2000 so you will need to keep on contact with them also if your a designer/developer you will need to keep in regular contact with the clients to make sure that you can get feedback and make the product to their specification.
Design crowd is the main example of a business contact that I use in the creative and digital media sector. Design crowd is a business website where designer can upload projects and designs for clients and the winner wins real money this is very useful for freelancers because they can work for an employer and also work on design crowd its free to sign up and is very easy to use a very useful tool in the creative and digital industry.
To participate with relevant networks your expanding your expertise for example if you did a project for a successful company and you did a excellent job for them then they may talk with companies they may trade with ect and they will then come to you and ask for you to do a project for them this will support your freelance activity because your getting business, and also making money from the projects.
advertisement is the main example of a strategic to gain reputation you advise on a website your going to get much much more advertisement compared to not doing so you could offer your first few jobs at a really low rate so low they cant refuse the offer which will then draw in business if you do a good job.
design crowd is a implemented system you go on look for the client you want to do a job for the one you think you got the best chance of winning and then design the product and upload it onto design crowd this is a implemented system because design crowd is in place for you to get work all you have to do is search the web for any designs you think you have the best chance of winning.
The companies your likely going to get work for are construction companies,engineering, logistic companies you are less likely to get it work because of certain people experience the agents you properly get are recruitment companies like reeds who may supply you with certain project work if your doing unemployed work also design crowd are the main agent they get you the work for these certain companies.
college courses or training courses are a great example of improving your own development for example you may have get a new operating system you may got a new piece of software program you don't know what to do with them then you would go on a training course to improve your skills to increase the chance of getting work with will increase the chance in future success.
To seek constructive feedback you would show the client the finished product and then ask them to be honest as possible then you would take that feedback and improve depending on what feedback they sent that is what constructive feedback is it is taking and giving honest feedback.
you would set hour many hours you work for a project to make sure that all the jobs that are done are done in time but also because your a freelance designer you need to make sure that your first job is getting done to the highest standard also you need to review your own performance before doing a project because it may be out of your scope for example you may be a designer and you get a project in for a website you have to develop it but you got no development skills you need to make sure that you get training in that area but it you can then you need to either hire someone who can if that would cost to much then you would need to recognized the project and choose a other one and finally you need to make sure you hit the business targets by spending the least amount of money on a project but also that you do the most projects as possible in a year to make sure that you hit them targets.
As I said above working flexible is vital if your wanting to become a freelance designer because you need to make sure that all your work is at equal priority for example if you have a job for your self employed job and you work on that job for most of the time then your other job your main job where your making money for working is going to be weak.
You need to make appropriate business decisions because you may have loads of work coming in but you may not want to invest loads in new computers for example because you may not get any work maybe next week that will mean your losing money where if you didn't spend that money on them new computers then you would be able to spend the money or electricity ect instead of losing money.
you would use a spreadsheet to calculate budget to make sure that your calculating all the bills and the income currently coming into the company you will also archive files and folders to make sure they dont get lost or damaged and if they do you have back ups.
As I said about you would input the date into the spreadsheet you can make it calculate a certain row you can do this on excel all you do is put in the data and excel will do the rest that is why excel is so useful for business management.
You may want to buy it support if your computers breaks or go down because if your pc broke then your going to lose money until you fix it but if you contact technical support and your covered by their warranty then they will be able to fix your problem which will let you continue with your business.
you need to plan ahead of cash flow like what I said about one day you may have a load of work coming into your business and then you will have none this is why it is vital to make sure that you manage you cash flow in case of this emergency.
You need to have an agreement about the rate of pay per hour and for them paying you what work your doing like an employment contract a agreement for a job is an agreement between the freelancer and the client also you need to make sure you tell the tax office that your working self employed because of tax issue that is why it is important to review the legal requirement before having a career as a freelancer.
Like I said above you need to agree on how long the job is going on for and compare that to your rate of pay for example you may charge £150 for a 20 hour project and £250 for a 40 hour project but the employer wants it my next week you cant do that so you need to make sure you are at. you also need to agree about other expenses for example you create a website they want a co.uk address that cost money that other expenses its outside the freelances range.
You need to talk to the client saying what the benefits would be if they choose them for example you can say I will create a professional, neat tidy website with a flash header and footer that is showing the performance outcome you telling the client what they will get if they choose them.
You need to make sure that the client gives you all the stuff they want on their product for example I create a website using dreamweaver i upload it I have no content off the client i show the client and then they will have to pay me extra to insert that content onto the web this can be damaging to me and to them that is why it is vital to make sure you tell the client for all the content that they want on the website before doing so.
You need to make sure that if you have any problems issues you need to communicate with the client in the most clear form as possible speak in non technical gargin and this will help the client understand what the problem is if you speak in technical gargin then they are not going to understand which will lose confidence in yourself and also their technical knowledge which can cause problems in the future.
You need to produce two copy of the document to make sure that you have a copy and they have a copy you also need to make sure that you scan the document and archive it put it on a usb stick, on the computer so if something happens that is not agreed you can go back to the document which will be very useful in the future.
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