Five Foolproof Steps to Score More Freelance Graphic Design Jobs

When you’re working as a contract designer, your next job is usually on your mind. regardless of how busy you’re or what proportion experience you’ve got, you almost certainly ask yourself “What do I even have lined up after this?” a minimum of once each day.

It’s one of the worst parts of freelancing and it’s an unavoidable reality of counting on contract work to pay your bills. But that doesn’t mean freelance designers are simply at the mercy of whatever work happens to blow their way that month. There are tons you’ll do to stay your pipeline full — to confirm the subsequent time you ask yourself “What do I even have lined up after this?”, you already know the solution.

To help you get there, Looka — the AI-powered graphic design app — interviewed 100 people that had previously worked with designers. In our survey, we asked them everything from how they found their designer, to what they’d be willing to pay extra for, to what was the worst part about working with them.

If you’re looking to find out the way to be within the right place, with the proper skills, we’ve got the answers — so you’ll spend less time trying to find graphic design projects and longer designing.

Convincing Clients they have Your Design Services

If you’ve ever addressed a difficult client, you’ve probably heard them claim at one point or another that they might do your job for you. As annoying because it is to listen to, this complaint can have an impression on your ability to seek out freelance graphic design jobs.

When we check out the explanations why clients prefer to work with a designer in the first place (as against DIY-ing), the standard and knowledge a designer brings were cited by 91% of clients. Coming in at a foreign second, the time investment was only mentioned by 33% of clients.

Why is that this important?

When you’re marketing your services as a designer, you would like to spotlight your experience and therefore the quality that comes alongside it. If a possible client watching your profile or portfolio can’t get away with what you recognize as the way to do and the way long you’ve been doing it, it’s easier for them to dismiss your work.

Being able to point out off past projects and cite years of experience is great here. What’s even better is having the ability to showcase the method behind your work on your website or portfolio. If clients can see what proportion work goes into a bit, they’re less likely to ascertain it as something they might do themselves.

Getting Discovered as a Graphic Designer

But maybe we’re getting a touch before ourselves. Before clients can consider whether your work warrants them ditching the DIY route, they have to get your add the primary place. While getting found can sometimes feel more sort of a lottery than a meritocracy, there are tons you’ll do to form your own luck. To start, let’s check out the foremost common ways clients find designers — so you’ll start being within the right place when the time to style comes.

At first glance, these results seem to mention that online marketplaces are the simplest thanks to being discovered. And this is often true. fixing a store on a site like Creative Market means more people have an opportunity to seek out and buy your work than — especially considering the 6 million members that use the location.

But once we take a better check out this chart, the results skew a touch less Up working and a touch more networking.

Between “Through a friend/family member” and “They are a friend/family member” network and private connections account for nearly 45% of designer discoveries. Meanwhile, in fourth place, we will see that direct contact through a designer’s website only accounts for 12.5% of designer-client intros.

If you’re working as a contract designer, you ought to be thinking one thing and one thing only right now: “I got to network more.”

As powerful as having a web presence on Upwork, Fiverr, or your own personal website is for showing off your portfolio and potentially being discovered, human connections still win. tons of this comes right down to how people choose their designers.

Becoming Your Client’s Top Choice

If a client is searching Freelancer.com or asking their network for recommendations, you’ll bet you’re not the sole designer they’ve heard about. So how does one stand out from all those other names and portfolios? Here’s what 80 of our respondents had to mention about how they made the ultimate decision on which designer to travel with:

While multiple factors play into this decision, the clear winner is portfolio quality. even as we saw when asking clients how they chose to figure with a designer within the first place, the standard of a designer’s work is top of mind.

But it’s not the sole thing that matters.

Social proof from referrals and positive reviews were mentioned in 40% and 28.75% of responses, respectively. Many of the respondents who mentioned portfolio quality went on to speak about the importance of a private referral or positive reviews in making the ultimate decision.

Between investing longer in networking and leveraging current connections by posing for referrals, you’ll make these numbers add your favor. The more familiar you’re as a design resource within your network, the more likely people are to trust you with their design projects.

But apart from getting your name out there, there are few other tips to require from these results.

Expertise and knowledge also play an enormous role in who gets hired. With 37.5% of clients mentioning the importance of experience and expertise during a particular style or industry, it pays to specialize. the maximum amount as you would possibly want to cast a good net for your freelance design work, clients tend to favor designers who concentrate on only a couple of areas — seeing them as experts, unlike their jack-of-all-trades counterparts.

Communication also came up as a serious factor, with many purchasers citing professional, punctual communication as what made them choose one designer over another. So, if you haven’t been watching your words in your proposal emails or prospecting messaging, it’s time to start.

While remaining factors like changing your pricing or participating in tests and contests won’t be for everybody, speed should be something everyone cares about. While we’re not suggesting you aim for speed in particular else, but you ought to a minimum of help clients understand why certain things take longer. Clearly communicating how some time is spent can transform a 1-week timeline from a deal-breaker to a deal.

How to Grow a little Graphic Design Project

No, we’re not talking about scope creep — we’re talking about the art of the upsell. Once you’ve got a client hooked for a project, you’ve already done the difficult work, so it’s time to form that effort work for you: with premium add-ons.

Of course, you would like to upsell clients on something they really want to shop for, so we asked our survey respondents what that might be, here’s what that they had to say:

Again, design quality is top of mind for clients throughout the whole purchase process — even when they’re being upsold. But how does one upsell on better design quality without making customers concerned about the standard of your work as-is?

Here, you would possibly consider showing clients the extent of labor you’re capable of doing in 1 vs 2 vs 5 days and charge them a premium for time spent. Of course, that might mean abandoning the prospect of additional payment for faster delivery, which quite 27% of clients are willing to pay more for. One solution here is exclusivity. By giving a client the choice of exclusive access for a shorter period of your time, they will effectively take over space in your calendar where work for other clients would have gone.

Of course, this suggests they’ll likely expect you at their beck and call, which is where the premium for better communication also comes in. you almost certainly don’t want to overtly charge for better communication (in fact, we’d advise against it), but the deeper connection that comes from putting all of your attention towards one project can foster clearer communication. Mentioning this as a perk of paying for faster turnaround and full access, can assist you to turn that standard agreement into a premium one.

Creating Freelance Design Work from Your Past Work

Winning clients is great. Keeping them is even better. to try to do that, you would like to offer clients an excellent experience while you’re working with them.

To understand the way to do this, let’s first take a glance at what to not do.

More than missed deadlines or costs, the only worst part of working with a designer for many respondents was poor communication — at a staggering 64%.

Conversely, watching the foremost important part of working with a designer, communication comes out on top.

What does this tell us?

No matter how talented, cheap, or flexible you’re, clients value communication above everything else. to urge more freelance design work, your people skills got to be even as impressive as your design skills.

Fill Your Freelance Design Pipeline

Now that you simply skills to urge found, chosen, grown, and referred, it’s time to urge out there and do the diligence of truly finding graphic design courses in Delhi projects to tackle. If you simply remember one thing from this blog, make it this — design quality always wins, except when poor communication gets within the way. It doesn’t matter what proportion of work you set into your portfolio or spreading your name, if people don’t like working with you, it won’t work.

So, take the time to actually hear your clients, take their business needs under consideration, and understand their industry. it’d just cause your next freelance design job.