** Making Money As A Freelance Designer...

Post in the warriors for hire section, the classifieds section and the WSO sections, to get your name out there...

Then supply a portfolio of your work..............

If you can compete with the quality and the pricing that many here are used to, then you may at least bring in some money from the WF.

As for a full time income as a graphic designer, you need to be very versatile, in the adobe products such as illustrator, indesign, photoshop, dreamweaver, and other things.........

Good at offline graphic design is also a must to really make a living.

You could look into becoming a wordpress theme developer and if you are great at it....... then you can sell your themes..... in order to do this you have to know wordpress coding and php.....

Other than that, it can be a rough road and fun, but you gotta hustle, you gotta go get the work, and build a good reputation and then people may start to come to you, which helps lots.........

Publish your portfolio to any free portfolio site (like devient art, artician, etc), and promote it via social networking site like facebook, twitter etc.

You might as well learn how to do Wordpress installations. After you do a few, it's a breeze. Then you could offer full "websites" with custom logo (banner) / backgrounds.

Once you learn that, you could even start offering offline businesses (small / medium size businesses) websites. IMO, that's a LOT more lucrative. You can crack those out for $800 - $1200 bucks. Offer packages, hosting / maintenance for $50 - $100 bucks a month. Upsells for SEO, Google Maps...

Many small/medium size businesses don't even bat an eyelash when I start talking about $1500 - $2000 packages. Why? Find out what it costs them to advertise in newspapers, etc. It's nuts.

Thing is, you gotta get in front of them. Pick up a phone and sell!

I am currently working as a part-time freelance designer and I earn around 1k or something. Being a student (who doesn't need 1k atall) I am happy with my current earning.

As steve mentioned in his post, If you wanna make it big learn wordpress. Even I am learning wordpress and might soon start offering my services for wordpress.

There are bunch of freelancing websites and forums (warrior is one of the best to sell your services). Try posting your portfolio and promote. Offer cheap reviews initially, this will really help you get more clients.

Hoping the information was useful

With just designing header and background I think you won't earn more then 500-600 $ a month. You will have to widen your photoshopic skill and provide as many graphic designing stuffs and services as possible.

I provide all types of designing services as you can see in my signature.

Hey Anthony,

Great info!

I've actually done my own wordpress installations, but with the flexsqueeze theme. -- which I guess can be another thing that can be incorporated into a package/buy-up.

But Do you put the domain & hosting on your name since you'll be maintaining it... or does it go on the business?

Also, if they ask how to promote/market the site --- what is the best SEO and/or PPC service, or any other services that you provide them with?

In Many Thanks,
Tom

Try to build your portfolio first. when you have a good portfolio you can price your works well... You could already make money with your existing skills, you can make headers, banners, logos and business cards. but try not to limit it there, try learning html and css so you could jump in webdesign. then you could learn minor php so you could build themes for wordpress. good luck

This sentence and, especially, the bolded phrase, completely misled me...

I had to go through the whole thread to realize that, actually, you were talking about graphic design - making image files that can be inserted/added to a site... not really "designing sites".

Sorry, but what you are planning to do in my books comes under the "outsourcing the graphic part" of a web site making project. I do use a few guys that would create for me the needed image files for a quick buck. What I mean: I have the 'big picture' and I code the site and I decide what it should look like etc. - they just manufacture the required image files (because I hate messing with image editors).

Now, depending on your location you can make a miserable income (Western world) or a very good income (Third World) - the $ amount being the same

As a side not I am a bit surprised and confused by your statement, re: switching from internet marketing to manufacturing image files.
People usually move in the opposite direction. From trading your time for money (as in a job) toward building a business (a system that works for you). Of course, even with internet marketing, if you don't treat it like a business, you just created a job for yourself... and that can make you tired.

P.S. Now, if you can really design the whole look/layout of a site (as a psd file) and provide the coder with the "sliced" images... then you may have a chance!

Thanks for that info Istvan -- I am still new and still learning.... so I understand that I may not know all the technical terms. That's why I am asking questions.

I went through a graphic design training that taught many graphic designers build images with buying royalty free images -- and then cropping , resizing, blending, etc...

But I guess, like your stating -- to be a REAL graphic designer... It is best to build the images from scratch.... and if that's the case, then I have a whole lot more to learn.

I was just hoping if there is any place in the designer world for my current abilities, and if not, then I can't say I didn't try.

In Many Thanks,
Tom

I am not saying that you have to learn the "terminology"... If anything, I have a larger problem with people in IM using different terms very liberally - as if they were synonyms or having the same meaning.

[I am aware some forum members get upset if I remind them about the proper terminology and they dismiss it as 'semantics'... For all those ignorant a**holes this is what I have to say: if you spend many years working as a technical translator, you learn that one single mistake = wrong word can cause a damage of millions; if you work for years as an official translator for courts and government agencies you know that one wrong word can screw up a human being's life and fate - so, don't tell me "it's JUST semantics"!
That's not about you, Tom!]

Tom, I really wanted to help and seemingly my message didn't went through exactly as I wanted. Which is embarrassing in the light of the above paragraph

Anyway, I'll try it again:

When I used to make custom websites, after consulting with the clients I usually came up with an idea of a look or design or whatever-you-want-to-call-it.
Then I can tell to my graphic guy what I need, for example:
- 912px wide content area > header image with this width and 195px high; and rounded upper corners
- to blend in in the #XXXXXX background colour I will use for body
- matching "read more" button
- matching "box" bg and header for the sidebar sections: 290px wide sidebar
- same width, 78px high footer
- etc.
Now, I can add to use images from royalty free sites, I can even point him to a few that I'd like and so on.

^^That's what I understood you were planning to do.

Another option is that you work with the coder/developer from the beginning and after the consultation with the client YOU come up with the overall layout, concept, design of the site... and make your concept as an image to show it.
When agreed, you "cut" it up for the dev and he's going to do the coding part.

In the second case I call you a web designer who works closely with a coder/developer. Usually, coders are terrible when it comes about the visual aspect of a site, so it's a good cooperation: the creativity, fantasy of the visual artist makes a huge contribution.

In the first case you are just an "image labourer" employed by the developer/coder, simply executing the orders and instructions. You are a tradesman paid by hourly wage.

Do you see the difference?