Do You Have the Time to Do Freelance Design?

Do You Have the Time to Do Freelance Design?
From Jacci Howard Bear,
Your Guide to Desktop Publishing.
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(Continued from Page 1)
Reading about what it takes to do freelance design is all well and good but to help it sink in, let's put it in writing and take some action too.

Your Assignment
Answer these questions and try out some of the exercises. Be realistic when answering questions or making estimates about time or money.

Exercise #1: Time Commitment. Estimate how much time you'll devote to each of these typical daily tasks (let's assume you already have a few clients and you have some marketing materials distributed already and an ad in the newspaper that's bringing in clients):

* Answering telephone inquiries about "how much do you charge?"
Try this: Pick out a few names from the phone book and make some calls as if you were the client seeking design services. See how long the calls take.

* Answering email inquiries about "how much do you charge?"
Do this: Have a friend send you an email asking you about your services and how much you'd charge to "do a few business cards" or "put up a Web site." Compose your own reply as if that email were from a real client. How much time does it take to read and reply?

* Opening mail, filing the keepers and tossing the junk.
Do this: Time yourself doing the mail for a few days. If all you get is junk mail, pretend some of it is from clients and pretend to read and file. Feel silly? Hey, no one has to know but you!

* Paying the phone bill, paying for the printer supplies you had delivered last week, filling out deposit slips for the checks you received in the day's mail, sending out a handful of invoices, and recording all these transactions in the appropriate places.
Do this: Time how long it takes you to balance your checkbook, pay a few household bills. You'll be doing that for your business as well and it will probably take about the same amount of time.

* Calling the newspaper and arranging to have your ad run another 4 weeks.

* Preparing (or ordering) and eating lunch.

* Getting dressed in nicer clothes and straightening up the office for an in-home meeting with a prospective client.

* Greeting the prospective client, showing your portfolio, discussing their project.

* Preparing a written estimate (including getting bids from three printers and doing some online research because the job includes some things you've never done before) and getting a contract ready in case the prospective client decides to hire you.
Do this: Make up a possible project you might be asked to do. Pick a number for an hourly rate you might charge ($50-$100, perhaps) then write up a simple estimate. It might help you see how much time this type of nonbillable work might take.

* Working on another project that you've already started. Today you're scanning a couple of photos and doing a little image editing. (Hey, this is billable time!)

Remember, only that last item in the list was something billable to a client. The rest of the time you're doing necessary work related to doing business but it's not always fun, playing with the computer and making cool stuff work that directly results in money from a client.

Now let's pretend you can get an average of 3 billable hours out of every work day. Let's also pretend that all that money goes straight into your pocket - no taxes, no rent, no supplies, just pure profit. How many days will you have to work to earn $40,000 a year? If you're charging $50 an hour that's $150 per day and about 266 days out of the year (at 3 hrs per day). Hey, that doesn't sound bad. 365 days with about 104 days off for weekends, a 2 week vacation, 5 days of "calling in sick" (why not, you're the boss!), another week's worth of holidays (why should you work through Christmas?) leaves you with 235 working days. Oops, not enough. OK, you can cut back on the sick days, work a few weekends. But of course that $50 an hour isn't really pure profit. You really will have to pay rent, pay taxes, and buy supplies so you're going to need earn a lot more than $40,000 or charge a lot more than $50 an hour or find a lot more than 365 days in the year (which one do you think you can change?).

I'm not trying to discourage you. I just want you to take the time to run a few numbers. Have a good idea going in how long things will take and how much time you can realistically except to devote to making money as a freelance designer.

You can see my Online work (Graphic/Multimedia/ WebDesigner):http://lifewithoutcolour.blogspot.com/