Being a Starving Graphic Artist Sucks

Never Disappoint Your Clients Again: Setting the Expectation Level

If you got 3 out of 5 right on a test is that good?
How about 8 out of 10 on another exam, is that something you'd be pleased with?

Well, it's difficult to answer those questions isn't it? It all depends on what your expectations were. For example, if you only expected to get 2 out of 5 right, you'd be pretty happy with 3. Conversely, if you expected to get 10 out of 10 right on the second test (because it was easy), an 8 out of 10 might tick you off.

I've been thinking about expectations and how they relate to me as a freelancer, an author and a business person. Whether you receive praise or disappointment, it all hinges on expectations.

Since we listed the Being a Starving Artist Sucks and Verbal Kung Fu for Freelancers eBook on the iPhone, I find myself checking out the Apps Store, seeing what else is available for download (games, apps, eBooks) and checking out some of the reviews.

Have you read the reviews for some of these apps/books? Oi veh!

You can read 10 reviews for an app, 5 of them are embarrassingly gushing and full of praise, "This is the best app ever!!!!!!!!"; the other 5 reviews are horrifically nasty, "I can't believe they invested time to build this POS - don't waste your money on this crap."
                                                                                                   
Sure, you're going to have the developer or her/his buddies post glowing reviews, and you'll have bored, malicious and just plain sad people write venomous diatribes (even if they didn't purchase the download) because it makes them feel better in some twisted way (sadly, there are even a couple of those for the Verbal Kung Fu for Freelancers eBook).

The rest of the reviews are somewhat legitimate, written by ordinary people across the globe - people with very different expectations on the value they place on the downloads.

For example, I know people would drop $10 on an iPhone game and not really expect it'll be all that great, at the same time I've found buyers willing to invest the time to type out a full page, scathing review for a $.99 game that didn't deliver all of the features they wanted.

Staggering.

Is the $.99 business app really worth what they were charging?
How about the $7.99 downloadable game?
Again, it all boils down to expectation levels.

Unfortunately for the developers out there (including me), when many of these initial downloadable apps, games and books apps came out they were free (developers just wanting to make a name for themselves). Many of these downloads weren't half-bad, so everyone's expectation levels were high...unrealistically high, and most of the review were favorable as you'd expect since the downloads were free.
 
Of course when the developers started to charge for their downloads, consumers blasted them. The expectation was: if download A) is free and is usable, than download B) should be the greatest thing since WIFI since they're charging $3.99. When those expectations (whether realistic or unrealistic) weren't met, consumers got pissed off and took full advantage of Apple's flawed, anonymous review system.

What's this all mean to you?
Whether you're selling downloadables on the iTunes App Store, or you're running a freelance design company, you need to help your clients/buyers establish realistic expectations on what you'll be delivering. Make sure in your initial meetings you get a clear idea of what she/he is expecting from you, reiterate it to them so they know you heard them, and write it down so you'll be able to include it in the project scope section of your contract (If you don't have a project scope section for your contract you should).

By the way, Apple has since revised their review policy since I initially wrote this post (a while ago), but it's still pretty flawed - Seth Godin had it right, "Anonymity is the enemy of civility."

Having a discussed, written down and agreed upon expectation level BEFORE you start the process will always ensure that you're clients won't come back and say, "I can't believe I paid $750 for this project when I expected you to do..."

Expectation levels, as in the iTunes example above are extremely dangerous when left purely up to the client/buyer without any discussion. Make sure you always get a clear sense of your client's expectations before you start your next project with her/him, otherwise you will be "acting stupidly", right Mr. President? Little political humor at the end here :)

Guest Graphic Design Expert, Mike Klassen: 5 Reasons You Might Want to Turn Down Freelance Work

I used to dream about the day I’d be so busy with work, I’d be able to turn down projects. Not because I wanted a client to feel bad, but because it would signify to me that I had reached a certain level of success.

As I’ve gone along, that dream is no longer important. I try not to turn down projects and I’m certainly not at a point where I’m turning down a project every day. But I have said no a few times and thought I’d share some of the reasons why so you can be prepared for it when it happens to you, or at least give you some things to think about for the future.

1.
The project is offensive in some way. Actually, this is one that hasn’t happened to me yet, but it will happen to every designer or writer at some point. Whether it’s for political, moral or religious reasons, there are projects that just don’t match with your own views. Sometimes it’s tempting to take the money and do the project anyway. For me, if in doubt, I try to picture showing the project to someone at church. If that thought makes me uncomfortable, that helps to tell me that perhaps the project isn’t a good match.

2.
The project is not one where I feel I have the skills or desire. I’ve said before that I don’t care to do logos. Of course, as soon as I said that, I started getting requests for logos. I’ve done one since it was just a variation of a prior logo a company used, but other than that, I’ve said no. The reason? I simply don’t think I’m that good at it. Maybe that’s how you feel about certain design or writing niches.

While it would be nice to think I can do every type of project, the reality is that it would take a lifetime to become an expert in every aspect of design. Instead, I like to focus on the things that I enjoy and think I’m good at, then slowly build up new skills in different areas as time allows.

There’s a temptation to say yes to everything so you’re not leaving money on the table or so you can stretch yourself. But there’s no shame in admitting that, for some projects, you’re not going to be the best match with the client, whether it’s due to skill level or a lack of passion for the type of project

3. 
The project requires an on-going commitment. I once bid on a project to do the layout for a monthly newsletter. It would take about a week out of each month dedicated just to that project. Thankfully, I didn’t get the job. As I think back on it, I should have never bid on it to begin with.

I enjoy the freedom of not being tied down to ongoing projects. I have no problem with projects that last weeks or months, but that’s different. With projects that are, for example, every second week of the month, you start losing the freedom to do things like schedule time off for family vacations when it’s best for your whole family. Plus, all other projects then need to be planned around that one regular job and, for me, that’s not something I care to do.

4.
The client isn’t being fair to another freelancer. About two years ago, a client was impressed with something I said on some marketing forum. She said that she had just given a project to another designer, but would pull it from him and give it to me if I could beat his price by mere a few dollars.

There were probably a number of reasons to turn that one down, but the reason that I felt strongest about was that the other designer, who had already landed the job, had apparently done nothing wrong to lose that job. I saw no reason to rob another designer of a job simply because I could beat his price by a few dollars. (If he and I had been bidding on the same project, that’s different... may the best designer win.)

5.
The project doesn’t pay enough. In the beginning, I was ready to take any project at any price just to build my business. While I’m not always at maximum capacity, I’m not concerned about losing a job because my price isn’t low enough.

You’re not going to see the income you want until you’re being very realistic about the rates you charge and walking away from projects that don’t pay what the job is really worth.

Obviously there are more than five reasons to turn down work, but these are the ones that stand out most for me. Freelancing should be fun, so doing projects that aren’t enjoyable or a good fit for some reason or another reminds me too much of working for some company, Monday through Friday, 9-5 and that’s no longer for me.

Mike Klassen runs Klassen Communications, a direct market layout and design company. He shares his experiences with other designers through his blog at: http://mikeklassen.blogspot.com. Mike's got some great articles and ideas that are not often covered in typical design blogs, so you'll definitely want to take a few moments and check out what he's writing about!

Thanks for the great article, Mike. If you other guys want to share your experiences and articles, check out the Guest Blogging section - I'd love to hear from you. 

Pay You to Review My Books? Dude, Get Bent

I’ve found a number of other reviewing sites out there that will only check out an app/book/etc. if you pay them. They’re using the reasoning that they have too many items in the queue to review and that the fee is for “priority reviewing”. Are you kidding me?

I won’t fault folks for trying to make a buck but I can’t help but wonder how legitimate the reviews are if reviewers are being paid off.

For example, if the reviewers received $100 from an author/developer and they trashed the resource, how many more authors/developers do you think would pay them in the future?

Furthermore, if you were a visitor on the reviewer’s web site, how much trust would you put into the reviews if you knew they had to be paid for? It’s a blatant conflict of interest and it's rubbish.

The worst cases of these shams are the bait and switch web sites. What these guys do is have a contact form on their web site for authors/developers to submit their request for review - mind you, they don't say ANYTHING about having to pay for the review. Upon receiving your request, the reviewers send out an obvious auto responder message that indicates that they have so many resources to review that they'll do they're best to get to yours but might not until 2099. But, if you're desperate enough...and you pay enough money they'll somehow, through the grace of the Divine, be able to squeeze you into their schedule - it's a miracle.

I even had one guy that told me after a couple of months after I'd provided him with evaluation copies of my books that he had over 900 resources in the queue, and that's why he hadn't reviewed what I sent him. Although he did hint that he might be able to move me up if some Andrew Jackson's and Ben Franklin's appeared in his bank account.

Come on, what a joke.

Look, if you're a freelancer that's looking into getting some insider advice on how to really take hold of your business and gain a competitive edge, I can assure you that I've never, nor will I ever pay someone to review the books I've put together.

The testimonials are real, and they're from real people - anything short of this would be a discredit to you and me, and I won't do that in order to boost sales. 

Freelance Graphic Design Advice: Demystifying the "I want free design" Client Email

Wanted to share this email with you guys - if you think that since I wrote Verbal Kung Fu for Freelancers, that clients have stopped trying to take advantage - not a chance. Below is an email I received on 7/6 from a client who was snarking around for free stuff (you can tell from the email that I haven't heard from him for quite a while).

If you've been a freelancer for a while I am sure you've seen something like this, if you're new to freelancing, don't worry...you will. As you read it think about how you would interpret it and how you might handle it:

"Hey Jeremy! Long time no talk!
I’m assuming you are happily married now. Hope all is well. I’m in the process of bringing on a partner and I need to get some business cards going for him. Can you just do the digital side and send me the files and I’ll get them printed? His name is Joe Carrols, Phone: 555-555-5555, Email: joe@jackassclient.com
Appreciate it...Thanks!
-Chris "

Here's a sentence by sentence breakdown on exactly what I believe this jackass tried to pull:

The Friendly, Innocent Opening
"Long time no talk! I’m assuming you are happily married now. Hope all is well."
He hasn't talked with me in a while, so he starts out friendly...like this is a social email and that he actually cares about me.

Laying the Groundwork
"Can you just do the digital side and send me the files and I’ll get them printed?"
In this sentence he starts to lay his plan. What he means here is I want you to handle the digital stuff this time, but instead of having you handle the printing (and making some extra money on it), I've got a guy that will do them cheap.

The Big Close
"Appreciate it...Thanks! -Chris"
The coup de grasse of this bloodsucker's plan is his salutation at the end, by saying "Appreciate it, thanks" he's telling me that he's assuming that this is a done deal, that I'll do the work and get it over to him without any messy delays like paying me or anything like that. Absolute horse crap.

• If you would have received this email, would you have thought this guy was looking for free work?
• Was my analysis "on target" or did I misread this?
• How would you have responded to this email?

I'd really like to know what you think on this, drop in your 2 cents by leaving a comment or pass this along to others in the design community.

PS - In a later post I'll share what I did to this guy :)

PPS - Just wanted to thank Stephen down in Houston for his feedback, "...BTW, the Contract and More package is freakin' awesome. Well done, my friend. Your stuff is such a valuable resource for designers everywhere...Thanks so much for producing books and material that designers can actually use to build their businesses. AWESOME!!!!". Thanks Stephen, get on out there and start kickin' some arse! 

A Day in the Life of a Graphic Designer: Another Day of Cracking Clients...I Mean Rocks

I feel badly for freelancers that are either self-taught or come out of design school with no training on how to deal with clients. For me, I am a self-taught designer with a degree in Marketing, but that really didn't prepare me much for dealing with clients either. On more than one occasion in my life I got the raw end of the deal when working with client - something I am not overly proud of. 

I know that it's far more fun to check out the newest tutorials on Photoshop or go searching for free fonts, but if you don't know how to deal with clients and invest all of your time gathering goodies, you're going to end up a well-equipped but miserable freelance designer.

Being able to cope with the daily madness that clients throw at you is a tremendous challenge for all freelancers (a look on blogs, message boards and twitter and you'll see it). That's why I wrote Verbal Kung Fu for Freelancers. I got tired of getting run over by client day after day.

But to be honest with you, clients still try to run over me, they still try to get away with whatever they can (just because I'd written a book about it didn't change that) -  they just don't get away with things anymore, I know how to put them in their place.

Just so you get a taste for what type of client interactions I, and many other freelancers deal with, I've included a small snippet of what happened yesterday:

• One client that burned through 2 full messages on my voice mail (the machine cut her off), she also sent 5 emails full of gibberish which I had to try to make sense of and get her back on track. Talk about OCD!
• Another complained about the printing done on his inserts, even though he wanted to go with the printer because they were inexpensive (he wanted me to call and try to get a future discount for him...nah, he can call).
• A client who's also a buddy was supposed to provide 300 characters or less for his flyer, he gave me 585 and said, “See what you can do”. He first tried to have his sister design the flyer instead of paying me, when that backfired he came groveling back.
• Another client I hadn’t heard from in ages assumed that I would be able to pick up right where I left off - she’s frightfully demanding and has no idea what she’s doing so I constantly have to reeducate her.
• Lastly, and perhaps the best of all, one client tried to get me to join one of those worthless multi-level marketing deals. Jeeez.  

Yep, just another day in paradise. Do any of these client interactions sound familiar to you?

It's a constant challenge keeping clients and projects moving in the right direction (even for me), I can only imagine what other freelancers are going through that don't know what I know - ouch.

PS - Blog post title was inspired by my friend and illustrator, Rich. When asked, "Dude, what are you up to?"

He always replied, "Just cracking rocks..." This is also found in the Clash's song, "I Fought the Law" - "...cracking in rocks in the hot sun, I fought the law and the law won, I fought the law and the law won..."

PPS - Shout out to my friend, Ruben over in Belgium for his feedback on BASAS, "I’m really enjoying the book, already learned a lot! Not completely finished yet, because it’s been very busy with the holidays coming up, but when I have some spare time, it’s always a pleasure to read. Really worth the price!" - thanks Ruben.

When Slow and Steady Don't Win the Race, How to Cut Revision Time in Half (and Keep Your Sanity)

Nothing will slow you down and take the wind out of your sails more than clients evaluating your creative projects and picking them apart with revisions.

I've found that clients often feel like they are not only entitled to but qualified to make creative direction judgments on their project - no matter how little intelligence or background they have on the matter. Ridiculous. 

In meeting with a client for the first time, I remember looking them over and thinking, "Is this the one...the client from hell that's going to go round and round on the revisions merry-go-round?" It's almost like playing Russian Roulette. But the fact of the matter is, the more you work with clients, the more likely you will eventually get this client that has no idea what they want and is just as picky to match.

Over the years I've learned about techniques and human behavior that have helped me cut down the number of revisions, you'll find most of them in my "Verbal Kung Fu for Freelancers" book, as well as my mentoring CD on iTunes called, "From Zero to Graphic Design Hero", but I did want to mentioned something extremely valuable I learned about clients after creating both of those resources.

Let's say a client hires you to create a logo, business card and web site for her. Typically what I, and most freelancers would do is start with the logo. We'd start with rough concepts, move on to more refined concepts, hone them down to 3-5 logos and then continue to grind those down until the client finally picks one. Throughout the entire process we're attempting to get the client's approval, we do this because we feel if we don't, we're wasting time.

I've got news - this approach is a HUGE time waster.

Let's continue on with the example, once you've got the logo done you then move on to the business cards and repeat virtually the same process. For most freelancers, their 2-4 weeks into the project now - no good, keep this approach to designing and you'll not only tear the hair out of your head, you'll be wasting thousands of dollars. But now you're about to learn a better way...

So What's This New Approach?
After I'd be freelancing for a while it dawned on me that the longer I was on a project the more the client tended to find "wrong" with it. Furthermore, I found that this process of creating one project at a time gave the client loads of time to mull over and obsess about what they suddenly felt should be changed.

So instead of submitting projects one slow stage at a time - and one at a time, I would submit let's say the logo (5-7 of them) and the business card all at once. This forced the client into making a whole lot of decisions at one time, rather than micromanage tiny little stages over the course of weeks. Now the clients had 5-7 good looking logos and a finished business card in front of them - ready to go, all they had to do was approve it. This tiny shift in my approach cut project turnarounds from 3-5 weeks down to 1-2 weeks. The same approach can work for you if you find yourself doing revision after revision*.

Why My Approach Works:

• It's true, the longer clients have to look at creative projects, the more they'll find wrong with them. Shorten the time they get to obsess over them.
• Clients have difficulty seeing your vision in the early stages, which cause them to nitpick. If you can show them a finish project much sooner in your process, the better off you'll be.
• By providing finish projects all at once for clients to approve, you are demonstrating your confidence in what you've created and establishing yourself as the creative director - not the client. This is a much more effective approach than asking for approval at every small stage of the process.
• I've found that while many clients are picky, some are busy to - if I have a good looking branding package ready for them to go, many will take it and avoid wasting further time with revisions that don't really matter in terms of bringing in more sales for them.

* NOTE: In order for my approach to work, you need to hone your skills in interviewing clients; being able to read/interpret what they want and sell your artwork (those skills are discussed in the resources I mentioned earlier).

Pure Insanity - Why Some Freelancers Refuse to Embrace Success

A while back a freelancer in GA picked up both the Being a Starving Artist Sucks and Verbal Kung Fu for Freelancers books. At virtually the same time I ran a spec work project as an experiment on CrowdSpring. At the end of that contest I made an offer to give the 10-12 freelancers a free copy of my Being a Starving Artist Sucks eBook (about 3 took me up on the offer).

After a few weeks I checked back with everyone to see how they were enjoying the books (yes, that is important to me). What I was surprised to learn was that the designer in GA who actually bought the books had read through them both, in fact she said, "These books are fantastic. I devoured them. I found both of them very funny, and I especially loved the kung-fu theme. Both of them have been quite useful to me already."

Nice response. By the way, I checked out the designer's web site - she's talented and she's going places.

In contacting the other 3 designers I'd met during the spec work project (remember that none of them won the contest I ran), I was surprised to learn that NONE of the 3 designers had read the book. In fact, only 1 of them even went through a few pages. While they all had their own excuses as to why they hadn't done any reading, I found that "I don't have enough time" was a common thread.

Here's a portion of what one wrote, "The book looks really interesting but to be totally honest with you I haven't got very far. That is not because I am not interested, more an issue of time. There are a lot of pages of information to read through and I will get there!"

Hmm, let's back up for a second and look at this; you have time invest hours in doing creative projects that you have virtually no chance of getting paid on, yet you have no time to learn how to grow your business and develop your own clients that will actually pay you.

It's maddening to me. These designers are clearly struggling and yet can't seem to invest 15 minutes a day to grow their business. Over 75% of the freelancing businesses out there won't make it past 2-3 years...I suppose someone has to make up those stats - these freelancers are the ones making up the stats.

What kind of odds do you give these designers in becoming successful and making over even $50k a year?

And is just that they didn't read MY books? Nah, but clearly you can see that "playing the part" of a freelancer is more important to them versus actually becoming a success and being paid for it.

I am sure I'll hear back from the designer in GA - the other 3 I am not holding my breath on. I hope someday they'll get around to taking their success seriously, but if they think spec work is going to make them rich, they've got another thing coming. I wonder how many of them are still actively in business.

PS - Just wanted to quickly thank you guys for passing this info and blog on to other freelancers. If you enjoy reading this and or get an RSS feed to it, please consider letting the online design community know you enjoy this resource.