Reply To: accepting a request/road to start as a freelancer ?

[silentheart00]

Well, this got lost in the great churn of class posts this month, but here’s my advice:

1. Never take exposure as payment.  People are asking for free work and it is not worth your time to take free work when you know you can get paid for it.  Exceptions would be if you wanted to donate something to someone or something out of the goodness of your heart, but do not take requests from people in exchange for exposure.  I and many others have learned the hard way.
2.  Charge fairly and know what you’re worth.  Take a look at what the going rates are for your area/on the website/etc. and match that price within a few bucks.  Don’t ever undersell yourself.  You can charge per project or per hour if you wish.  Whatever you think works best for you or for the project.
3. Have a written contract for you and your client.  You may have to throw down a few bucks to talk to a lawyer to have a contract written up, but hopefully that will then become a template for future clients.  Or you can whip up your own, but beware, there may be loopholes you don’t see when you write one yourself.  This gives you more leverage for when your client doesn’t want to pay in court.

As for Facebook, I would not personally use it because in their terms and agreements, the can collect any and all information possible about you (although living in the EU the new privacy regulations may have dampened them down a bit) and the biggest issue I have with Facebook is any image you post on it is now the property of Facebook as well as on any subcompanies, such as Instagram.  So from now on, I advise you to read any website’s terms and conditions and privacy policies that you will be conducting business on.  Deviantart is alright, but I suggest signing up for Artstation.  It has a pretty professional portfolio website for free, it’s built for artists and freelancers, and has a Sellers option in Alpha that has the best fees I’ve seen so far for a selling platform.  The percentage is a little less than other sites, but the fees are ridiculously low.

This video may help, too.

Let me know if there are any other questions you have and I’ll do my best to answer them.