Freelance

W

weezcolez

New Member
Hi,

I've just set up as a freelance graphic designer straight from Uni based in South Wales. I've done a couple of jobs which have come from word of mouth as I have not advertised as such yet. I'd be very grateful for any advice from other freelancers out there regarding the best ways and places to advertise yourself and to drum up business.

Thanks
 
Boss Hog said:
Welcome to the Graphic Design Forums :icon_smile:

To start off, do you have a website?
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Took the words right out of my mouth - if you don't already, get yourself a portfolio. I'm not a freelancer but a good portfolio is a must.
 
I have done a flash site for myself but decided it wasn't right so am in the process of designing a new one.

Do you know of any good samples of this sort of thing online?
 
Well I would steer away from using too much flash as this won't help your SEO, if you are looking for something cheap that you can do yourself quickly then maybe go for a wordpress based website, loads of skins etc online and plugins to do all kinds of things.

Once you have a website up and running we will be able to advise you further as the website is what you need to market, just ensure you have a good portfolio and are competitively priced which obviously helps :icon_smile:
 
Yea stay away from flash in my opinion. Thats what I had originally and loading times became ridiculous. A possible client/employer is likely to get fed up waiting and not bother with it.

And yea bad SEO as well.
 
Pixels Ink said:
Thats not to say flash isn't good for certain things on a website. Just don't make the whole thing flash.
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Exactly, just don't have it 100% flash, ensure you have a decent amount of textual content on each page and bits of flash here and there will be fine and can look REALLY good.
 
Welcome to the forums Weez.

I echo the comments of getting your website up, that'll be your main source of income. If you're lacking on the portfolio front, I would advise doing some free work to get the ball rolling. You could offer your services here if you wish to do so.
 
Pixels Ink said:
Thats not to say flash isn't good for certain things on a website. Just don't make the whole thing flash.
Click to expand...

Yea sorry - full flash sites were what I meant as they are terrible for loading times as I found out.

Websites with flash elements work well though :icon_smile:
 
Gareth, been meaning to mention, your website seems to take ages to load (maybe somebody can confirm this as it could be my connection again).

I think it is because you have too many large images on your homepage, can you not split the page so 50% of them are on page 2 for example, I'm sure there's a setting in wordpress for it to only display X amount of threads.

Just a thought :icon_dunno:
 
hmmm, its fast on mine, but that said I'd be interested in what people's experiences are of the loading time, because if its slow for the majority then I need to sort it, let me know people.

Thanks for bringing it up Boss, rather know than not:icon_thumbup:
 
Thats good enough reason for me to change it Col, many thanks, off to look at ways of speeding the upload time.
 
I was around 20 seconds too, you need to reduce the image sizes with optimisation and show half as many posts on the homepage as mentioned above.

When you've done it give us a shout and we'll check.
 
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