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Entering the word of freelance design on your own can be intimidating, but as long as you have a solid self-promotion strategy you will be able to find work in no time. There are a few basic steps that you can take to promote yourself as a freelance designer, including business cards, your portfolio, direct mail, and your target audience. The first step is to get yourself some business cards. They will be your most important publicity item because they let people know what you do and how to contact you. Business executives usually keep a large selection of vendor business cards handy for the occasional odd job. Your business card needs to include your mailing address, telephone number, cell phone number, email address and website address. Keep the design of your business card simple, clean and very easy to read. You do not want to risk a potential client not being able to make sense of the information on your business card because of an over-the-top design. Get plenty of cards printed. As in thousands. Hand out several cards during meetings with prospective clients, because they might pass them onto their colleagues. If you already have some existing clients, give them plenty of cards to pass on as well. Add a few additional cards along with invoices or newsletters. Drop a few cards in public places like company reception areas, sports clubs, restaurants, anywhere a prospective client could pick one up. If you design websites for a living then having your own custom web design is a must. It needs to include a killer portfolio so your prospective clients know what kind of designer you are. Having an online portfolio makes it easy to share your work with prospective clients. Instead of attaching a few JPG samples of your work, you can just email them your website address and let them look at your entire portfolio. When you go to get your business cards printed, print some mailer-postcards as well. Custom designed postcards are the perfect way to show off your design skills and get noticed because prospective clients don’t have to open an envelope to see it. It’s all right there for the world to see at a glance. Most freelancers just send out emails scouting for new clients. When an executive sees a custom designed postcard instead, it will most likely stick with them. Design something fantastic on one side, then write something about yourself and your talents that will be memorable in the future on the other side. When researching what companies to send your postcards to, aim for higher end corporations. Large corporations have multiple departments with individual design needs, which makes for a lot more available work. Larger corporations also tend to have a more on-going need for a graphic designer.
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