Did you ever think through how seemingly “small” mistakes and moments of bad judgement can ruin your reputation and steal clients away from you? Especially if you’re new as a freelancer/designer, there are many things you need to think through. Today we have put together a list of some of the things we think you should be especially aware of. We hope this can be a helpful tool for you.

Image by ZsuZsanna Kilian

Good luck!

Don’t take on too many projects at once

If you want to make sure every client get the focus and quality they deserve, make sure you’re not doing too much at the same time. This will only get you in trouble and you will lose in the long run.

Not being available

Make sure your clients can reach you most of the time. If you spend a day in a meeting, make sure to activate your voicemail and leave an away message on your email. If something really important comes up, clients aren’t always as patient as you’d like them to be.

Not listening

Make sure to follow as many of your clients wishes as you can. And never forget to repeat and assure that you haven’t misunderstood anything. If you’re not listening, you’ll get unhappy clients that wont come back. After all your clients are the ones paying your bills!

Pricing problems

Image by Flavio Takemoto

There are many potential problems related to the pricing of your products/services. You have to decide with your client if you will charge by the hour or if you’re giving a set price in advance. All professionals do this as a natural part of the early stages of work. If you’re not spending enough time on this you could again get unhappy clients that wont pay the bills.

No contract

On all bigger projects you will need a contract/signed agreement. This should include what is included, what will cost extra, the agreed price, expected finishing date, how the product(s) will be delivered, when bills are to be paid and what that will happen if any of the parts break their part of the deal. Without a contract there are tons of problems that could arise.

Being insecure

Now for some more “personal” mistakes. Being insecure is something that quickly can be a deal-breaker. To avoid this you’ll need to read up on your client and the project (if possible). Make sure that you know what you can do and that you are confident with your own skills and products. If necessary, use your CV and portfolio to lean on.

Being too confident

Finding the right balance is important. Make sure you’re never too confident. You have a job to do, you’re not the only expert in the field. By being friendly, humble and professional will bring you more projects than just bragging about your own skills at all times.

Copying other designers

Make sure you see the difference between being inspired by a trend and being a copycat. Sometimes it’s a fine line, and once you cross it you will not be seen as professional or unique.

Using default settings at all times

Make sure you know your software properly. If you want to be seen as a professional and unique designer, you can’t keep using standard brushes, layer styles and clip art in your work. Many new designers do this for a while before they realize how destructive it can be for their reputation.

Not saving properly

A typical newbie mistake is often related to saving. All software can crash every now and then, and the power could go out for an hour. Make sure you have routines for saving properly when you’re working. And remember that saving properly means to also save different layers, fonts and other resources used in that specific project. This can save you many hours and a lot of money if done correctly.

Backup

Image by Svilen Milev

You have to have a good backup plan. What if the office gets robbed, there’s a fire or your computer just crashes? Make sure you always have your work backed up outside of the office as well as having a backup on site.

Conclusion

These were some of our most valuable tips for avoiding some of the most common design mistakes. We hope these can help you out, and we would also love to hear your own tips and experiences in the comments.

Thank you and good luck!

Image by Wilton Rodriguez

In this article we’ll have a look at some potential time-consuming factors that can ruin your efficiency during the workday.

Social Media

As much as we love Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc., we need to keep track of the time we spend to make sure we get our work done properly. It may sound easy, but if you’re really into a conversation or chatting up with other designers it can be easy to get carried away and lose valuable hours.It’s a well-known fact that many people spend a lot more time on social media than what is good for business. Keep private things outside of work hours, set an amount of time for social media each day and keep it closed when you’re supposed to work. A minute here and there can easily mean many minutes and maybe even hours during a day.

Private tasks

Image by Tey Teyoo

For many freelancers, private tasks and errands can steal a lot of time that should have been spent working. If you have a home-office, it’s important to close the door and focus. Private emails, phone-calls and different errands should be kept outside of your work-hours. Once you start allowing these things to steal of your time, you could be in trouble.

Websites

Are you reading different websites when at work? Keeping up to date on what goes on in the market is really important, but do you spend more time on the Internet that what you really need to? It’s normal to get carried away reading about design news, tutorials, interviews, showcases and so on, – but it’s equally important to know when to stop. With the huge amounts of available information out there you need to be able to stop in time. Decide how much time you’ll allow each day and keep the schedule.

Underpaid projects

Image by 1mblack

Are you getting what you’re worth? A common mistake, especially for new designers, is to keep saying yes to underpaid projects. You will need to accept a few of those to fill up your portfolio and get experience, but do you just keep doing them? If you fill up your time with underpaid projects, you wont have time to chase the better paid ones. It’s all about finding the balance. As hard as it can be to say no sometimes, you need to consider when it’s time to try move on to the better projects.

Time-stealing clients

Some clients just take up too much of your time compared to what you’re getting back. If you have clients that call you 24/7 to ask about smaller things or that want to make changes to the project all of the time, you need to look into how you can fix this. Of course you should take proper care of all clients you have, but you’ll occasionally you’ll meet the types that just keep calling and changing their wishes because of bad habit. A good way of dealing with this is to schedule regular meetings with these clients to make sure everything’s taken care of in a proper way.

E-mails and phone-calls

Image by Ivan Prole

Whether it’s clients, family or others that call or mail you, it can quickly be very time-consuming to keep getting back to everyone. Several successful designers I’ve been in touch with have an hour at the start (or the end) of every day to take care of emails and phone-calls that need to be made. This is a good way of cleaning up your inbox and making those calls without having everything interrupt what you’re doing throughout the entire day.

Conclusion

There are many challenges on the path to success as a freelance designer / small business owner. If you learn how to avoid many of the time-stealing factors that lurk around, it’ll be much easier to get the success you’re looking for. Do your best at planning your work hours, leave room for the distractions at set times and focus.

Finally we’d also love to hear your own tips.

Good luck!

After a few years of freelancing out of my Gmail inbox and a simple checklist in my Google Desktop sidebar, I finally committed to finding a new solution. I needed a better way to manage my projects. Avoid common mistakes in selecting a new project management tool with these easy steps.

Step 1: Identify Your Needs

In most cases, different people have different requirements. I didn’t need some massive piece of project management software, I just needed a better way to organize and track about 4-7 projects simultaneously. Gadgets and graphics are fun, but I needed to upgrade for the functionality, not for the pretty effects and eronious options.

Step 2: Indetify Your Wants

This is just as important as identifying your needs. Since you’re already willing to make a big change, you might as well make sure you’re making all the changes you’d like to. There’s few things more frustrating that going through a big upgrade or change only to find out shortly after that you’d like to make additional tweaks and you need to go through the whole process again.

Despite what some people think, it’s strikingly easy to determine your wants for things like project management… Just answer the following questions:

• I wish I could…
• It’d so awesome if the software did…
• Hopefully I can find a program that…

See, it’s not rocket-science folks. I discovered that I’d love a solution I could log into from anywhere and get to work. I thought it’d be great if my clients could also log into the software and track and discuss projects so I also wanted it to look nice. Do you want to access your info on the go? Do you want to have multiple users?

Step 3: Identify Your Restraints

This is the most commonly skipped step for most of us. We’ve gotten so excited about what we might be able to do, we’ve forgotten to get realistic again. Once you’ve thought about what you need and want, it’s time to get down to business.

Money
We’ll start with obvious. If you can’t afford new software right now, you’ll have to be looking at only free packages. The open-source community has plenty to offer so you’re not out of luck. It is also important to keep in mind that “not able to afford” new software is an idea you need to look at closely. Personally, I was ready to admit to myself that a one-time investment into better project management was something I couldn’t afford NOT to do. Between searching through emails and IM conversations and not remembering enough about something my sidebar is calling “Site for Joe”, I was losing more money every month in lost hours than what I would spend on the software.

Time
Now to the not-so-obvious. If you’re putting in 60+ hours a week just to keep your head above the water, you don’t have much time to spend on this upgrade. You’ll need to find a solution quickly and get it up and running even quicker. If you’re not so crunched for time, you should be pretty thorough while going through these steps – the more time you can put in here, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

Needs
In the first step, we pin-pointed what we have to have in our new solution so don’t get sucked into something that doesn’t meet them to your satisfaction. As simple as it seems, I still talk to plenty of people who forget this. Perhaps I could simplify it a bit more… If ‘Software A’ doesn’t have your needs, move one to ‘B’. The solution you select needs to have these… that’s why they’re called needs.

Step 4: Go Shopping!

Note that I did NOT say “Go Purchasing”. My wife could assure you that there is a distinct difference between the two. To me, shopping consists mainly of research and test-drives.

Start by googling some keywords like “project management software”. You’ll see that there are thousands of companies and individuals claiming they have the best software ever created. Try integrating some of your needs and wants into the searches like “hosted”, “simple”, “mobile”, etc. and you’ll start to narrow the field. Once you find a few good-looking candidates, download the trials and test out the demos.

Step 5: Pull The Trigger

You’ve done your homework, you’ve planned, and now you’ve found the solution that best fits what you’re looking for in a project management tool. Puchase, download, install, test, and use it. If you’ve followed these steps you should be well on you’re way to more efficiency and a less stressful work week.

A Few Links to Help You Out

You didn’t think we’d leave you empty-handed did you? In addition to searching around, here are a few of the most popular choices for project management with a quick description.

• ActiveCollab – $199-$399 (one time)
  My choice for project management. Fully-featured, web-based software you can install wherever you want. Full support for iPhone.
• BaseCamp – $24-$149 (per month)
  Crazy popular hosted, web-based solution. Plenty of features, plenty of support.
• Open WorkBench – FREE
  Downloadable replacement for Microsoft’s Project software. More traditional, database-style management.
• dotProject – FREE
  Popular open-source web-based software. Decently equipped, Convincingly ugly.
• Project Management Software
  Read for Benefits of Program Management Software.

Any other favorites out there? Let us know in the comments.