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by xerox-elf
1201 days ago
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I'm not in tech, but I'm a self-employed independent contractor (motion graphics design). My annual gross income is between 100-150% that of my full-time colleagues. For roughly half the working hours. It's a pretty sweet deal. How I did it: I spent 2.5 years full-time at one of these pressure cooker SF ad agencies that churns through junior employees like nobody's business. By the time I left, I had connections at ad agencies throughout SF. Five years later, all my jobs have come through word of mouth referrals. I bill based on a day rate. The average job is between 1-4 weeks long. However, there's a strong caveat: for the last couple years, 75% of my work has come from one client. The tech recession has made a lot of my smaller side gigs shrivel up, so I'm pretty dependent on this one agency holding steady. I'd feel a lot more secure if I had a more diverse client roster-- I've been brainstorming ways to be more proactive about client outreach. Looking back, I should have started looking for opportunities to productize from day one. The thought didn't occur to me. It's definitely something I'm looking into now. |
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The beauty of your success is that you are in advertising, and so you advertised yourself successfully enough to get word of mouth of referrals, and so you must be good!
How do you go about looking for clients that are interested in your services? Do you wait for them to come to you through word of mouth? How do you expose your availability and skillset?