I can empathise with removing your phone number — something I also resorted to.

Dave Ellis’s last blog post…Solution Footwear

Amanda has offered some excellent advice (thanks Amanda). Particularly the part about honesty. Don’t bank on anyone who offers a percentage of their profits. From the beginning they’re trying to pay you as little as possible, so it’s unlikely you’ll ever discover their exact income.

Great discussion.

I think with t-shirt design you are looking at around two ways of approaching pricing:

1. Charge them a base price for the design and then a % of each t-shirt sold. But ask yourself this; how are you going to find out how many are sold? Don’t bank on their honesty.

2. Charge a higher fee for the design because you are taking into account they could make money from each t-shirt sold, but run the risk that your high design fees will put them off hiring you in the first place.

Now I agonised over these two when asked to design for t-shirts and made a decision which is a 3rd option. That option was to not ask for a percentage, and also to not over charge for the initial design.

I decided after lots of thought that really whenever I create a design for a client it makes them money because it’s something they market their business with, but I don’t ask for a percentage of the sales made from a flyer design for instance.

In addition I figured that if I found myself in the horrible situation of seeing my design in a high street shop because the design had really taken off in a big way there is a positive spin to this happening anyway.

I can lick my wounds of “Oh no I should have charged more” with the knowledge that once my design is in the High Street I can view this as extreme promotion for me to have my design in such a high profile area (obviously you would advertise the fact in your portfolio) and that is how I will get my money anyway…..by becoming an acclaimed designer, getting more clients, and charging more for my projects.

What about when a client uses a logo I designed for shirts that are going to be sold for x amount of profit? Is it reasonable to request a percentage of the money from each shirt that is sold? Personally I feel that that would be fair, seeming as I still don’t have a summer job before college, and the bills and fees are already shaking thier collection tins at me. This would make up for some of it.

- Emails to clients and contacts
- Writing blogs
- Forming quotations
- Responding to blogs
- Messages in online business forums (online networking = clients)
- Any other area of your business that requires you to type, which is many

The faster you can do your marketing and client email communications and admin, the more you can earn each project whilst keeping your pricing competitive.

It’s not how the real world works at all when you are a professional designer I promise you and a steady flow of customers is definitely something you can expect as long as you consistently do marketing for your business.

Starving artist is a myth perpetuated by people who aren’t earning enough from their trade because they haven’t learned enough about running a business to do well, or they aren’t talented enough as a design to do well. Or a combination of both.

Both of those issues for anyone struggling in that way, can be fixed by learning more about marketing a business and cultivating better design skills.

I think that the issue for most artists isn’t talent, it’s business skills. They think just because they are artistically talented the work will just flow through the door, but it doesn’t.

When you launch into a freelance career, a good 25% of your time at least will probably be spent marketing your business if you expect a steady flow of work.

Nearly all designers will take 50% up front so clients won’t have any issue with that. Any client who does have an issue isa bad debt risk (i.e. it’s more likely they won’t want pay your invoice at the end of the project either), thus the deposit taking is to weed out the bad customers from the people who will pay their invoices.

Price your projects based on how long you think a project will take you, which is unfortunately a matter of experience sometimes, but you’ll have to estimate in the beginning until you’ve done enough variations of projects to get a good idea of how long it actually takes.

Take into account time for making revisions to the design based on clients requests once they see your concept. If you’ve listened properly to what they said they wanted, hopefully these will be minor - the more revisions they want the more it eats into your profit if it’s more than expected.

You can charge extra for revisions if you want, but that can be off putting for the small business owner who often can’t afford for project fees to run away with them mid-project.

Decide on the hourly rate you would like to earn and then double it (50% of your time will be taken up by admin, customer communications, and marketing you see). Then x that hourly rate by the project time. The figure left is your quote…perhaps check it against other providers of similar quality to ensure it is competitive in the marketplace.

It’s in your interest to become a fast designer if you want to earn decent money whilst offering well priced competitive services at the same time.

Hope that helps! :)

Wow, I really rattled on there, lol.

50% up front? That’s a really good idea. But how do you price various projects? I’ve done posters ( like huge posters for school events) for a hundred dollars, but that’s about as extensive as I’ve gotten.

Where I agree with the majority of posts, I think Steve O hit the nail for me; if this potential client wanted a logo, if they consider themselves a professional business, why not act like one?

I’m sure they wouldn’t go to a material stockist, or a shop hoping to sell some gear, and say “can I have some fabric” or “let me sell in your shop”. I think the other people would see them as amateur from the way they present themselves.

How you respond to it, I think determines how you wish to present your own business.

Caroline’s last blog post…Quick and Dirty…