There area a couple of ways around this, one is to call and set an appointment. Chances are that you may still be turned away if they are not interested in speaking with anyone regarding a sales pitch. My suggestion is if this does not work, do direct mail. Make a nice letter on your company letterhead with samples of your work inside and send it to them. After about a week, call them and say that you are following up on a letter you sent them the week before. Many times, this will get you in the door, because they are more familiar with who you are; that is if they read your letter.
Having a contract with a printer is kind of strange. What I mean by this is you are purchasing their services, so you should be under their terms. Usually, your spec sheet or work order is sufficient for an agreement on what you ordered. If the printer does not do what was requested on your work order, then you have proof to take them to court if necessary.
Here is what I suggest. First you must have a portfolio of your samples. If you do, then look for temp agencies to show your portfolio. These temp agencies help find production and design jobs in large and small corporations and companies. For example, when I first moved to Dallas, I looked up a company called Art Squad. They found me a job in less than 2 weeks as a freelance designer for Blue Cross. I use Art Squad anytime work is slow. They always have some type of work, whether good or bad, but it all pays the bills. I have listed below a few places you should look into to help you find temp to full-time work.
I will try to answer your question, but I am not by any means a CPA, so what I tell you should be checked out directly with a professional. Usually, as a freelancer, you only charge tax on the final product. If an agency has contracted you to do a project, they will be the ones completing the final product for the client. Thus, charging the client tax. In order for the agency to be tax exempt, they must provide a Tax ID number and fill out a tax exemption form. Check with your state for state tax regulations and requirements.
To answer you question about what to charge, is dependent on experience as well as location. Your location could warrant a high fee such as $100 per hour, but that all depends on experience and skill level. As an artist starting out, I would charge between $30 and $50 per hour, with $50 an hour being the preferred rate. Use our pricing guides and plug in your hourly rate. You should also time yourself on a regular basis to see how much time it takes to do a project. By the way, never sell yourself short. If it takes you 5 hours to do a brochure, and you know that most designers would take 10, then charge for 10. If the client has a hard time with the costs, go down to 8 hours charge. You’re still making money and are beating the competition.
As for a client requesting a cat smoking a cigar or even a sailboat, you can always use clip-art or contract an illustrator. I know how to draw, but my skill is not in illustration, so I hire that extra work out. Of course, I mark the cost up. Put it this way, if a client requests something give them 2 options. One would be clip-art, which is not custom and you may not be able to find exactly what they want, or you tell them you can have your illustrator come up with custom artwork. Let them know the price difference. To figure pricing on clip-art, I just roll that into the cost of my design quote; it is so inexpensive, it does not justify too much additional costs. For custom work, this could range from $100 to several thousand. Get with an illustrator and mark up the work 20%.
Here are some links for clip-art and stock photography. I suggest signing up for them when you can, or on a per need basis. Some of the sites are a pay per image program.
Link building is one of the most vital aspects of online marketing. Link building techniques can be quite diverse. They may be effective in generating more traffic from another domain, or to help you rank higher in search engines. Furthermore, by using online tools like a serp keyword checker, you can target which kinds of keywords to target for your anchor texts.
The first step is to identify the person, website or site that you want to get linked from. This can be done by doing a search using your preferred search engine. There are also several bookmarking websites which offer a listing of sites that have links that could be good for your business.
Another option is to use Internet social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook and perform your own research into the well-known people and sites that are being linked. You can also ask people you know who they have used or have already used to get a feel of how reliable the links are that you choose to use. Once you have identified a site that fits your requirements then all you need to do is search on the respective social media sites and make contact with the owner of the site.
As mentioned earlier, there are various bookmarking websites that offer a list of sites that are used by other websites. As a result, it is possible to get links from quite a few different sites using the methods outlined above. These bookmarking sites are very useful because they ensure that the links that you use are relevant (as they are categorised) and they have been verified by users via user rankings.
Link building can be very time consuming, and it can require some effort and discipline to generate the desired results. You should always focus on using high quality links to increase your website’s exposure. This means that you must not solicit for cheap links because they may not be recognised by the search engines. Instead, you should focus on using the most prominent and respected links available.
While directory submission sites are the best known, there are other link building techniques that do not involve the use of any single site. These include blogging, forum posting, forum submission, forum submission with comments and blog commenting. However, the real success of any link building campaign is to have quality links – quality over quantity!
