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Hey Everyone!

So here is the thing, I work full time as a designer, and I also have a business of my own on the side. My business is really new, so i have not/am not doing much work. one of the reasons is cause I am really busy with my full time work. What are some inexpensive/free and time effective ways that you promote yourself?

Tags: career, design, promotion

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Well, who are you trying to market to? Is it a clearly defined market segment, a niche market, or everyone?

I would like the kind of aim toward people in need of branding, but it is just a small business, so pretty much any one to get a cliental built up.
I have been struggling with the same thing actually. I have created a Facebook Fan page to get my name out there, along with handing business cards out to close friends & family. I've been given advice about telling everyone you know about your business and to even start blogging and what not. I never had gotten into that, or Twitter because it doesn't exactly seem my cup of tea but it may be for you. It is mainly about getting out there and being yourself, but also you live and learn.
I totally agree, twitter and all the blogging is not really for me. I do have the facebook and twitter accounts, but i dont really up date them much. i have tried blogging, but i never know what to blog about so i usually stop after a short while.

I honestly think that the promotion of any business, whether it is large or small, would either take money or a great deal of time. For example, on Facebook you can pay to have your portfolio fan page advertised to your desired audience. Which, in this case, it actually seems that your target audience would be new businesses because they are likely to need what you can offer.

 

Fair enough, i have been quickly learning that its gonna take a lot of time and money for most cases of promoting. thanks!
Your welcome. Sorry I couldn't help you more.

Hey Nick!

I was just reading your post and thought that I might be able to offer some helpful tips on ways to promote your new business. I was reading some of the other comments and I am with you guys in that Twitter isn't really for me. Blogging can be a great way to get your name out there, but again, this usually requires consistent updating and can sometimes take a while to yield any sort of return.

 

Aside from those things however, you could maybe try taking an ad out in a local newspaper in your area to promote your new business. I have found that it's often best to start local and try to expand from there. It's also helpful to submit some of your work to popular design blogs where they will be viewed by lots of other creatives, or participating in design contests like the ones on 99designs.com or Deviant Art. It's very easy to set up a free portfolio to showcase your work and although it will take some time to update, it's not nearly as time consuming as running a fully operational blog site.

 

These are just a few of the inexpensive ways that you can start to build a foundation while getting your name out there, but these are just some of the things I have learned from my own experiences. Hope it helps!

Thanks. I have been tossing the idea around of the newspaper ad for a little while now. Maybe i will think about it a bit harder. I didn't think about the design contest/site though. maybe i will try that. i will look up 99designs.com for sure. 

Thanks Eric.

Speaking of design contests and what not. I just recently came across. freelancer.com You can either bid on projects that people have posted or take part in design contests. I've actually come to like it very much.
I was actually told by one of my professors that using this site is bad business for the design industry as a whole. It makes it difficult for us to charge what we think we are worth. Instead, we have to deal with the extremetity of underbidding. Amateur designers are taking extremely low bids in efforts to get a job. This is in turn causing businesses to expect a lower charge for our services in general. He stated that we are losing dollars per level of quality because of how these sites are being utilized. He also stated that you are better off doing not profit work to promote yourself, rather than affecting your peer designers. As designers, we should be rated on our designs and quality of work before we are rated on what we charge. I just say all this so we may all be enlightened on the subject and so that we do not get blindsided by the effects of bidding...no offense intended what so ever.
I noticed that a lot of jobs on these site were going for really cheap. I cant really justify doing work that cheap, i dont really want to work for free.

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