Recently I was hired to write a feature article for Adbase Insight, the email newsletter of Adbase.com. Each issue contains meaty content designed to help freelance illustrators and photographers market themselves better. I’ve found the articles to be extremely helpful and am proud to be a part of it. You can sign up for Adbase Insight for free here.
In my article I wrote about using the internet to raise your profile and find new clients. Here’s an excerpt from the introdcution:
“If you build it, they will come”.
Those immortal words might be true of baseball fields in Iowa, but they are not true of websites. One of the biggest mistakes a freelancer can make is assuming that people will flock to his/her website just because it is there.
It’s been said that having a website is like printing up flyers and leaving them on your front porch in the hopes that someone will walk over and take one. That would be a foolish advertising strategy for a business, but that is exactly how some freelancers attempt to find work online. In order to attract potential clients, you need to do more than just have a website. You need to take full advantage of the power of the Internet.
You can read the rest of the article here. The first half is content I have already covered elsewhere on this blog, but the second half of the article is brand new.
Adbase is a company that maintains a giant mailing list of art directors and art buyers. If you freelance full-time as an illustrator or photographer, Adbase’s services are well worth the money:
- You can quickly and easily send a postcard campaign to thousands of art buyers.
- Using a service called Adbase Emailer you can send sharp-looking quarterly emails to those same art buyers. Adbase will not only create and send your promo emails, they will track how many people actually read it and how many clicked through to your website. (I send out an email campaign every quarter, and I almost always get at least one job from it.)
- You can customize your mailing lists any way you’d like, and Adbase promises to always keep the contact info up to date.
- In addition, no one’s name is added to the mailing list without their permission, so you don’t have to worry about harassing a potential client with unwanted spam.
Obviously I’m a very satisfied Adbase customer. Give them a looksee. And don’t foget to read Harnessing the Power of the Internet.