For a freelancer, a website is an essential marketing tool. It proudly displays your work to potential clients 24/7. It trumpets your accomplishments to art directors all over the world. Most will not even consider hiring you if you don’t have a website.

But not all websites are created equal.

There are some little extra touches that can go a long way in making sure your website pushes you to the top of the hiring list. Some of these tips I’ve just recently learned. In fact, I’m planning to completely redo my website this fall to take better advantage of them.

Put your contact info at the top.
Make sure your email and phone number appear on your header, so that they are readily visible on every page. It’s not that uncommon for an art director to print out samples from two or three artists to show to the boss and/or the hiring committee for a project. If they are having a tough time deciding which artist to call, having your contact info at the top of the page might push you over the edge, especially if the art director is busy and doesn’t want to take time to look up the contact info for the other artists.

Don’t use Flash.
I know many artists use Flash on their websites. It looks cool, and can make it difficult for others to copy and use your artwork. But while it may help you protect your work, but it won’t help you get hired.

According to The Thriving Artist, an excellent resource by Mark Simon, there are two ways Flash can work against you:

First, you can’t print a Flash webpage unless print functionality has been purposely built in (and most of the time it hasn’t). If a busy art director can’t print out your work, your samples won’t make it into the hiring meeting.

Second, Flash sites are not user-friendly. One nice advantage of non-Flash websites is that each page has a unique URL. If you want a potential client to view your character design portfolio, for example, just send them a direct link to that page and they can go right to it. With a Flash website, the potential client will have to start on the home page and poke around for the correct page. To a busy art director at a big agency that could be a turn-off.

Post your resume.
I’ve been freelancing for ten years without a resume, going on the strength of only my portfolio and client list. Recently, I’ve been advised that not having a resume could be limiting the jobs I can get.

Often, I’m told, the hiring decisions at an agency or corporation can take place outside the art director’s office in a more corporate setting. The final decision is not always made by the art director alone, but by businessmen and other non-creative types. In such a setting, the lack of a resume can make you look less professional and keep you from making the final cut.

Taking that advice, I’ve just posted my resume online here. For now there’s a link on my home page, but when I redo my website this fall I’ll make the link more accessible site-wide.

Post a PDF of your portfolio.
Why should the art director have to go online to see your work? Wouldn’t it be great if he/she could easily print out samples to keep on file, or better yet, to bring to the hiring meeting? Take a few of your best samples, assemble them in a PDF, and post them as a mini-portfolio for download.

If you own a Mac, making a PDF is easy. In almost any application, click Print. In the print dialogue box, you should see a little button that says “PDF” or “Save as PDF”. Click it and your file will be converted into a PDF. It’s that simple.

If you don’t have a Mac, you can upload your file to PDFonline.com and they will convert it to a PDF for free.

My mini-portfolio can be downloaded here.

Track your visitors.
Having a website is great, but how do you know if anyone is visiting? Track ’em. Big Brother issues aside, its amazing how much information you can find about your visitors. I use a free service called StatCounter.com. By pasting some code on my website, I can track not only how many people visit my site, but when they visit, which pages they visit, how long they visit, what city/country they are located in, even which web browser and operating system they are using.

I can’t learn anything too personal like name, address, e-mail or phone number, so in my mind its not a privacy issue. There’s nothing to get paranoid about. All it really tells me is how many people are visiting my website, and which pages they are viewing most often. Using that information, I can see if there’s a link that no one is clicking. Or if the number of visitors drops down for a while, I know its time to step up my self-promotion efforts. The knowledge is used for good, not evil.

If you want to get more specific info from your visitors, here’s a legitimate way to do it….

Create a Sign-Up Page
You obviously have a mailing list, right? But adding the right names to the list can be a challenge. The good news is, chances are there are people visiting your site who like your work and wouldn’t mind being contacted with updates. These people could turn out to be your best leads for future work, you just need to find out who they are. With a little website magic, you can create a sign-up page on your website. That way you can get some names on your mailing list from people who actually want you to advertise to them.

Just make sure the sign-up process is short and simple. Quick and easy is the rule. Make all fields optional, and don’t ask for anything more than some basic information. You can view my sign-up page here.

With a little extra work, your website can go from being a simple marketing tool to a promotional machine.

CreativePro.com is a great resource for, well, creative pros. They’ve got some helpful articles, and a free email newsletter called “CreativeProse” that almost always has at least one item/article that interests me enough to read. (Which, unfortunately, is not always the case with email newsletters.) Check out a couple of recent articles from a regular feature titled The Art of Business:

Winning Back Lost Clients
Price Wars

You can subscribe to the CreativeProse newsletter here.

How did I not know about this website? Thanks to a blog entry by the very talented Tom Richmond, I’ve recently discovered FreelanceSwitch.com. FreelanceSwitch is a blog devoted to freelancers in general (artists, writers, web designers, etc.). I’ve seen several websites that attempt to gather resources and advice for freelancers. Some are good, others not so much. This is one of the best ones. Dig around and you’ll finds some helpful articles that are real gems.

Last year storyboard artist Mark Simon published a 3-CD audio set containing his lecture “The Thriving Artist” given at the National Caricaturist Convention. Simon’s website describes the lecture as a “non-stop energy presentation packed with insider secrets and industry stories you won’t hear anywhere else.” The first two CD’s contain the lecture, and the third “bonus” CD is Mark discussing all the information he didn’t have time to include in his presentation.

Since I’ve been freelancing for over ten years now, I didn’t think there would be much information on the CD’s that I didn’t already know. But I was pleasantly surprised. The CD’s are jam-packed with very practical info, and although much of the content is material I was already familiar with there were quite a few tips and insights I hadn’t heard or considered before, or that I looked at in a new way. Simon is an artist who is also very much a businessman, so he does a good job of presenting important business-related topics in a very relatable way. His speaking style is very energetic and confident, but not over-the-top like what you might expect from a lot of “self-help” type material. If you make your living as an artist, or if you aspire to, purchasing this CD set would be money well spent.

Here’s a list of the topics covered in the lecture, taken from the back of the CD jacket:

• What is a Thriving Aritst?
• Learn how to earn more money, without doing more work.
• Should artists ever work outside the arts?
• How to get art jobs.
• Fighting the Starving Artist Myth.
• Dealing with families who say,, “Get a real job.”
• Artists have more job opportunities than any other profession.
• Rates and Salaries.
• How to turn clients into evangelists for you
• The 80/20 business rule.
• Accounting for aritsts.
• Marketing do’s and don’ts.
• Artist rights.
• Artist resumes.
• Artist websites.
• The 5 steps of hiring freelancers.
• And much more.

You can order “The Thriving Artist” here.

As I mentioned in Part 1, when it comes to networking talent will only get you so far. Passion, confidence, and likability will take you a lot farther. There are some very talented artists whose careers are languishing because they lack these other qualities. Likewise, there are some very mediocre artists whose careers are thriving because they have those other qualities in abundance. I guess it’s just human nature. Who would you rather work with, a talented person who you enjoy being around, or a really talented person who is insecure, boring, or a jerk?

But what if you are not naturally bold and outgoing? What if you aren’t a great conversationalist? That’s ok. There aren’t too many people who come by those qualities naturally. You don’t have to be Mr. or Mrs. Popular. Just be yourself and then look for ways to gradually improve and grow. By nature I’m an introvert and I hate making small talk. But every time I force myself to get out there and mix it up, things get a little easier and I get a little more confident. Even if I strike out, I’m still better off as long as I learn from the experience.

I’m certainly no expert in this area, but here’s some networking tips I’ve picked up over the years:

1. Be authentic. Nobody likes a phony or a pretender. Besides, you won’t fool anyone. If you are trying to be something you aren’t, people can sense it pretty quickly.

2. Put the relationship ahead of the reward. Don’t get so caught up in finding a lead that you view the other person as a means to an end. People who network that way are really just using people, and nobody likes to be used. Treat people the way you’d want to be treated. I read about a young art student at Comic-Con who wanted to show is work to a leader in the industry. Instead of just walking up to the leader’s table and asking for a portfolio review, he offered to get him a drink or a sandwich from the concession stand. Of all the aspiring artists the leader talked to that day, guess which one he’s going to remember?

3. Focus on giving, not getting. Don’t make your main concern be what the other person can do for you (i.e. give you work and a paycheck). Instead, emphasize on what you can do for them (i.e. offer ideas, meet their budget and deadlines, etc.)

4. Follow every lead. Just because someone isn’t in the position to hire you doesn’t mean they can’t help you. People know other people, and the creative community is a lot smaller than you might think. If you make a good impression on a secretary, a website programmer, the bookkeeper, whomever…don’t brush it off. You never know whose ear they may have. Also, if someone gives you their business card don’t throw it away. Jot some notes down on the back about who they were, how/why you talked, or any other important info. If you network well at a conference or event you will come home with a fist full of business cards, and its easy to forget who was who. Make notes, keep track, and send everyone a follow-up email. A simple “thanks for chatting” or “it was nice to meet you” will suffice. Likewise, if someone gives you a name or a phone number of someone else to contact, treat it like gold. Those are the kind of leads that have the highest chance of turning into real work.

5. Be patient. Don’t get discouraged if you follow up on all your leads and nothing happens. Just because you don’t hear back doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve failed to make a good impression. People are busy, and it may be that they simply don’t have a need for you at that particular moment. Keep reminding them of your services through an occasional friendly phone call or e-mail (but don’t badger them). When the right project comes along, they’ll know who to call: You!

As a freelancer I’m always looking for my next paying gig. Unlike most people, I don’t have a steady paycheck to rely on (although the bills keep parading through my mailbox with military efficiency). To get new work I advertise on several illustration websites, I send out a quarterly e-mail to potential clients, and I occassionally do promotions through the mail. These are all good strategies, and for several years the combination of all three has helped provide a steady flow of new projects. But there are limitations to this kind of self-promotion.

First of all, such methods lack focus. With each strategy I am casting a broad net over hundreds or even thousands of potential clients in the hopes that a small handful will respond. And a few almost always do. But the results can be an unpredictable mish-mash of exciting projects, mediocre projects, and projects that are downright painful to work on (fortunately most are in the first category). I’d like to start fine-tuning my promotional efforts to target the specific clients and projects that I would really enjoy working on.

Which leads to the second problem with my current strategy: It is too generic and impersonal. I start by designing a postcard or webpage with a “one size fits all” mentality and then let the internet or the mailman find the matches for me. To land the projects I really want requires a more customized strategy that targets specific individuals and companies I want to work with.

Finally, I need to make sure I am getting out there to network and make connections. There are several agencies and corporations here in the Minneapolis area that would be a good fit for me but who may not even know I exist. To land the type of jobs that I really want, I need to start making some calls and promoting specifically to them. I also need to make sure I continue to attend conferences and events, because you never know where a connection might lead. I am currently working as a character designer for a cartoon series on NBC, and I can trace it all the way back to a trip to Comic-Con in 2003. During that trip an artist friend encouraged me to introduce myself and show my portfolio to a Disney animator (who is now one of the show’s directors).

But therein lies my biggest challenge: Meeting new people in person is out of my comfort zone. I like freelancing partly because it fits with my hermit-like tendencies. But if I want to advance professionally (and grow personally) I need to get out there and make some personal connections with the outside world and its inhabitants. And that means brushing up on my networking skills. More on that in part 2…