Went to work in a small company doing design work. It blurrred into office work. The owner would say without income there is no graphic work. Needed the work, thought I was getting my feet wet, stuck it out.

Design work came less frequently and was allocated to my time left after completing my other work “but need it this week…” Everything became rushed. My work was well received, had a few opportunities to do projects for outside sources.

The clincher was when they brought on a graphic design student to do their graphics because I was too valuable doing the office work. The co-owner wanted to develop a different style and figured that this would be the right move. The intern had three months to do what I would do in 10 hours. I was stuck doing office work, small black and white ads and occasionally tossed a design bone. It went downhill from there real fast.

Not going into the job with a know all confident attitude I ended up being walked over. I did not stand my ground until it was too late.

Yep… just the other day I did a guy “a favour, it’s simple - maximum 30 minutes”, which in the end took 3 hours.
He was working as an art director at my previous job, (which went bankrupt). I suppose this guy has a lot of contacts and dupes them all into doing various “favours” with the lure of getting paid jobs out of it in the end. At the time he offered me a freelance job as well, but after this I think every paid job will come with 3 favours for free.

Not sure where to draw the line, but it’s important not do do anything for free, and preferably not cheap either, because if not we will be disrespectfully taken advantage of !!
But as a beginner, knowing what to charge is one of the hardest things…

Recently I went on an interview for a in house web designer position. The company wanted me to make several concepts for their site redesign to see if I fit there company needs. Im not positive of what they were thinking since I even mentioned that I’m trying to break out as a freelancer, I emailed them saying I cannot do the concepts without being compensated.

It amazes me that they tried to pull that on me, I wonder how many free web designs they managed to get out of ‘potential’ employees. Even more so, I wonder how many of them refused to hand over something they worked hours on for nothing, expect hope that they would receive the job. While the company is building a data base of designs for them to use for their own needs after the designer is turned down the position.

Great article btw!

Samantha

THIS IS AN AWESOME POST! I’ve run into 3 of the 4 common scams listed.

People always like to tell you it will be great portfolio experience. ESPECIALLY IF YOUR A STUDENT! Watch out for this but still understand that you are not UBERDeSIGNER and you actually might have to do a few of these in the beginning. What I would do is design something for a non-profit and then file the cost of your design as a donation at tax time. (I don’t know if this is possible but it sounds like a good idea to get something out of doing free design).

While I was a student I did run into one of those fake contests. When I asked how much money I would win the people running it were like nothing. I laughed!

Spec Work. I hate this. If the client doesn’t have an idea of what they want. I’m not apposed to doing some concept wireframes or linking them to a couple of sites where they could get ideas but when they want me to do a mock up with no money down. Start of a failing relationship.

I recently had to hire a web developer for my company with a really low budget which was interesting because I was finally on the “flip side” of the coin trying to get something for cheap rather than keep for getting taken. My boss of course is just looking to get something for free but I’m morally against pressuring young developers for free code. I did get it for low cost but I believe it was at a fair price. The developer didn’t have much experience at the CMS I needed and I wasn’t about to pay him for his education.

As a community I think it is important that designers help each other not get ripped off but at the same time help each other determine the worth of our own designs. Working in a larger corporation would help take out a lot of these pricing woes but limit your freedom.

Final piece of advice is just BE CLEAR. If you don’t need portfolio work tell them no thanks. If you don’t do mock ups let them now how much of a down payment you need. Don’t be shy! Give them the number just make sure you’re both clear on how you got it. USE A CONTRACT!

Thank you all for the great responses, I think this post and all its comments will really help out designers new to the business.

I also wanted to add one more thing to be careful of:

Don’t Get to Friendly

Its easy to get really friendly with clients especially if they give you steady work and payments. I remember once instance where I would get paid at the end of each week for my work instead of before I started working on the projects and I ended up getting stiffed for a week of work when they decided they didn’t need me anymore.

I feel with you Victoria. Great post, although this is common sence really.

Great cartoon! Which i could say i had never been taken for a fool. But of course, i have.

This is a great post. I’ve been designing for a few years, but only recently went completely freelance, and boy it doesn’t take long to start getting screwed over. One of my first clients and one after her decided after completion to go to paypal and get their money back..or half anyway. It seems you can do that easily over there. I learned real fast not to give any files until I get final payment. I got burned a few times.

Currently I have a client wanting to hire me to do her a site, and since she just wanted a small simple site, I agreed to do it for $600..I know, bad choice. I actually just got an email this morning from her stating she was uncomfortable with my contract, and felt that she could incur additional costs. Now, the only thing in my contract that would be additional is Flash (billed separately by the hour), her not paying on time (I charge a small interest in my contract for that, but have never had to use it), or large scale changes after the site is finished and her 6 months of small updates are up.

I do charge for ongoing SEO…I mean, I’m not continuing to do SEO for free. What do you guys think.

This little cartoon is awesome! My husband is a graphic designer… we know how it goes… Too funny.

I’m glad you guys liked it, I thought it was pretty funny too. =)

its really tough to start out as a designer, you get to do some jobs for free..
but you can always find a good client..

How very true this post is. As a freelance designer and also a national sales rep. with a major printing firm I see this all day everyday…. from friends, from clients (current and potential). It is like being wrongly convicted of murder and then going out and bargain shopping for a lawyer. Okay maybe not that severe but still for many companies having a dynamic design to create a presence in the business world is the difference in that businesses life and death. So why would someone want to go out and get the cheapest possible.

There is a really good article in a Printing Trade magazine that talks about firing bad clients because they cost you more money and sales than keeping the good ones and much the same is this article. It is better to kick these “want something for nothing” clients to the curb… even though they might pay right now in the long run you could get 10 clients to replace the one bad one. Because as we all know the ones who want it for nothing are usually the ones who want it redesigned 100 times.

You need to bring a really big and scary guy named “Guido” with you to the client meetings who only grunts in monosyllables. This can help facilitate the client to pay-up. Or else….

Then I believe the craft will regain the respect it deserves.

I’m a beginner at web design and i currently did something simple for my website… a Flash website.. real simple because i’m new to web design, even though I am alright in Flash and quite good in Photoshop.

Anyway, This 16 year old guy from German somehow cam accross my website and saw my msn contact in my contacts page.. He added me on msn and asked me if he could use one of my old website layouts i don’t use nomore.. Not knowing about this scam and since i didn’t need that old layout, i didn’t hesitate and offerd him my layout in PSD format but then told him not to use it but to look at it and dom something similar with his own style.. Well, I guess he didn’t listen to that..

He then later on kept on bombarding me to help him with designs and to fix some premade flash websites he downloaded to use for his page because he doen’t know anything about flash… he basically depended on me to do his work and website for him free of charge..

I think last week or so he came back wanting me to fix a Flash site for his friend but I told him I can’t do it.. and if he wanted a Flash website, he should learn tutorials like I did and became familiar with the program.. and since then, he’s not been able to ask me to do anything for him ^_^

Next time, I’m charging
Great post by the way..

Regards,
Kofi

This is a very well written article.

I truly believe that designing has been more commercial now than artistic. Most of the clients look around for “cheap” designers. And definitely the reasons mentioned are absolutely right, especially the 4th one regarding the Indian designers. I am an Indian designer myself and have seen people stooping too low to get work from clients. It is pathetic to see this happening. I personally don’t take up cheap works, unless I am in a real need of money. The effort is simply not worth the effort or, no offense, even the client doesn’t deserve that kind of effort at times.

Nice post!

Gino and I were going over this just yesterday. Ironic that there was a recent post on the matter. Haha.

The that I have known for a while tried to get me to do cd album covers for free so that I would get “recognition” and get my name out there. HAH! Wasn’t he wrong. (Dropped the client ^_^)

~chris

Be warned. Get a Freelancer.com is the worst for these types of scams. Whenever you see an ad or post requesting design samples flag them to be removed or boycott them. Let’s unite to stop the exploitation designers. If we refuse to work for sub standard wages the industry will reward all of us. If we keep low balling to get work sure we may get more but we’ll have to do 5x the jobs to make a living. This hurts all of us. Yes this includes India and the like.

John
http://www.johnwboyd.info