The first website I ever built, as a graduated professional, cost my client a whopping $300. I wish I could say I was sixteen when I did it, but I was twenty-two, working a full-time job and freelancing on the side. Looking back, it’s no surprise when my first year of business after quitting my job landed me in debt. I’ve always had a policy of keeping my expenses as low as possible, but charging $20 an hour simply didn’t cover such non-tax-deductible necessities as “eating on a daily basis”.

When I first started out, my biggest mistake, bar nothing, was charging too little. My intentions were good—I wanted to save my clients money, and I wanted to provide quality design for a low price. What I failed to realize, of course, was that would become a difficult task when I quit my day job to run my business full-time. Sure, my clients were happy, but I was broke, overworked, and stressed out.

A street corner in the pretty, but expensive (by South American standards) Colonia del Sacramento. I could make a convoluted effort to make this relevant, but it isn’t really. It’s mostly here for decoration, and because I mentioned Uruguay.

The result, of course, was burnout. I suffered from burnout for years. But it wasn’t just me who suffered: my clients, too, paid the price. They may have been paying bargain-basement prices for their websites, but, in all honesty, the customer service and attention to detail just wasn’t there. And of course it wasn’t; I simply didn’t have the time or energy to devote to simple tasks like answering emails in an expedient manner, or ensuring that files were properly error-corrected and everything was done to as high a quality standard as I would like.

These days, I charge more. I’m open about telling my clients that I’m not the cheapest option. Graphic design is competitive, and there’s always people willing to design a website for $300. I’m no longer one of them for a few reasons:

• If I’m doing work at a lower rate, I need to take on more projects at a time. I used to have ten to fifteen projects on the go at any time, but now I try to keep that number under six. Fewer projects mean I’m more focused, more efficient, and the overall turnaround time is drastically reduced.
• Charging more for a project means that I can spend more time on it. I work faster now than I used to, of course, but I also spend more time on the details. Cheap design work cuts corners. Unless you’re living off a trust fund, or in your parents’ basement, this is unavoidable.
• In order to truly compete on price—without eschewing the basics like costs of living and sanity—you need to be a huge company. Ultimately, a one-person-shop simply doesn’t have the resources to make this work.

Ultimately, I’d rather give my clients a high quality product and great customer service than a cheap price. As I’ve switched to doing higher quality work at a higher price, both myself and my clients have become happier. The people who choose to work with me don’t choose me because I’ve given the cheapest quote—they choose me because they care about their businesses and they realize that great design is an important part of their success.

When you market yourself this way, you’re using love, rather than price, as a measurement of worth. It’s the difference between Walmart and Apple. Both companies are hugely successful, but I can’t imagine there are a lot of people who have fond feelings for Walmart. In a market where we often feel as though big companies just don’t care, the benefit of being a small business is that you can really connect with your customers. If you care for them, they’ll care for you. When you charge a decent price, you can provide a better product. With a better product, your clients will be happy. Everyone wins!

So charge more. And unless you’re a massive conglomerate, stop competing on price. You can’t beat out the companies who outsource. Instead, make the highest quality product you possibly can and give great customer service. Compete for your clients’ love.

A quiet street in Montevideo.

Sometimes everyone really is happy, and the end result is beautiful and usable and made of design-love. Other times, though, one of us is going to end up miserable, and the design can end up so off-target, messy, awkward, or downright ugly, that your designer won’t put it in his portfolio. That’s a bad scene. In order to make the feedback process as efficient as possible, I’ve rounded up a few tips from years of going through this process with a rather substantial number of clients—of both the dream and the nightmare variety.

1. Don’t micro-manage…

This is, bar none, the fastest way to quash your designer’s spirit. I’ve gotten to the point where, if I suspect someone’s going to micro-manage me, I’ll walk away from the project. It’s one thing to give your opinions; it’s another thing to tell me exactly what to do. Usually when this happens, I’ll argue for a bit, citing rational reasons why the particular edit isn’t a good idea and backing my objections up with stuff I’ve learnt in school or elsewhere about design theory. The micro-manager client generally knows better, and eventually my spirit dies, and I become an unskilled, untrained monkey who happens to own a copy of Photoshop. “You want that font in 60pt lime green Comic Sans for your investment banking brochure? … fine.” If I’m not arguing with you, you’re not getting my best design work.

2. …but don’t macro-manage, either.

The converse of this, of course, is the client who says “just do whatever you feel is right.” In theory, that would be lovely, except that I always feel as though I’m cheating these clients out of really getting what they want from the work. You have an opinion; I’d like to hear it. I want you to be happy with what you get out of the process, and I really can’t read your mind (yet)!

3. Be specific.

Design is highly subjective. You can tell me that you don’t like something, but I oftentimes don’t know how to fix it for you—chances are good that I put it there because I like it, after all! What element don’t you like? Is it the type style, the colour, the juxtaposition of elements, the spacing between those two lines?

Snarkiness courtesy of the charming (and sometimes rather gruesome) the Oatmeal.

It’s true, designers do often need to design from a feeling and other vague, hard to define concepts. While it’s true that it’s our job to translate an immaterial concept into a material(ish), visible entity, the more specific you can be, the easier it’s going to be for us to figure out what you want. Which leads me to my next point:

4. Know what you want.

If you don’t know what you want, there is no way in hell I will ever figure it out.

5. Realize that design is about solving problems.

Not like “world hunger” sort of problems, but visual problems. You’ve got something you want to communicate to your audience, and you need it to be easy to read, and to communicate your brand messages, and to make the audience feel a certain way. You want to be able to lead them into bits of information, guiding them through your information in a very particular manner. While I often trivialize design by saying “I make pretty things” (which is true), I also make stuff that works, and stuff that takes into consideration your goals for the project.

Therefore, when I make suggestions for ways we could make the overall design better, take them into consideration. If I don’t immediately do everything you ask for, this is because I’m keeping your aims and needs in mind, not because I’m obstinate. (I mean, I am, but that’s something altogether different.) To make a design truly great, we need to work together to solve your problems—that means that I need to listen to your feedback, and you need to consider my advice.

6. Never, never, ever use the phrase “you’re the designer.”

In theory, this would mean that you trust my decisions, value my input, and recognize that, since I’m a professional that you’re paying to do this work, I must know what I’m doing. In actuality, it means that you’re going to be the epitome of a Difficult Client: you’ll constantly say the designs I present to you are no good, but you won’t give any concrete explanations of why; you’ll insist that I make every single tiny, micro-managing alteration you request, then complain when the design starts to erode and the whole thing ends up a giant mess; and you’ll ignore all of my advice and opinions.

This makes me crazy.

It got me thinking about how often companies misrepresent themselves, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes accidentally. In a world where we all have less “face time” with companies—I’ve worked with all kinds of clients I’ve never met, and some whose locations I’m not sure about at all—it’s easy to see where our potential clients might not be as trusting of us as they ought to be. If a customer doesn’t trust a company, he’s unlikely to give the company any business.

So, how do you go about establishing your credibility?

1. Answer your emails, please!

This has got to be one of the most valuable things that you can do for your business, especially if your sales are mostly generated via the internet. Email is the method by which most clients will reach you, and if their first few questions go unanswered for lengthy periods of time, they’re going to think that this will always be the case. If you’re working with someone who’s halfway across the globe, email communication is suddenly tenfold more important, and if you don’t respond to your emails, your clients will simply assume that you’ve run away with their money and projects. I emailed a company a simple question about their product three days ago and have still heard nothing; at this point, I’m highly unlikely to purchase anything from them. Even a simple “we got your email, we’re looking into it, and we’ll be in touch soon” might have sufficed, but it’s simply irresponsible to ignore an email for any more than forty-eight hours.

2. Make it look, and sound, good.

Yes, it sounds self-serving for me to say this, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t true. Which of these two companies would you buy from?

Sorry, Gracious Indian. I love your roti wraps, and the delivery guy who rides around on a scooter, but I HATE your website.

Not actually my favourite place for sushi locally, but their website, though still a little rough around the edges, makes me want to buy sushi from them. (Note the inclusion of a testimonial!)

That’s right. Professional design makes you look credible in the same way that spelling your words properly and using capitalization makes you look credible. Nobody wants to buy from a company that might just be a ten-year-old playing with his basement computer. If it looks like your website has been built with care and consideration (which typically, but not always, mandates a budget), people will be more likely to see your company as credible.

3. Give information.

A photograph of yourself will help, as will personal anecdotes. People are still highly social creatures, and we trust one another more if we get a feeling for one another. This is why my local clients like to have a face-to-face meeting to begin with, but then are comfortable with email-only communications. North Americans are quite brusque about our social connections, but in a great number of other cultures, it’s commonplace to develop a social relationship with a person—going for coffee and dinner several times—prior to even discussing business.

4. Show how much people love you.

Testimonials work, and they’re vital if you’re running a business online. It can be challenging collecting positive references from past clients, even those who were thrilled with your work, but your persistence will pay off. Use them in as many places as you can. Put one in your sidebar somewhere, and make sure it randomly loads a new one every new page. Insert them into blog posts, or project or product descriptions where appropriate. Have a whole page full of all of them—people tend to notice testimonials more when they’re included on other pages—but there’s nothing quite like a great big list of your clients singing your praises.

5. Be involved.

Write a blog. Beyond boosting your search engine rankings, which everyone loves so much, it will also help to establish you as a credible source who knows your stuff. Read everything you can, and get involved with industry forums or mailing lists. Write articles of interest for other publications. Teach a class at your local business centre or free-school. Present at conferences and unconferences. Answer people’s questions on Twitter.

In short, anything you can do to show that you’re helpful and knowledgable will help. Learn to communicate well, make sure everything that you put out is polished, and you’re on your way!

There’s a maxim to pricing freelance work that goes something like this: you can have two of the following three elements: fast, cheap, and good. When I first started out, I tried to be all three. Naturally, there ended up being some compromise, most notably with respect to the “fast” and “good” elements of the equation. As I grew as a designer and a businessperson (it still sounds funny calling myself that), the scales shifted: my prices increased as the quality of my work and process increased.

For some time, I struggled with the idea of offering clients their choice between fast and cheap, but I’m coming to realize that this, too, is impractical on a larger scale—I’m so consistently busy that it simply doesn’t make sense for me to take on very many lower-paying gigs, regardless of how spread out their timelines may be. I really prefer working on projects with shorter timelines, anyway: the work-to-reward cycle is so much shorter (and thereby more gratifying), and a more rapid cycle of development means that the project remains fresher in my mind—I don’t forget details or need to re-learn anything as we progress. So, unless it’s a case ofhey-I-really-did-need-this-yesterday, in which case a priority placement and rapid-turnaround can be secured with a rush fee (although I’ve found most clients with urgent projects suddenly decide it can wait a little, after all, when they discover that it’ll cost more), “fast” is non-negotiable. Quality, naturally, is even less negotiable

As a result, my fees have been steadily increasing. A while ago, I switched to pricing projects using a flat rate based on an hourly model, with certain discounting for clients and projects I like (conversely, of course, there’s also a hidden “pain in the ass” fee that’s tacked on for work that’s going to drive me to the bottle). The per-project model makes me feel more comfortable about pricing negotiations, which I’ve always been terrible at, and as a result have an awful tendency to under-price myself.

Ooh, shiny.

I think my problem with properly pricing myself has always been an issue of perception: I still see myself, fundamentally, as a little girl who simply has no idea what’s going on. People are always surprised when I admit to this, which is gratifying—at least I don’t come off as naive and insecure as I often feel!—and logically, I know that this isn’t how it is. I’m twenty-six, which means I’m officially Very Much a Grown-up; I’ve been running my own business for years and can still afford gorgeous shoes, which means I must have some sort of head for it; and my clients are happy with my work, which means that I’m producing good work. And so, every time I increase my prices, the logical part of my brain forcibly overrides the insecure, insane part.

Every time I increase my price in some way, I feel uncomfortable about it, but force myself to manage the discomfort. And every time, it pays off: I feel more valued, I feel happier in my work, and I can afford nicer shoes!

I think the shoe comparison works here: I used to buy $20 shoes. Now, my standards are higher: I won’t buy a pair that’s made of plastic, or that originally cost less than $100, simply because I realize that these will be of inferior quality. I no longer want to save money at the expense of quality, and this is a characteristic I’m looking for in my clients. I don’t want you to work with me because I’m cheap; I want you to work with me because I produce great work.

And ultimately, the higher my prices are, the better work I’ll be able to produce—both because I’ll be able to spend more time focusing on the minutia of the project, and because I’ll be able to spend more of my “spare” time developing my skills. While I’ll probably never be tackling million-dollar accounts (and because I keep my overhead low, I really don’t need to charge nearly as much as an agency would), I am no longer a low-cost solution. I’m a high-quality solution, and the more I charge, the better I’ll be.

Right now, I’m a pair of well-fitted leather Nine Wests. Eventually, I’ll be a pair of Louboutins. (And then I’ll be able to afford a pair!)

Apparently I can work the topic of shoes into every single subject ever. Eventually this website will stop pretending to be about design and will just go on and on, at length, about footwear. I’m beginning to believe I have a problem.

We spend so much time complaining about the bad clients that it’s sometimes easy to overlook the good clients. Lately, I’ve been working with a few really great clients, and I’ve been so happy because of it. Where a bad client can make you feel as though you’re losing your soul, a good client reminds you of why you fell in love with design in the first place and makes you feel as though you’re doing a good job. It’s the sort of warm-fuzzy feeling I associate with boys who bring me flowers and strangers complimenting me on my shoes.

Winning your designer’s love, regardless of any other factors, will mean that you will receive a level of service and quality that surpasses that most Troublesome Clients receive. When I love a client and feel that my client respects me as a professional, I invest more of my mental energies into their project. A good client makes you want to do an amazing job, where a bad client experience will often just make you want to finish as fast as possible and get the heck out.

So, how do you go about making sure you’re the greatest client ever, and ensuring your designer feels as passionate about your project as you do? Here, a few tips culled directly from my Dream Clients:

1. Pay your bills as fast as humanly possible.

Nothing says “you’re not worth much to me” like a leisurely bill payment. Freelance designers suffer so much stress about unpaid bills and cash flow—it’s hard when you don’t have a regular stream of income—that late-paid bills are a major problem.

I have one client in particular who sends me a full payment, via electronic means, within 24 hours of receiving an invoice. Every time it happens, I am utterly delighted. The rapid work-reward cycle means that I feel more compelled to finish work rapidly, knowing that I’ll be rewarded immediately upon completion. If, on the other hand, it takes more than a month to put a cheque in the mail (there is a due date on there, you know!), I’m going to feel much less inclined to speed through the project.

Freelance designers are not the power company—if you don’t pay us, we can’t eat (or buy pretty shoes)! Pay your bills promptly, please.

2. Know what you want.

It’s your designer’s job to gently guide you and to help you figure out what you want, then create a visual representation of your needs. If you approach a project without knowing what you want, the whole process goes to hell. Essentially, if you don’t know what you want—and you don’t need to have every detail planned out, but you do need a rough idea—I can’t figure out how to build it for you. It’s like if you were to hire an architect to design you a house; you’d want to figure out how many bathrooms you want before asking for blueprints.

Beware the phrase “you’re the designer”, as in “Well, you’re the designer, you figure it out!”. While I think usually this is used with good intentions, it will make the vast majority of designers cringe. To us, it sounds like you’re saying “you’re the magician!” (See also: “Can’t you just Photoshop that?” Design is not magic; Photoshop is not a magic button. It’s mostly work, training, and lots of patience.)

3. Understand that I probably know what I’m doing (and that’s why you hired me, right?)

This directly contrasts the “well, you’re the designer!” mindset, and clients usually tend towards one extreme or another, where a balance is really preferable. A micromanaging client, however, will almost always be less popular than a hands-off client. This is an almost guaranteed way to make your designer want to throw himself off the nearest bridge, skyscraper, or touristy landmark.

Of course, there’s a fine line between giving feedback and micro-managing. How to tell the difference? If you’re into the sixth round of revisions, and all the revisions read something like so: “Make the logo 40% bigger, and move it 3 inches to the right. Make the text all white, and the background purple. Headings should be right-aligned and in 4pt red Comic Sans. Can we add a few animated gifs throughout the page in order to make it ‘pop’?” (Please note: often these sorts of phrases are then followed by “Well, you’re the designer! Can’t you just make it look better?” and then repeated ad nauseum until all gadgets that receive email or phone calls are smashed into little bitty pieces.)

Remember: you hired your designer (I hope!) because you think they do great work and know what they’re doing. They’ve probably been building websites longer than you. While ultimately the final judgement call is yours, realize that a good designer will work with you to give you a final product that both suits you and your business and looks good. Remember that we have your best interests in mind, and give us enough freedom to create something beautiful for you.

4. Communicate effectively.

The client-designer relationship is much like any other relationship: emotions are involved, everyone’s a little nervous to begin with, you need to make sure everyone’s happy and nobody’s being taken for granted, etc. This is why, of course, good designer-client relationships generate brilliant work, and bad ones leave all parties unhappy. So, like with any other relationship, good communication is vital. Make sure you’re being clear about how you feel and what you want, and treat your designer with respect and consideration. (This means no phone calls at 2am, no matter how dire you think the emergency is, right? In theory, I am sleeping then.) Your designer needs your feedback in order to know that they’re on the right track—make sure that you can give useful, constructive feedback in a timely manner.

And when all else fails, sending presents works, too. I once had a client who mailed me a box of chocolate brownies when my computer died, in order to “aid the recovery process”, and another client who made me a heart-shaped chocolate cake. Chocolate generally engenders love and loyalty, but really, all that’s required is a polite thank you for a wonderful job, and I’ll move mountains for you.

The Keshen Goodman library is one of my favourites, but wow, have libraries ever changed since I was a kid. Of course the card catalogues are long gone, but now the library is full of loud, obnoxious high school students play-fighting and giggling away in the study carrels. Whatever happened to libraries being akin to a place of worship, where you’d be shushed for speaking above a whisper?

At any rate, I was amazed to discover that not only is it totally kosher to eat in the library, but they also have a little cafe in the corner, which is actually rather lovely if you’re making a twelve-hour-day of it. Every day it’s the same girl working there, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her crack a smile, not once. I usually try to be excessively polite and friendly to people working service jobs (God knows I’ve had my share!), but she never once cracked. Today, though, as I went for my usual can of Diet Coke, there was a new girl working. It took her about five minutes and some outside help to figure out what I wanted, and then another minute or so to ring it in, but she smiled and seemed human!

As I trotted off with my caffeinated beverage, I thought to myself, “Well, the other one was more competent, but I like this one so much more.” (I suspect that when I was working service jobs myself, I was the efficient-but-snarly server.)

Clearly, this is a lesson I ought to take to heart, and start applying to my own life and business.

I am, naturally, enamoured.

In other news, I’m moving out of my little room in my little apartment into a commercial space just up Lincoln Street—it’s an oddly-shaped little three-room affair with hardwood floors and just the sort of character I like. I‘m hoping this will help me segregate my home from my work life and give me a little more space to stretch out in. As an added bonus, I won’t need to clean up my apartment when a client comes to visit!

A few new projects have been added to the website, and there should be more finishing soon.