Confidence. Rates. Nothing up my sleeve. It’s all business, baby.

Posted by Amanda on Friday Jan 22, 2010 | Classified as: Freelancing, Personal Development | Sub-Classified as: confidence, web design

violetminded opened its eyes at the end of September 2009. I didn’t see much in the way of business until 2010 rolled around. Yesterday, I started to think about why that was.

I had a portfolio with some relatively decent pieces in it from my days in design school. I even included some sweet print designs I’d done up for April’s art show. I mean, I’m not screaming from the rooftops that I’m a genius but I’m certainly no neophyte.

“Dude, you’re doing it wrong” or How I Managed to Trip at the Starting Line

I did a number of things wrong right off the bat.

1. No blog. *gasp*
2. No rates had been set.
3. Not enough diversity to my portfolio.
4. violetminded had no real identity.

The blog was remedied easily enough, with a bit of elbow grease and decisiveness. I fail at loving my designs enough to keep them so I changed the look of violetminded five times before deciding on this incarnation. I need to exercise restraint in order to not run and change it again in February.

It was the setting of the rates that was the doozy.

You’d think that setting yourself up to start bringing in cash flow is easy and maybe even enjoyable. In actuality, it’s like listening to 80s pop and being forced to drink bad vodka. I avoided it as long as humanly possible. I’m adverse to 80s pop and bad vodka, you see.

And so, violetminded sat around until the middle of October when I approached Kelly on Facebook (no secret here, I’m madly in love with Kelly & Cleavage, even though I’m married… shh… don’t tell Mike). My first step was to work with her, brand her website anew, and design her a fancy new blog. It wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops but we had a beautiful product at the end of it.

When 2010 rolled around, I took it as the kick-in-the-ass that I required. It was time to buckle down, stop being just a freelancer, and start being a business. The buckle down required me to stop being such a pansy about rates. And then I realized what was keeping me from moving forward.

Rates & Confidence: BFFs in the worst way.

I confess.

Until recently, I had very little confidence in my own abilities. I’d spend countless hours perusing my favourite design websites and smack my head against the wall while muttering, “Why couldn’t I think of that first? ACK! Does this make me a sub-par designer? Maybe I am just a talentless hack.”

Whoa. Wait. Back up. Did I just think that out loud? Also, I didn’t actually hit my head against the wall. That would be potentially killing brain cells that I may need at some point. But I definitely have felt like it.

How can I possibly justify charging market value rates if I have no confidence in my own abilities? How can I market myself if I wasn’t entirely sure I would be interested in hiring me? More head-butting the walls in my head. More trembling before the mighty business model that I hadn’t really thought of.

Time to get a real job?

Hell. No.

Designing and coding Cleavage had opened my eyes: people actually loved what I could do. The site was all Kelly. It was a minimalistic beauty that came out of me; not out of one of my fellow designers. Just me. And Kelly. And a sexy design brief. We made sweet, sweet web design all night (and day) long.

Hot.

With my confidence boosted (thank you), I could see straight. Walls crumbled. Shoulders squared. Chin raised. Bring it.

… now what?

Rates. Oh snap. Almost forgot.

The rates. They gnawed on my brain, like wild Violet Zombies. The problem hadn’t gone away. It had only managed to seem like it had gone away. Sneaky.

At the beginning of the month, the business started rolling. I put away my confidence issues and started my research.

At first, I was astounded! I couldn’t afford to pay another designer $1800+ so how the hell did I expect people to want to pay me that kind of scratch for my services?

Everybody wants a killer design, especially after seeing one that they lust over. Problem is, nobody wants to pay for it.

Chris Pearson, Pearsonified

Nail. Head. Chris hit it.

It’s also why designers hate to set rates. It’s hell. What if nobody ends up wanting to pay us at all, let alone what we’re asking?

It’s a terrifying question. It almost made me want to give it all up for a “cushy” dev position at the company Mike works at (we make an awesome dev team, let me tell you).

Almost.

Company. Individual. Parity Shift!

Based on my experience, I have reason to believe that about 90% of you who just saw my prices thought, “Gosh, that’s awfully expensive!”

Well, you’re right, but actually, you’re wrong too.

You’re right because $1800 is a decent chunk of change – for an individual. You’re wrong because companies throw this kind of bread around all the time. They do so because they understand that crafting a brand holds a value that is oftentimes hard to measure in dollars and cents alone. On top of that, companies typically have a monetary objective behind the launch of a new design, so to them, there’s a foreseeable payoff.

Chris Pearson, Pearsonified

Dude.

DUDE.

DUDE!

I got it.

I can’t afford to pay that kind of scratch because I – not violetminded – am an individual. But my company could.

Pro tip: parity shifts are useful when figuring life out.

I sucked it up. I set my rates and then told my new clients that we should work together to make sure they won’t have to donate their liver to the black market in order to pay me. I’m under the impression that the liver is, y’know, important. So don’t let me bankrupt you or your growing business.

I just want to design for you.

Why? Because I love it.

It gives me warm, happy feelings of rainbows and lollipops and Alistair/Dragon Age. <3