Presentation given August 5th, 2010 on setting tips to improve creative freelance project estimates, contracts, client management, motivation, and basic marketing.

1. Mastering Your Freelance Business San Diego Graphic Designers Prepared by: Rob Heller – August 5th, 2010

2. On The Subject Of Me Creative Director, UI Architect Graduate of RIT, NY 2005 Experience in Print, Web, Interactive, Video, Audio, & Application Development Founded SDGD, Nov 2009 2 Clients: Johnson & Johnson Heidelberg ESPN Jello Edwards Lifesciences Hoya Surgical Optics Lumenis Glaukos

3. Words of Wisdom Fabien Barral- 7 Rules To Understand Designers - http://www.fabienbarral.com/ 3

4. The Big Problem Underestimation

5. Public Enemy #1 It’s ok to hate this guy 5

6. Gauging & Defining Project Scope Why Underestimating Is So Common New technologies in the requirements Grey areas or complete unknowns during estimate period Complex projects that require heavy time to break into detail (unbillable hours) 6

7. Gauging & Defining Project Scope Other Pitfalls That Cause Underestimating The client needs an estimate ASAP or they walk No previous project ‘estimated vs. actual’ data Estimating time for a project is just plain not fun 7

8. Scope 101 We’re going to build a news website. Let’s plan it out. 8

10. 5x Templates build XHTML/CSS

11. JavaScript and AJAX

12. Cross-browser fixes

13. Back-end development

14. CMS Setup and configuration

15. News feature

16. Contact us form

17. Content entry

18. Homepage copy

19. Addition of 10x News items

20. Testing

21. Internal functional testing

22. Client User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

23. Go-live

24. Live server setup

25. 301 re-directs from old site URLs to new9

26. Let’s break it down Start tracking! Timefox Easy Time Tracking Pen and paper 10

27. Crunch the Numbers… Anything Else is a Guess 11 Research and planning: 5% Solution design: 5% Design: 25% Front-end development: 15% Back-end development: 30% Content entry: 8% Testing: 10% Go-live: 2%

28. Estimate, Execute, Track, Analyze Rinse & Repeat Start simple It’s a process Mistakes are OK 12

29. Project Estimate Resources Web Development Project Estimator Schedule and Cost Summary Tick How to Estimate a Web Site Project Simple process to estimate times and costs in a web project How to Accurately Estimate a Web Design Project Estimating Resource Time for Web Development Projects How To Estimate Time For A Project 13

30. The Contract Piece of cake!

31. Ingredients For A Solid Contract Scope Deadlines Delivery Details Payment Schedule Revisions The Fine Print 15

32. Contract Building Resources Terms and Conditions for Design Contracts Design Contracts – The How and Why’s of Contracts What goes into a good web design contract? Using freelance graphic design contracts Business of Design Online Forms Freelance Contracts 16

33. Staying Motivated And Saving Time in the Process!

34. Procrastination 18

35. Get Inspired! www.graphic-exchange.com www.designyoutrust.com www.dropular.net 19

36. Stick to the Plan Map out what projects you will work on each day Create a wishlist & log actual list 20

37. Always Move Forward “I need more time!” I just DON’T feel like working on this… This project is dragging on forever… Forget all of that, you got this under control! 21

38. Marketing Your Business Mo’ Money, Less Problems

39. #1 Most Important Key to your Freelance 23 Reputation Is Everything.

41. Communication portal24

42. Take Action! Figure out what you want Move, move, move! Track what works and what doesn’t Adjust your plan as necessary 25

43. Thank You! Questions? Comments? Contact me anytime: rob@robheller.com

45. Stick to the contract

46. CSS Killswitch / File releasing27