For the freelance illustrator there are two tasks that are absolutely essential for being successful:

1. Finding new clients
2. Keeping the clients once you’ve found them

The first one is all about marketing yourself, doing appealing work and targeting the right clients with your promotional efforts, and is universally considered the hardest part of being a freelancer: Finding the work.

The second one is at least as important as the first, however. Once you find a client, doing ongoing work for them is one of the cornerstones of building a successful (and stable) freelance business. One cannot rely on a constant influx of new clients providing enough work to stay busy. You need a core group of clients who give you steady or semi-steady work that you can count on to be your “rock” while you continue to pursue new work. When you find a client who gives you constant work… they are worth their weight in gold and you should do everything you can to keep that relationship strong and healthy.

I’m fortunate to have a few of those types. MAD is of course one, but I also do a fair amount of work every year for Scholastic and National Geographic World publications. Penthouse is proving to be a client that gives me a handful of jobs a year, and I have been doing a lot of work for Ray Griggs and his various movie and TV projects.

I was asked in a comment last week to explain about these “workplace posters” I am always posting the artwork for on The MAD Blog. Those jobs all come from one client, and this client is one of those long term, constant work types that are so important to a freelancer’s success. The client is The Marlin Company, and they produce communication materials for industries and employers all around the U.S. They make both print and electronic display units that a company would put up in their employee areas and provide a subscription based service that sends monthly content for those displays. The content consists of posters, placards and electronic animations that promote teamwork, safety, stress management and other important employer messages to the subscriber’s work force. The content is tailored to the specific display unit and some target certain industries like health care or manufacturing, but most are universal messages that any business wants their employees to understand. The poster art  I do is part of their “humor” line and usually depicts some zany scene or situation that enforces the message that goes along with it. The final printed poster is 17″ x 21″ with my image being 17″ x 17″ and text at the bottom. I basically do one a month for them, and have been doing so for about 8 years or so… although to be honest I can’t recall exactly when I did my first one. It was a physical painting and not digital, so that was a while ago. I estimate I’ve done over 100 poster images for them.

So how do you retain these kinds of clients? The first step is of course to do a great job on the artwork and on meeting any deadlines they have. Communication as always is key, so staying in touch and keeping them informed of your progress is important… but of course that is something you do for all clients and all jobs. You just don’t know when that first call from a new client might evolve into steady, on going work, so you need to do every job like it will be the first of many. It also is important to make the client feel like you appreciate their business, so the occasional thank you note or holiday card is a great way to convey this message.

It will become apparent quickly when a client falls into that “steady source of work” category, and that’s when you need to go the extra mile for them. When I have a client like that, I will make sure they are taken care of ahead of other work if that becomes necessary. I won’t blow a deadline for another client, but I will pull an all-nighter if my “gold” client calls with an emergency piece or something with a shorter deadline without batting an eye. I certainly will never turn down a job from a client like that no matter what the cost in effort may be.

The reason these kinds of clients are so hard to find and retain is that is is rare for anything to continue in the long term in the publishing world. Some things are out of your control, and no matter how good of a job you do changes will take place that will change everything. This often involves an art director losing their job or moving on, and a new art director taking over who has different ideas and tastes. I used to do a lot of work for a company called Business and Legal Reports, but when the art director I worked with left I never got another call from them. I know a lot of illustrators who would do a steady gig like a spot illustration for a column for some magazine for years and then lose that work when a new art director takes over the publication. You can’t get worked up over that kind of thing… it’s life and it will happen. All you can do is a great job and let the chips fall where they may… it’s always been my philosophy that when you work hard and put great effort and heart into what you do, good things will happen eventually. The world of business has a lot of cut throat to it, but the good will outweigh the bad if you just don’t give up and keep giving it your all.

Here are a bunch of my favorite Marlin Co. posters I’ve done over the years:

I love being a freelance illustrator. While it is challenging in many respects the work is interesting and the deadlines intense, and it’s seldom boring. I don’t punch a time clock every day, collect my paycheck every other Friday and have to conform to anyone’s routine but my own. As I have said many time, financially it is a little more exciting that it needs to be, what with the constant uncertainty about the next job, and how much income will be forthcoming in a given month (or week, or year for that matter). I have been very lucky in that I have other resources to fall back on if the freelance work has been slim, but there is no denying that when the work is plentiful the checking account is a happier place. Making a living as a freelancer is hard enough when you are only worrying about marketing yourself, finding new clients and pursuing and securing new jobs and projects… let alone when you may run across the occasional problem of doing jobs for clients that take a long time to pay, or never pay. Deadbeat clients are a serious risk to your financial well being, because they not only can cost you money but also very valuable time in both doing the project itself and in efforts to collect payment.

In this matter I again have been very lucky. I can count on one hand the number of jobs I have done that ended up being a serious problem in getting paid. Actually luck is only part of it. Mostly it’s because I follow a number of guidelines and policies that minimize exposure to potential problems and maximize the likelihood that any issues will be favorably resolved. Here are my guidelines for preventing problems with and dealing with deadbeat clients:

Preventing Problems-

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as they say. Doing what you can to prevent having a problem in the first place is always the best policy. There are many things you can do to prevent having collection problems.

1. Use a good invoicing/accounting system- This is by far the most important thing you can do to prevent losing money or having problems with invoicing, billing or payments. It can be as complex and all-encompassing as a serious accounting software program like Quickbooks Pro, or as simple as a tray labeled “Outstanding Invoices” on your desk that uses gravity as it’s aging system (invoices at the bottom of the pile are the oldest). The bottom line is that you have some way of keeping track of who you have billed, when you have billed them and when things are getting late.

I use Quickbooks Pro but mainly because I have other accounting needs that require a full accounting program. There are lots of other programs out there that will do the job, including some designed specifically for freelancers. For years I used the “tray” method. Keeping notes in a datebook also works well. All you really need is a system for quickly identifying outstanding invoices and tracking the dates involved. This information is important when it comes to identifying and resolving issues that might arise. (more…)