Freelance advice

[sharpcube]

He

Im planning to start after my 8-5 work, as a freelancer.
Im living in Belgium. I make house drawings for the last 10 Years en the last 3 years i started with 3dstudio. I bought the soft, now want to make some extra cash of my hobby.

Anywone have some tips.

thanks greets domi.

[mike_kennedy]

Network as much as you can and get a contract to cover yourself with deliverables and payment schedules.
Cheers
Mike K

[Clifton Santiago]

Start hanging out with architects...

[JeffG2]

Start hanging out with architects...

But make sure you've had all your shots...

[natty]

Have you got a website? always handy to have as quick reference ..

[sharpcube]

Have you got a website? always handy to have as quick reference ..

I have just finish one, i's online now www.dorensy.be
Not like a pro site but good for starting i think.

by the way it's in dutch for now

[natty]

Good start dude ..

I find contacting architects and designers personally and sending them a PDF of your work directly really helps... if you go through website and get the normal info@design.com you send your email off to them and who reads it ? normally the person who sorts the post and knows nothing of what they are looking at ... and bins it.. go for the personal touch and straight to the right person..

Good luck

[paulison]

I would suggest that depending on the type of work you want to get that you also target large design & build companies, property developers, housing companies etc in addition to architects and designers. I've found that architects may be the most fussy and drag things on a bit when it comes to finalising projects where developers and marketing companies etc are looking more at the overall impression instead of just making design decisions while you produce 20 revisions because they cant make up their mind :P

So i guess architects/ designers are great for you to create nice work that can be used in your folio, but also targeting builders etc who may not be so particular can be good for cashflow.

I dunno how well the mass-mail/email thing works either. And many people dont look at CD/DVD's because it is too hard since they are used to pampered existences away from the PC on the golfcourse "networking" with other rich assholes :P

individual approach works best. make an appointment to meet some people and showcase your work and have an answer regarding 'price' instead of leaving it open because then they will think that your price scales depending on the size of their wallet. Nice business cards works for some of the bigger wankers out there as well and make sure your website is on it

Hope that helps but i guess most of that is commonsense?

[glorybound]

Freelance

I went to your site and it looks great! I was big into flash, but when I realized search engines can not find it I stopped.

[pixelstudio]

lovely website! some advise in dutch : bij de kamer van koophandel kun je lijsten kopen met projectontwikkelaars en architecten. kun je die een mailing sturen oid weet niet of dit in belgie ook zo is?.

Glorybound, i think there are some ways to have google find your website even if it is in flash.
Also, did you do the animation complety in flash? i have been bussy with flash also and maybe you can share some tips ? hehe

[sharpcube]

If you use dynamic webcontent (text) google will trace it

I learn allot from lynda.com there flash cource