Emer­gency Cash Tip #8: Free­lance Graphic De­sign Work

Sim­i­lar to free­lance writ­ing, free­lance graphic de­sign work is an ex­cel­lent way to make emer­gency cash on­line and quickly.

  • If you’ve al­ready done graphic de­sign work of some sort, this is a def­i­nite plus.
  • If you haven’t, don’t worry. It’s still pos­si­ble to make emer­gency cash on­line do­ing graphic de­sign work.
  • But if graphic de­sign gives you the creeps, bet­ter move on to the next article.

For now, I will as­sume that you don’t have any prior experience.In that case, it is es­sen­tial that you be­gin by ac­cu­mu­lat­ing items to put in your port­fo­lio, which you will show to prospec­tive clients.

At a min­i­mum, you will want to cre­ate the fol­low­ing ob­jects for your graphic de­sign portfolio…

  1. an e-book cover;
  2. a ban­ner;
  3. a small busi­ness logo; and
  4. a pay­ment button.

If you’re not skilled with Pho­to­shop (or GIMP, the free ana­log to Pho­to­shop), this type of work prob­a­bly won’t be easy ini­tially. You’ll prob­a­bly do very poorly on your first few ban­ners, but with a lit­tle work, you can get better.

If you plan to sell ban­ners, one good way to start is by go­ing to the fol­low­ing site: https://mybannermaker.com. This site will al­low you to cre­ate a ban­ner by up­load­ing a back­ground im­age, in­sert­ing text, and tweak­ing a few op­tions. It’s easy to do; and it is also free.

  1. One good way to ap­proach this process is to edit each com­po­nent in­di­vid­u­ally in GIMP or Pho­to­shop be­fore you in­sert it into the ban­ner us­ing mybannermaker.com.
  2. Once the edit­ing is fin­ished, the only step that re­mains is to com­bine every­thing us­ing the site.

Re­mem­ber, since all of your work is likely to be used for com­mer­cial pur­poses, it is crit­i­cal to use “stock pho­tos” and pho­tos that are in the pub­lic do­main. Oth­er­wise, you could be vi­o­lat­ing someone’s copyright.

Once you have cre­ated a small port­fo­lio of items that are suf­fi­ciently at­trac­tive and well-pol­ished it’s time to be­gin mar­ket­ing your work through var­i­ous channels.

3 Ways To Find Free­lance Graphic De­sign Work

Chan­nel #1: Elance

As I men­tioned ear­lier, Elance is a good place to pick up free­lance writ­ing and edit­ing projects. It is also a good place to find work if you are a free­lance graphic de­signer. All you have to do is post your port­fo­lio in your pro­file, bid rea­son­ably on projects, and then wait for peo­ple to ac­cept. As you gain cred­i­bil­ity, your ac­cep­tance rate will rise.

Chan­nel #2: Sitepoint.com and Warriorforum.com

Site users at both of these places re­quire a great deal of graphic de­sign work; and if you want to make emer­gency cash as a graphic de­signer, you should take ad­van­tage of this.

Start by mak­ing an of­fer peo­ple can­not resist.

For in­stance, of­fer to make site lo­gos for $3 (or free) for one week. If you ac­tu­ally pro­duce high-qual­ity lo­gos, the fo­rums will be buzzing about your work by the end of the week; and fu­ture work will come flow­ing in with­out your need­ing to do any­thing else.

Chan­nel #3: Craigslist.org

As I men­tioned ear­lier, Craigslist is a great place to find free­lance writ­ing projects. This is also true for graphic de­sign projects. Just keep in mind that you can search for jobs in any Craigslist city site, since many of them do not re­quire you to work on-location.

Sum­mary

Free­lance graphic de­sign work is an ex­cel­lent way to raise cash quickly; how­ever, it is im­por­tant to keep in mind that sub­mit­ting low qual­ity work may very well en­sure that you never get a project.

  1. So, be­fore you get started, work out all the kinks un­til you can cre­ate an ac­cept­able portfolio.
  2. Af­ter that, go for­ward with your work and also en­sure that you match or ex­ceed your clients’ expectations.