What’s Wrong With Your Illustration Business?
(Illustration by Peter Diamond)
Whether things went really well for you in 2010, or really wrong, the beginning of a new year is the perfect time to take a look at what you might need to change about your freelance Illustration business.
Finding the Weakest Links in Your Business
I’ve already written about the value of analyzing your business here, but now I’d like to suggest zooming in a little closer on just the “problems”. Try and figure out what might be standing between you and the success you envision for yourself.
What might you be doing wrong?
What isn’t producing the desired results?
Is anything draining your time and money without offering something in return?
What is stunting your growth as a professional artist?
Once you discover the things that are dragging you down, you can choose to either remove them or make plans fix them, as needed. This may mean anything from making changes to your schedule, revising your promotional strategy, or upgrading your portfolio. Whatever the issue, it can be very useful to single it out, separate it from the pack, and make some strategic decisions about how to make a change for the better.
Identifying “problem areas” of your business can help you to make immediate improvements and potentially free up some valuable resources, which can then be devoted to something more productive elsewhere in your business.
Repairing Your Business
The most important step in this process is to actually do something about the broken parts of your business that are holding you back. This means setting aside time specifically for the purpose of fixing all those things that you promised you’d get to at some later date.
This is one of those aspects of being a freelancer that seems the least rewarding on the surface. It’s not often desirable to think about the negative things, but it’s easier than it sounds, and if you take action now you’ll feel instantly better about where your business is today, and where it’s going. You’ll have less problems affecting your business, and less undesirable tasks filling up your to-do list.
Once you focus on the broken pieces, you’ll be able to turn your attention to the things that are working well, and maybe even make them better with any resources you might have liberated from the wreckage of past mistakes.
What’s wrong with your Illustration business? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section of this post.
Special thanks to Peter Diamond for providing the artwork for this post.
About Peter Diamond: Peter Diamond is a Canadian illustrator based in Vienna, Austria. He cut his teeth on punkrock concert posters and CD covers and now offers his artistic voice to the world at large. Diamond is in fact his real name, but it doesn’t mean what you think it does.
Related Posts:
- Taking Stock of Your Illustration Business in 2010
- Setting Up Your Business for the New Year
- How to Recover from a Holiday and Get Back in the Groove
- 9 Ways to Run a Smart Creative Business
- Are Your Promo Materials Out of Date?
- 10 Online Creatives To Watch In 2011
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A very thought-provoking topic. I actually don’t know what’s wrong with my business, but do know something must change if I want to bring it to that next level. Can’t find a particular destination to aim for – difficult to go somewhere when you don’t know where you’re going! (lol)
Thanks for your comment, Ingrid. It sounds like that might be the area that needs your attention right now, because choosing a direction or main goal with dictate many other decisions that you make. Is it a matter of which market you should target, what type of work you want to do, etc?
Good post. I especially liked the questions. I’ll be adding those to my monthly business review. Too often it’s easier to see what is working and do more of that than to see what isn’t working and deal with those issues. Usually it’s the “not working” that’s the gum in the wheel that keeps you from going faster and getting to the next level. Thank you again!
You’re very welcome, Dawn. To go further, sometimes it’s the broken parts that hold back the parts that ARE working, and making changes in one aspect of your business can benefit many or all other parts. Glad you liked the questions. Are there other questions that you might recommend asking?
Coming up as an illustrator ten years ago – it was mostly a magazine & book world. That’s where the jobs were. Of course nowadays that is not the case. On the other hand there seems to be a rebirth in the interest in style and content which means that illustration is needed in all different areas now. If it is a flash in the pan or is here to stay is anyone’s guess. The best thing to do it seems is to keep churning out work in your own voice. Draw what you know and what you love and be mindful about where you fit in the big puzzle. Staying on top of your “brand” on all levels and utilizing all aspects of social networking. My personal rule for the past year has been – if i see an illustrator i admire marketing his or herself in an way i am not (i.e. blogging, tweeting, contributing), I make it a point to ad that to my campaign. Of course at the end of the long and lonesome day we are really here to make art. And above and beyond that should always take precedence over anything else. Without quality content there is nothing to market.
Lots of great points. Thanks for sharing. I agree that it can be very valuable to pay attention to what others are doing and thinking about whether it can help with your own efforts as well. This goes for not only the business side but the creation of the work as well. While it can be a bad trap to always compare yourself to others, it doesn’t mean that you should go to the other extreme and wear blinders.
Yes, we all tend to persist at things that aren’t working– hard to walk away from something you’ve invested a lot of time in. But it’s gotta be done, and the start of a new year’s a great time to do it. Good post, loved the illustration!
True, Mark. I think you’ve made a good point that I missed in the article.
Great post. I’m always happy to analyse my business, and frequently do, but it can be all too easy to focus on good AND bad, balance up the bad points with good ones. This week I’m going to focus on my day-to-day schedule, which is currently a bad point, I never struggle to deliver work on time to clients, in fact I enjoy working efficiently, but with a young family I often don’t get to start work as early as I’d like each day, and face interruptions during the day, but perhaps I need to find a new approach to this problem, by only focusing on the problem, not just making myself feel better with the fact that I still get my work done on-time. The solution is out there!
Hi Ben, and thanks for your comment. As a father myself, I can definitely relate. In fact, I’m writing this now having gotten up at around 5:30 this morning, because it’s a quiet time before the world, and my family, is awake. After a year or so of scrambling around to get as many hours to work as I could, it reached a breaking point where my wife and I realized that we needed to set up a schedule where I was guaranteed a certain number of uninterrupted work hours per week, just as if I was going to work outside the house. So far it works great!
I must say, the opening illustration caught my attention so much. Even looking at it again after days didn’t change my opinion.
Thank you, your choice of the image reminded me of how important the opening of anything is.
For me there were a number of factors that contributed to the worst year I have ever had in my almost 30 years as an illustrator. One big one was needing a regular job which I was lucky enough to get but which sucks my time and creative and physical energy away.
The other was not exactly knowing what the best way to promote myself was these days.
I had always sent postcards, had work in directories, etc. but I don’t know if those work anymore. I would love to know how other illustrators promote their work. I have thought of trying to set up a blog but my technical skills aren’t there. Suggestions?