How Is Your Illustration Business Evolving?
(Illustration by Sam Washburn)
Now that we’ve reached the halfway mark of 2011, it’s a great time to reevaluate your business and look back at the goals you set at the beginning of the year.
Back in January EFII made a case for taking stock of your illustration business and setting your sights on the new year. Now that July is coming to a close, it’s a good idea to ask yourself how things are going.
Are you sticking to the promises you made at the start of the year?
Are you moving closer to the goals you set?
What are your failures? Your successes?
What have you learned about the business, and about yourself?
What changes should you be making to your day-to-day business activities, and to your overall goals?
What would you like to accomplish before the end of 2012?
These are just some of the questions you may want to ask when evaluating your progress at the halfway mark, so that you can better prepare yourself for the rest of the year, make adjustments where necessary, and hopefully pat yourself on the back for any accomplishments you may have made. That’s the only way to actively participate in the growth and evolution of your business.
How’s your business doing so far this year? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section of this post.
Special thanks to Sam Washburn for providing the artwork for this post.
About Sam: Sam Washburn is an illustrator working out of St. Louis. Missouri. He loves drawing whimsical and editorial scenes and has had his work recognized by CMYK and the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles.
Related Posts:
- What’s Wrong with Your Illustration Business?
- Taking Stock of Your Illustration Business in 2010
- Setting Up Your Business for the New Year
- 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- Are Your Promo Materials Out of Date?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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Work-wise for me it’s been a slower than I would like half year compared to the last couple of years especially. Consumer confidence and the economy has something to with this, but having a new website (since December) has refreshed my attitude. While dipping into seo and social media makes some difference to my business, I still really believe in the ol’ postcard mail outs and targeted folios to prospective clients. This year I am going to be much more focused on the people/businesses I WANT to do work for and also be more active in my personal projects. (in Oz NFY starts July)
Well thats a good question and I wonder why not more people are commenting.
What can I say, my schedule is full, no sign of slow economy here… I have a list about invoices sent and this year, so far has been a blast! There are more invoices sent than in the whole year before. I have to admit, I just started out with the freelance biz about 2 and a half year ago and since then my goal to get new clients was met without getting my word out to them personally – or through application letters. I´d say most commissions are referrals that benefit from my online presence, blog and social media “showing-up” and the rest might be due to publishing. Before the end of 2012 I´d like to be able to put together a book and a calendar of some personal projects, something that I had in mind for a while but was not able because of a lack of time. When contemplating failures or things that can be changed I consider time the most critical point. I´m a very process-oriented guy and feel good when juggling many tasks, but especially on the high-end of the “busy-curve” the extra-time to promote my work on-and-offline would be important-which is quite not possible sometimes and that bothers me the most.
I’m finding that my busy times and slow times are still up-and-down, a bit like a rollercoaster. But the slow times are becoming shorter. I’m frequently working like crazy for 3-4 weeks, followed by a rather quiet week or two. Which kind of suits me.
I’m mostly working on very large, continuous projects – for 3 months this year I worked on a Facebook game which took up most of my time, and right now I’m doing work on a book series which, typically, is 8 books in one batch, with each book taking around 2 weeks. After the 8th book in that batch, there will be a break from that series for about 2-3 months.
And now and then I get smaller, quick jobs that kind of interweave through the big jobs. I think I really like working this way. It’s nice to have something that you’re working on for quite a while, and then have smaller things that come up to give you a bit of variety.
The rest of this year for me will be focused on going hardcore with promotion. I’ve been at this freelance thing for just under 2 years and I’ve been really lucky in that work seems to just fall in my lap. As soon as I start feeling down about things being slow, I’ll get an email or call for a new job. But I doubt that will last, so I figure it’s time to start doing some proper marketing!
Caught this thread through G+ Sparks, so I missed the first half of the discussion. (I will go back and read it I promise.) Revamping my website has helped a lot this year, although I have been slow with keeping up with relevant posts. Integrating my social with my website has also helped with coverage. Twitter, FB, Stumble, reddit, and G+ all feeding to each other selectively (And to my website) has lightened the connectivity load a bit. I can track three projects back to direct website feedback. Oddly enough, my ongoing webcomic, has produced a few projects as well. I am working the local ADFed this year with mixed results, but it’s nice being connected to the local market after working national for so long. All in all, this year is looking up. It is better than the last two years, but still has a ways to go to be great.