https://hnry.co.nz/ for 1% of your income (capped at $2000 annually), they take care of everything financial.
Starting Out
Basic steps:
- Start with a solid folio
- Be prepared to put in the hard yards
- Make a website and a work email
- Put 30% away for taxes
- Find a good accountant
- Track everything
- Keep your records for 7yrs
- Network yo’ ass off, go to events
The realities:
- You will be running a small self-directed business
- You will need you to keep track of your work, your time and your money
- You will have to contact clients, deal with people and meet deadlines.
- You need to be self-motivated
- Working in your own time (outside of any secondary employment)
- Self-discipline is critical (be honest with yourself) – Do you get easily distracted? Can you manage and track your time? Do you pay attention to details?
- It can be financially hard as a main source of income (ie. Full time freelancing so it’s good to have a secondary income stream
- Keep finding jobs and clients to continue with when one finishes
What you can offer/your niche:
- Have the gear (hardware, software, tools and location to work from)
- Create a presence for yourself (your ‘freelance self’)
- Website / blog / Artstation / Behance / Vimeo / etc
- Social media feeds – Facebook page (not personal) / Twitter / LinkedIn
- Add links to your email signatures etc
- Put together a reel / portfolio of your work and experience
- Define your costs before you start (more about this later)
- Put aside some money to save for a rainy day
- Register for Tax at IRD (more about this later)
- Prepare for hard work, and possibly tough times
Portfolio and Branding:
- What describes you? How can you brand yourself?
- What are your values? What are your strengths?
- What work do you want to be doing?
- What work are you good at?
- What can you specialize in first?
- Specializing in one thing doesn’t mean you can’t work with clients who produce something different.
- Consider doing free work for charities or small companies you’re passionate about to build up your folio
- Create your own briefs to work on or do personal/passion projects
Networking + Marketing:
- Make an insta, fb, dribbbl
- Portfolio from adobe
- Behance
- Squarespace – $220 aud student annually
- WordPress
- Self-hosted site
- Domain name is about $20,
- Crazy domains, godaddy, freeparking
- Sign up for FB groups, meetup and event brite
- Chat to people at events, ask what they do, be interested
- Keep in touch with people, see what they’re uptop
- Keep in touch with people from your courses, they’re a good network to have
Agents/recruiters:
- You’ll generally have an interview where they discuss what your skills are and what jobs you want, you must have a portfolio of work ready to show them.
- Portfolio – high standard for entry
- The Pond
- Creative store
- Creative revolution
- Dusty road
- Unicorn factory
- Connections – DA, TDK
Finding clients:
- Linked in, friends, uni – fivrrr, upwork, unicorn factory etc
- Network! Attend events, meetups and make connections:
- http://www.meetup.com/
- Join the organisations in your industry
- Join the fb groups in your industry
- Register yourself online with job sites, but beware of the fivrrr undercutting issue (everyone tries to underbid each other so you can end up with very little money for the work you do. Devalues industry)
- http://freelancer.co.nz/
- http://ozlance.com.au/
- Join mailing lists, twitter feeds and job listing websites
- Do good work and build a good reputation with the clients to keep them coming back
- Keep up the networking, and keep in touch with previous clients
- Make the effort to contact potential clients
- Learn to be a salesman and how to sell yourself, your work and your services
- Keep your social and online presence constantly updated and fresh
When selling/pricing your skills, consider:
- Any hourly rate should take into consideration the following questions:
- How much have you invested to set up for your freelance work?
- How much does it cost to do freelance work (expenses)?
- Do you have a secondary income?
- What do you regard your time is worth?
- How much money have you invested in your education and upskilling?
- How much experience do you already have?
- Self-evaluate your own work honestly – does the quality warrant that huge $200 per hour charge rate?
- A client will not appreciate spending money if they feel they are not getting the level of quality that meets the cost. They may even complain and refuse to pay.
Cost of business
- Work out your expenses to get the cost of doing business. Eg, how much do you pay per day/hour to keep your freelancing going.
- Consider everything you need to do business: A portion of the living expenses you pay such as rent, power, phone, rates. Software subscriptions, printing, etc. Ongoing incidental costs (travel, phone, stationery, etc)
- Note that a lot of these expenses can be claimed back on Tax, lowering the amount of tax you need to pay. You may or may not want to include some portion of those into your hourly charge (but it’s worth thinking about)
- When you add these up, they amount to your minimum break even cost. This is the minimum amount of income you need in order to recoup those costs.
- If you work this out to an hourly figure, then you have a minimum rate that you need to be charging in order to cover your costs. This doesn’t amount for any profit.
- https://www.business.govt.nz/getting-started/funding-your-business/how-much-money-do-you-need-to-start-a-business/
how much it will cost to get your business up and running.
One-off costs – These tend to be bigger ticket items, including:
- lease or purchase of buildings or land
- permits, licenses or other compliance costs
- equipment and/or machinery
- vehicles
- shop fittings and/or office furniture
- branding
- a website and domain name
- registering your intellectual property (IP), eg trade marks or patents. Note not all types of IP need to be registered.
Fixed costs – These are bills and other costs you need to pay on an ongoing basis, also known as overheads. These tend to be time-related, eg monthly phone bills or quarterly rates payments. Common fixed costs include:
- insurance
- utilities, eg electricity and internet
- rent or mortgage payments
- wages/salaries.
Variable costs – These are expenses that vary depending on how much, or how little, your business produces.
Common variable costs include:
- raw ingredients
- production materials
- stock orders.
- An accountant will be able to run through your projected expenses and pinpoint any others you might not have thought of.
Claiming expenses for income tax
All businesses have expenses in generating taxable income. Most of these expenses can be deducted from your sales and income to arrive at a net profit, and you pay income tax on this.