Create an Invoice for Graphic Design Work for Production Effortlessly

Invoice for graphic design work for Production

in this video we're going to be talking about how to price your work as a graphic designer welcome back to the channel my name is cjam and first of all this is not career advice or financial advice let me just put that out there this is just me sharing what i've learned from being a graphic designer for 17 years to help you with pricing your work and how to charge as a graphic designer and nobody nobody whatsoever should tell you what to charge because you should determine how much you're charging based on where you are in your journey and how much you think your work is worth but it's also good to take advice and real quick this video is sponsored by envata elements but a little bit more about them later on down in the video so let's get started in developing your prices or what to charge your potential clients you have to make sure that you know what the standard rates are for graphic design services within your home country or the country in which you're operating so you need to develop your own rates based on your research and you can find that out by calling around to some of your local design shops or you can do a quick google search for your area and it's very important to do your market research because you don't want to be too expensive to price yourself way outside of the market and not get any clients but at the same time you don't want to be too cheap and don't even have a style in the market so are you going to price your designing per hour that can be a little bit difficult because it requires a lot of discipline in how you do your work are you going to have a standard or flat rate or are you going to charge per project ing to the workload so here are some examples just for reference let's say you charge 100 for a design you also have to consider possible changes that the client may want to that design right of course your work may be absolutely perfect in your eyes but the client always comes first right if they change their mind or if they want something adjusted you have to account for that those changes cannot be free yes you can give two free changes as part of your package but whatever they want seven changes what if they end up wanting 10 changes there has to be a line that says hey you get x amount of changes for free everything after that let's say is ten dollars per change right here's another example suppose you're hired to design a three-fold brochure right back and forth let's use the same rate of 100 per design that's six designs right because it's six size so that is 600 automatically for that project but you can give a discount let's say you give a 20 discount because the person is choosing to use you and you don't want to charge them too much you're just you know extending a little bit of courtesy to them for hiring you so 20 from 600 will bring your total to 480 and that's still not bad right let's look at if somebody wants to hire you to design a social media graphic for their instagram or facebook page let's say we're charging fifty dollars per square post right every single script that you do is fifty dollars so if you're doing a carousel with four slides each of those designs should cost fifty dollars and that total will be two hundred dollars right and you can give a discount let's say you want to give them a 10 discount that's 20 from your 200 and that will bring your total to 180 so you'll make 180 from that job that's still pretty good all right let's look at a logo example suppose your friend next door your next door neighbor right is starting a t-shirt business and they want you to design a logo for them and you say all right i'll charge 254 your logo fine what if nike or adidas contacts you and wants you to design their brand new logo for them those are huge brands obviously right surely you're definitely not going to charge nike or these as the same 250 that you're going to charge your next door neighbor why because you should charge for your logo design services based on the reach that that logo will have right do you think niko adidas is going to pay you 250 to design their logo when somebody else who's at the top of the market is going to charge them one million dollars to design that logo let's think about that what do you think be sure to let me know in the comments below and my reasoning behind that is your design that nike or adidas will use for their logo it's going to reach millions of people and it's going to make them billions of dollars based on where that logo is going to be on their products etc etc right so you have to make sure that you as the artist are getting properly paid properly commissioned for that work that you're doing right so that's how you have to think about it when it comes to logo designs and i'm also not saying that you should put on more effort in designing nike's or adidas's logo over your next door neighbor who is starting their t-shirt business so with all those examples let's just say we decide to have a flat rate and then build on it per project per workload right because each project is going to be different and you have to assess each project before you give out the price you know ask your questions you know what's the purpose of this design what did you have in mind for it find out all of the little details before you just throw a price out there and when you're interacting with your clients always try to be professional always try to be polite and courteous you know just be mannerable and respectful in how you talk to people because you don't know who it is you're dealing with and what can be the possible benefits that can come for you from working with that person also be sure to stand your ground when dealing with clients or potential clients especially the ones that want a discount or are demanding a discount don't be intimidated sure when you're just starting out you can do a couple designs for free and that's perfectly fine right but as you grow as you start to understand the market and what is required of you as a graphic designer then you can start to charge especially when you've done enough free work to build a little portfolio to say hey i can start posting these online to say hey i'm a graphic designer you can hire me to design your graphics so there's a season for free work and there is a season for paid work right and i can promise you this the moment you start charging for your graphic design services the moment you're out of that free season especially with people who you've used to design for for free the moment you start charging you're going to lose friends you're going to lose acquaintances but hey that's fine you're not getting into this line of work this business of graphic design to make friends right we're in here to make a living to make money and to provide you with top quality service so if you no longer want to be associated with me because i'm charging for my work then hey it's a free world right you can do whatever you want you can make your own choices but these are my prices and other things to consider when you're starting your graphic design business is you want to make sure that you're aware of all your overheads everything that goes into you being able to offer services as a graphic designer so whether it's your rent your electricity you know your power whether it's your internet connection your um computer you know eventually if you're using your computer all the while the design you know that's going to put natural wear and tear on it so i'm not saying that you should charge everybody like x amount to pay your rent every month that's not what i'm saying what i'm saying is consider your living consider your overheads because yes you may live with your parents but that doesn't mean you have to be a cheap graphic designer right yes you may own your own home or you're paying your own rent but that doesn't also mean that you should charge an insane amount of money for your designs to cover your rent what i'm saying is count the costs consider the costs of you operating as a graphic designer successfully be sure that whatever you're charging can go back into your business as well as it can be saved from you know you can put a portion of it back into the business save from a portion of it and also have a personal you know some personal cash for yourself from that so think about your prices very strategically it's not just saying hey i'm charging a hundred dollars for this design and that's it you have to intentionally think about everything that goes into you being able to offer this service of graphic design and for me i know that i have a lot of digital subscriptions right i have my dropbox i have my google drive that i'm paying for i have my adobe creative cloud you know photoshop and illustrator i'm paying for every single month i have my website that's up and running you know the hosting the domain that's not free and also one of my most important subscriptions as a graphic designer is envato elements and earlier i mentioned that inviter elements is the sponsor of this video and i use a lot of stuff from envato i use inverter elements daily you know i download graphic templates from them social media templates that i use for my clients i use elements such as patterns textures and backgrounds and i also download the vector icons from envato elements it's literally become a part of my workflow as a graphic designer and because you stuck around with me to this point in the video environments wants to give you 70 of a month's subscription from their website normally it costs 33 and you're getting it for nine dollars with that discount so what you can do to get that discount is just hit the first link in this video's description and you can download unlimited there is no limit to how much you can download within that 30-day period whether it's social media graphics like i mentioned earlier you can even download logos to use for your business right editable logos that you can make your own business card templates product mockups and so much more everything that you can think of to help you level up your graphic design is there on in fatah element so definitely check out that link in the video's description so i really hope these tips serve you well and i hope that no after watching this video you're much more confident to step out and you know how to price on the fundamentals of pricing your work as a graphic designer if you found the value in the tips that i shared with you here today be sure to let me know in the comments below and thank you thank you so much for watching this video and a special thank you to envata elements for sponsoring this video once again my name is teejam and i will see you guys in the next video [Music] you