It’s been a busy month here at Giz HQ with lots to contend with, but we’ve managed to launch an early beta of our new blogging service called Pijoo (pijoo.com). The blogging community has followed our progress as we launched gizfolio.com for freelancers and creative people, and we wanted to give something back, so here it is (in a very early form) for you to have a play with..

Just register with pijoo.com and add your blog(s) to start sharing with your fellow bloggers, get more readers and more visibility. The service is completely free, and all we ask is that you let us know of any problems you come accross (if any).

Pijoo.com is a simple social network/blog directory with discussion groups, widgets and visitor tracking - it even has a firefox plugin to help you discover new blogs from your browser.

Some of our early adopters have noted that the widget is too wide - we are working on a slimmer version, but in the mean-time, have a play and let us know how it works for you.

We’re getting a lot of feedback from our members about various features that would make the site even better, and we always listen to new ideas, so here’s a quick rundown of what’s going on behind the scenes, and what you can expect to see in the coming weeks..

Membership periods - The signup form for freelance accounts now lets you choose a membership length of 6 months, 1 year or 2 years, which allows more control over recurring payments. Anyone who signed up for 1 year before this change will have the option to change this by contacting us.

Spam, Spam Spametty Spam -  Not really a problem on the site (only 1 job listing was removed for spam so far) but it is becoming a problem on the contact form, so we’re adding a CAPTCHA and blacklist. So once that’s in, if you want to contact us via the website, you’ll have to do one of those squiggly word things. Sorry!

Dodgy Email Addresses - One or two buyers have either mispelled their email, or used a dead/fake address - which is a problem when freelancers want to contact them. We’ll be solving this by adding email verification for buyer accounts.

Misuse of Buyer Accounts - Buyer accounts are for posting jobs and finding freelancers. Anyone found using buyer accounts for other reasons will be removed from the site, as this is against our Terms of Use, and is unfair on other members.

Well, that’s about it I think.. Thanks to anyone who brought this stuff to our attention - we do listen!

Well judging was really hard, it took a whole weekend of sifting through images and heated debate (mostly about the price of beer) but we have our winners…

1st Prize goes to Andrew Bennet (BenSpark) for his excellent photography. Among our favourites was this..

2nd Prize goes to Astrid Mueller (PotatoMamma) for some really eye-catching illustrations. This image caught our eye..

Thanks to everyone who entered. After the success of the first competition, there will be more to come!

**Updated - Due to confusion about the whole 12am GMT thing, the competition is extended until midnight tonight (Friday 10th August) to allow all entries a fair chance**

The Creative Arts Competition is now closed. We’ve had a really impressive response thanks to all the efforts of Kevin at FuelMyBlog, and winners will be announced in the next couple of days.

For the few entries we got at the last minute, if they’re not on the slideshow yet, they’re still accepted so don’t fret if they don’t appear straight away - We have well over 150 images to sort through and judge, it’s a much bigger job than expected!

A huge thanks to everyone who entered, there’s some stunning work and it’s not going to be easy to pick only 2 winners, but we’ll do our best to choose someone who could really benefit from the prizes.

Being a freelancer can be very rewarding, and offers both creative and personal freedom that’s pretty rare in other lines of work, but how the heck do you get started?

It’s all about surviving the first year, which can be the downfall of the unprepared, and serves as a test not only of your creative skills, but more importantly - your ability to sell yourself, plan financially and deal with difficult clients.

Preparation..

Once you get a taste for freelancing, you probably won’t want to go back to a regular job in a hurry, so in the early stages it’s all about making sure you have enough to live on for the first 2 or 3 months while business is slow.

1. Save enough money to keep you going for at least 2 months. If you can’t do this, don’t tell your boss to ’shove it’ just yet - you might have to freelance in your spare time until it starts to pay enough.
2. Get advice from an organisation like Business Link or Princes Trust. They can help you see how marketable your skills are. They might even put you in touch with potential clients, as they deal with startup companies every day who could be looking for a freelancer.
3. Start building a portfolio - if you don’t have any commercial work to show, use your personal stuff or make mock-ups. Nobody expects you start with a catalogue of real clients, but they do expect to see what you can do for them.

Everything was going great..until…

Argh!.. My client refuses to pay me. Do I have any rights?

Yes, you wrote them into your contract… Didn’t you? If your answer to this is “What contract?” then you’re in a pickle. If you did get something in writing, there’s good news and bad news..

The good news is, you can use the written agreement to negotiate with the client with terms like “It says right here, I retain all copyrights to the work until I’m paid in full”.

The bad news is two-fold; firstly, it’s entirely up to you to enforce a contract. As a self-employed individual, your rights pretty much start and end with a written agreement between both parties. Second, if it’s not worded clearly and explicitly, it may not carry as much weight as you think.

You should rely on good communication and clearly defined, measurable goals to enforce an agreement and get paid on time.

Gah! My client keeps changing the project requirements, and expects more work for free.. My life is over!

This happens all the time, and is the perfect example of why milestones are so important. Breaking a project down into measurable goals (agreed by both sides) allows you be firm with a wayward client without sounding like a git.

This also gives you the opportunity to ask for part payment after a certain stage is reached, helping with cashflow.

Make sure you agree on milestones that are indisputable, and not open to interpretation. This way, when the project requirements change, you can confidently (and justifiably) ask for more beer money.

That’s all well and good, but I can’t seem to get any clients!.. Blah.

By the time you get organic search engine hits on your website (assuming you have one), you’ll have starved to death. Luckily, there are loads of other things that can get you noticed in the mean time..

• Start a blog. Blogs are a good way of attracting targeted visitors, and give you a captive audience for your portfolio. You can start the ball rolling by promoting your blog on sites like FuelMyBlog and MyBlogLog.
• Use sites like StumbleUpon to share your site with others.
• Put an ad in the Yellow Pages, and local paper. It’s not all about the internet.
• Join us, and we’ll take care of the nitty-gritty, leaving you time to pick and choose clients.
• Find out about grants and soft-loans available for advertising and membership fees etc.. (see point 2 above)
• For repeat business and referrals, send a business card to every client with your finished work.

One more thought; late payments and delayed projects are pretty much inevitable. Putting a small percentage of your fees into a savings account will keep the cash flowing when things go wrong, and keep you freelancing well into year 2 and beyond.

If you ever wanted to make a career out of your creative talent, or just have an artistic streak you’d like to explore professionally, then this competition is a great way to get started!

Gizfolio has teamed up with FuelMyBlog to give all you creative bloggers the chance to kickstart a freelance career in photography, painting, illustration, or any other creative talent you may have.

For one lucky winner, we have a 2 years Platinum Freelancer Account to give away, which should give you plenty of time to build an impressive portfolio and start getting paid for freelance projects.

This is a professional level account offering the highest number of features and maximum exposure for your work, worth nearly $800 in total.

**Update** Due to the high quality of entries so far, we will also give a 1 years Gold Account for one runner-up.

How to enter…

Send in a sample of your work. This can be a photo, painting, sketch, cartoon or illustration - anything, as long as it meets the following guidelines…

• Formats allowed are .jpg (jpeg), .bmp, .png, .gif or .tga

• File size no bigger than 2MB please

• It must be your own work

Email your entries to either mail@gizfolio.com or info@fuelmyblog.com and include your full name. You can enter as many times as you like before the closing date.

Closing Date…

All entries must be in by midnight (GMT) on the Friday 10th August 2007.

Who can enter?

The competition is open to everyone, you just need to be registered at FuelMyBlog and Gizfolio Startup Blog to enter. To get started make sure you..

1. Register at FuelMyBlog (click here)
2. Register at Gizfolio Startup Blog (click here)

That’s it, you’re done! Now send us your images for a chance to win.

The rules…

1. Enter as many times as you like before the closing date.
2. You must register at FuelMyBlog and Gizfolio Startup Blog.
3. No cash alternative will be offered for prizes.
4. Accounts offered are subject to our Terms of Use.
5. The judges decision is final.

Entries will be posted here and here. Good Luck!

The freelance job listings on Gizfolio have just had a whole bunch of new features and updates, thanks to the feedback of our members and even some non-members. Each listing is now far more interactive and offers more control to both buyer and freelancer…

• Job listers (buyers) can now link to external websites, PDF documents, google maps and downloadable files in the job description.
• Potential applicants can ask questions and discuss the project when (or before) they make an offer on it. Hooray!
• Job listings can be flagged as Spam, Wrong Category, or Duplicate post. This will become more important later, as spammers catch on to free job listings. Gits.

Well, that’s it for now - more updates as they happen (we have a room full of cambodian slaves working on it) - and keep an eye out for our first competition to be announced very (very) soon!

Welcome to the first in a series of articles by myself, Calvin Innes, for the Gizfolio start-up blog. I have been working freelance as an illustrator, animator and writer for a few years now, and during that time have made a number of different choices on how to promote myself, some good, some just plain useless…..

Through these articles I hope to pass on a bit of the knowledge I’ve gained, to freelancers just starting out in the industry. The articles should be particularly useful to illustrators, but will hopefully be a benefit to freelancers in all areas.

This time I’m going to concentrate on three main points you should cover to help promote yourself, and the services you offer. Not as easy as it might first sound. There are a lot of people out there who are just after your money and don’t actually work very well at all. And lets be honest, as a start-up freelancer funds are more often than not tight, to say the least. So every penny you spend on marketing has to count. And you need to make the most of any requests you receive. As a general rule, stay clear of anyone promising the world for no outlay at all.

1/ Website – For today’s freelancer a good website is, in most cases, essential. It is the most efficient way of presenting your work to potential clients, short of meeting them in person with your portfolio (see point 2). A good quality website should show off your talents in a clear and legible way. A good balance of text descriptions and portfolio work will always work well, but be sure not to distract from your work with an overly text heavy website (unless of course you are a writer). There are various ways to promote your website to drive the hits/views up, which I will go into in the next article for the Gizfolio blog.

The actual amount of work generated by a website varies between freelancers, but from a personal point of view I’d say as much as 80% of my work is generated on-line, so for me my website is the hub of my business.

If you have web design skills yourself then great, if not always look for a personal recommendation on a designer. They all say that they’re the best, but anyone can talk a good talk. Get yourself a good (and memorable) domain name, these can be bought for as little as £3 a year, and a good host for your site (I recommend E-Host Pros or Z-Host, both have good points).

2/ ‘Real Portfolio’ – Whether you’re an illustrator, cartoonist, even a digital illustrator, at some point you will need a ‘real’ portfolio of your work. Your portfolio will be useful for showing potential clients, but it will also allow you to quickly find a specific piece, without rifling through hundreds of loose pages. It’s worth spending time getting your portfolio right, with a good mix of illustrations showing off your talent in the best way possible.

This is certainly the age of the computer, but nothing beats a good quality, well presented book of your original/printed work. (I will go into how to present your portfolio in a later article). There is always the chance that a potential client will want to meet in person and see your work, before hiring you. Personally I hate these situations with a passion, but it’s one element of the business you will need to ‘get down’ if you want to give yourself the best chance of generating work. It always gets easier after the first one, trust me.

3/ Telephone Manner – I’m not a ‘telephone person’. I much prefer dealing with clients via e-mail whenever possible, so you have chance to re-read what you’ve written and correct anything before you send it out. On the phone you don’t have this option.

Three quarters of all my clients will at some point call me/ask for me to call them. So a good telephone manner is essential. If you’re just starting out and have had no experience in talking to a client on the phone it’s worth practicing. You might feel a bit silly asking a friend or partner to impersonate a client and call you, but the practice will prove worthwhile later down the line. Make sure you don’t ramble, or repeat yourself. You don’t need to put on an act and talk like a receptionist, be yourself. But be yourself with a mind on business. After all, the next phone call could generate your next big commission….

There’s no denying it, creativity and business are two very different animals and bringing them together can result in frustration, misunderstandings, damaged egos and empty wallets. An artist and a project manager often speak very different languages, and tend to be motivated by different things.We’ve met with business advisors, serial entreprenuers and company directors, and reached a better understanding of what motivates them, the skills they look for in contractors/freelancers and a whole lot more… and we thought it was time we reminded ourselves of the motivating factors behind art, design and the creative industries, so we made a visit to Ferens Art Gallery in Hull to really get a feel for the opposite end of the spectrum - art for art’s sake.

Behind every creative freelancer is an artist, who monetises their talent because they have to eat, but the real motivation is creative freedom, expression and surprise. No wonder creative differences and contract disputes arise, business and creativity need to meet on neutral ground, with someone that understands the needs of both sides.

This is the fundamental goal behind Gizfolio, to bring freelancers and commercial projects together on equal terms, and if we want to do that, we need an intimate understanding of both.

Luckily, our combined freelance experience should give us a head start, and we’re always glad to hear from others about their work, and who knows - by actually listening to the motivations behind the money, we can fill projects based on mutual co-dependence, not just the cheapest bid.

With new features and changes to the site on an almost daily basis, it’s pretty hard to keep track and announce each one, but here’s a quick rundown of the most recent, followed by some of the things we have planned for the coming weeks…

Recent changes…

• Not an important change, but an obvious one - the site has a new look, which should make it stand out more from the background.
• You can now vote for each member by giving them a 1-5 star rating on their portfolio. Getting feedback from other freelancers as well as buyers will help members to fine-tune their portfolio.
• Job search is now much better. You can now narrow your search by keywords as well as categories and job status.

Planned changes for July 2007…

• More control over job listings, such as PDF and image attachments, the ability to flag jobs as spam/miscategorised etc.. and more payment options for buyers.
• More control over communities for community owners, such as user moderation and the option to exclude certain members from a community. Currently if you start a community, you own it and can delete comments - soon you’ll have many more options.
• Widgets for wordpress. Still having problems with database access for the widgets, but they should be ready soon.
• Email notifications when you get a job offer or comment on your profile.
• Thumbnail improvements - some way of improving the way thumbnails are uploaded/created to make it easier.