The Freelancer’s Handbook is designed to provide an overview of the requirements, personal challenges and professional opportunities you will likely encounter in the early days and months of a freelance career. It is not intended to replace detailed information on market research, legal requirements, tax returns, social media or even how to create a logo. There are literally thousands of guides, handbooks and leaflets designed to assist you with these topics. The Freelancer’s Handbook should be viewed as an introduction that highlights relevant issues, challenges and milestones by providing suggestions, statistics, project examples, day to day activities and lessons learned by the author.
When referring to ’creative industries’, in the context of this book, we are primarily discussing users of Adobe’s Creative Cloud software. This includes graphic designers, video producers, photographers, radio presenters, animators, UI/UX creators, web designers and other digital content producers. The majority of principles and examples included are valid for those undertaking projects in any country, but are written from the perspective of someone working in the United Kingdom.
The handbook also includes an insight into some of the promotion ideas and methods that have resulted in long term business relationships with Airbus, Toyota Motor Manufacturing and other household names across the UK and beyond. The later chapters consider some of the pitfalls of social media plus there is also an appendix containing links to useful online resources.
Pursuing a career as a freelancer in the creative industries is both challenging and exhilarating. There will be moments of joy and moments of despair. For the most part it provides a true sense of achievement, tests your ability to survive to the limit and allows you to follow your own creative path to a large extent. In Section 10 of the book I present the feedback received from some of my contacts when I posed the question: ‘if there is one thing you wish you knew before you began working for yourself, what would that be?’
Freelancing could be and should be the most satisfying career choice you will make. Below are some thumbnails of pages from the book. See other publications written by Peter Simcoe on the Simcoemedia bookshelf.
