^ Well said.
Here's the thing, even if you grow your client base to bigger and better clients, and you put a minimum of say $1000 on your door, that's still a hell of a lot of clients, revisions, babysitting, chasing invoices, etc (100 clients a year to make your 100K - unrealistic and no way you're building two wicked sites a week and closing the clients/billing/considering the contract closed..).
Now, up your minimum to 10K and do 10 clients a year - still you'll be balls out gray, stressed, and babysitting huge contracts with marketing dept. control freaks from big brands (perhaps a good problem to have compared to doing a fucking logo for $20, but then again I wouldn't be content working at walmart even if it is in the electronics dept., yet some are...).
You'll have to find a balance on your time and what you will/won't do for clients that equates to maximum return for you at the end of your fiscal year. How many logo's can you really pop out at $15? fuck that's 6666 logo's to bank your 100K. Even $100 - $300 LP's - ugh. Learn to say NO to work, and learn to filter shitty clients or you'll learn the hard way (get overworked, taken advantage of on revisions/turnaround/deliverables). The more time you can spend on profitable customers and learn how to zone in only on those that pass a filter will be the only way you'll learn to keep top tier work in your studio, thus in your portfolio and future prospecting potential.
Stop marketing to marketers would be my first suggestion, or put up a portfolio of nothing but your best and charge accordingly. Designers tend to LOVE WHAT THEY DO a little too much and forget that's it's still a business, even though you're doing what you want and getting to be creative daily yadd yadda.
Here's the thing, even if you grow your client base to bigger and better clients, and you put a minimum of say $1000 on your door, that's still a hell of a lot of clients, revisions, babysitting, chasing invoices, etc (100 clients a year to make your 100K - unrealistic and no way you're building two wicked sites a week and closing the clients/billing/considering the contract closed..).
Now, up your minimum to 10K and do 10 clients a year - still you'll be balls out gray, stressed, and babysitting huge contracts with marketing dept. control freaks from big brands (perhaps a good problem to have compared to doing a fucking logo for $20, but then again I wouldn't be content working at walmart even if it is in the electronics dept., yet some are...).
You'll have to find a balance on your time and what you will/won't do for clients that equates to maximum return for you at the end of your fiscal year. How many logo's can you really pop out at $15? fuck that's 6666 logo's to bank your 100K. Even $100 - $300 LP's - ugh. Learn to say NO to work, and learn to filter shitty clients or you'll learn the hard way (get overworked, taken advantage of on revisions/turnaround/deliverables). The more time you can spend on profitable customers and learn how to zone in only on those that pass a filter will be the only way you'll learn to keep top tier work in your studio, thus in your portfolio and future prospecting potential.
Stop marketing to marketers would be my first suggestion, or put up a portfolio of nothing but your best and charge accordingly. Designers tend to LOVE WHAT THEY DO a little too much and forget that's it's still a business, even though you're doing what you want and getting to be creative daily yadd yadda.
