Charles Apple

An artist named Deborah Faas wrote me a few days ago, asking for advice on how to break into the free-lance business:

I am a news hound and a portrait artist and would like nothing more than a freelance job that could bring my two passions together.  I wonder if you could give me an idea where to start, I would really appreciate it.

Boy, did Deborah ask the right person! I’ve spent the last three weeks on what was essentially a crash-course in breaking into free-lance.

And, typically for me, I had quite a bit of good luck. Possibly more good luck than I deserved.

The whole thing started with an idea I had while driving home the very day I lost my job.

I could try to find a new position somewhere, but the likelihood of that happening quickly seemed awfully slim. What I needed — right away — was a project that would keep me busy for two or three weeks. Basically, something that would keep me from getting depressed once I got back home to Virginia Beach.

And it hit me: There’s this big election graphic I’ve drawn three times over the past eight years. It shows who’s projected to win the electoral votes in each state — basically, aggregating info I dug up from various media web sites around the country. I’ve been showing the graphic for years in my slideshows. Occasionally, editors have told me they’d love to run something like that but the time it would take for their staff to research and build the page seems daunting.

Well, here I was, with time on my hands. And obviously, I knew how to research and build the page. I ought to see if I can find a paper or two that would buy the graphic from me!

So started the first free-lance project I’ve done in years. A crash re-education.

Step one was to pull samples of the three times in the past I built this graphic. The first was for the Des Moines Register in 2000. I updated it in 2004 for the Virginian-Pilot. In 2006, I took the basic idea and used it to create a Congressional mid-term version and used it again in the Pilot.

The original graphic from 2000. States are listed
by the times their polls close. I even left a spot for
readers to fill in the actual winners as they are
called throughout the evening.

The follow-up pieces from the Virginian-Pilot in
2004 (left) and the Congressional midterm version
from 2006 (right).
—

So that was good — I had three samples to show.

So a couple of weeks ago, I moved to step two: I began sending out e-mails to editors I know around the country.

This pained me greatly. I know precisely how many e-mails folks in newspaper land receive for unsolicited free-lance work. I even blogged about it once. So I made a decision early on to try to personalize every e-mail I sent.

This literally took me days. I carefully crafted my sales pitch, trying hard to start out with a personalized note or two. Something to suggest this wasn’t a canned message. And, of course, I knew I’d include my samples.

I sent the first messages to papers where I once worked and where I had special connections. The second round went to papers where I knew the editor or visual directors and ones I thought might be interested in buying a big election preview. The third round went to everyone else I could think of. In only a very small number of cases, I sent a message to people I didn’t know. That’s the advantage, I suppose, of knowing a lot of people.

But what happens if two papers, in the same coverage area, both want to buy the graphic? I’d have to make sure there would be no overlap. I didn’t want any exclusivity issues or to feel they had been shortchanged.

I sure hated spamming my friends. I hated it.

And that’s one of the first things to learn about free-lancing or consulting. You have to find a way to enjoy the business and sales part of the process. Or, if not enjoy it, you have to find a way to become good at it. Which is something Alan Jacobson has been telling us all for years.

The bad news is that I’m not good at it. The good news, though, is that plenty of editors liked the piece enough to buy it. I ended up with 14 newspapers buying my piece.

Then, of course, I had to worry about how to get the graphics done.

The New York Times’ final projections, as of Monday night.
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The research, for me, was the easy part. I mined web sites to pull the media projections — I pulled from Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, The New York Times, USA Today, Fox News, CNN and the Associated Press. I also compiled info from NBC, ABC, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, but I elected (heh) not to use any of theirs.

Most of these guys updated their state-by-state projections once a week. So over the course of my project, I saw the states swap around once or twice. But then some outlets didn’t update regularly.

Fox News’ projections, as of Thursday.
—

At first, the projections for Fox News, for example, seemed horribly out of date. I realize a certain segment of our readers expect to see Fox News in a graphic like this, but does that obligate us to use outdated info? Perhaps it does.

Luckily, Fox updated its projections on Thursday — just in time. Sabato surprised me with an update on Friday and then wrote he’d update again Monday. He finally did — after 8 p.m. I had to go without it.

Sabato’s final projection from Monday evening.
—

I also pulled info from TheGreenPapers.com, the National Archives’ Electoral College pages and a few other sources.

Building the first page was relatively straight-forward. A bit tedious, but straight-forward. The earliest deadline I had was for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, so I built theirs first. Everything else was derived from that page.

Here’s an example of a finished page. This one ran
Sunday in both the Gaston Gazette of Gastonia, N.C.
and the Shelby Star.
—

One big labor-saving tricks, of course, was to make sure the page was completely accurate and updated before I began splitting versions from the Richmond page. If, say, the NYT changes its projections, it’s a lot easier to make those changes once than 12 or 13 times.

Once I began splitting apart the pages, things got complicated quickly. For example, two of my clients use a page that was 70 picas wide. Four used a 69p9- wide page. And one used a 69 pica-wide page. Meanwhile, the smallest page was only 60 picas wide — that’s more than an inch-and-a-half more narrow than the largest page!

It made for a tight, tight squeeze on that 60p page and the pair of papers that print 61p5 wide. For any papers greater than 68 picas wide, I included a seventh set of data — projections from RealClearPolitics.

Likewise, page depths were wildly different. The tallest space I was given was 127p6. The shortest was 117p9. One paper had the second-tallest page — until they wrote the night before deadline to ask if I could shorten the package by two inches so they could sell an ad adjacency. I managed to squeeze it in — to my surprise.

An advertisement. I hadn’t thought of that. Next time, I’ll start a couple of weeks out and suggest an ad adjacency as part of my sales pitch.

A handful of samples, showing a variety of type styles
and sizes. From the top down: The Baltimore Sun, the
Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Des Moines Register, the
Detroit Free Press, the Waterbury, Conn., Republican-
American, the Quad-City Times, the Minneapolis Star-
Tribune, the Fort Myers News-Press and the Richmond
Times-Dispatch.
—

I expected color to be an issue. I pitched the graphic as color but offered to build black-and-white versions as needed. In the end, only one paper took me up on that offer.

I also expected fonts to be an issue. And boy, were they!

I spent a lot of time adjusting and tweaking and finding ways to make fonts work across multiple papers. For three or four papers, we finally had to send them PDFs with fonts embedded in them. I wonder how service bureaus deal with issues like fonts. That’s something else for me to research when I get time.

And then there were deadlines. While nine of my clients planned to run their graphics today — Election Day — five others wished to run them as part of their voters’ guides on Sunday. For those early-bird papers, I promised preliminary copies to look at the Wednesday before and final copies by Friday afternoon. For the Election Day papers, I promised preliminary copies on Friday and finals early Monday afternoon.

I concentrated a lot of energy on meeting these deadlines. And I think I did pretty well. Even when one paper didn’t sign on until Friday night and yet another one committed on Sunday night, I managed to get their pages to them on time.

I learned early on that e-mailing large multiple-gigabyte Adobe Illustrator and PDF files wasn’t practical for most papers. So on the advice of my pal Bill Pitzer of the Charlotte Observer, I contracted with an FTP server, Box.net. They worked out well for me. I recommend them highly.

Box.net’s FTP sever
—

Once I finished a page — and after I had carefully checked it — I saved the file in the format requested by the paper, stuffed it into a zip file and uploaded it to my FTP server. Then, I sent messages to my graphics or design contacts that the pages were ready to download. I had the ability to monitor the files — I didn’t mark off a page as done until I saw it had been downloaded at least once.

I write this Monday night, reclining on the futon in my office, waiting for the Saturday Night Live election TV special. My pages all went out hours ago.

The kind folks at the Baltimore Sun even wrote back to see if they could post a PDF version on their web site for readers to download and print out themselves. Damn fine idea; wish I had thought of it.

Baltimore’s downloadable page. Click to bring
the page up in a new window.
—

Fourteen clients. Amazing. I’m overwhelmed and humbled with the response. And, of course, I’m elated with the unexpected income. What started out as something to keep me occupied turned into a couple of mortgage payments for the Apple family.

So what have I learned from all this? What tips can you hopeful free-lancers take away from my seat-of-the-pants project?

1. It helps if you have good contacts.

And I mean real contacts. People you know. People you’ve met. If you have to introduce yourself and pitch your artwork (or your photo or your story) at the same time, your chances of selling are significantly lower.

It also helps if you have some expertise in your field. If you’re an illustrator, make sure you’re citing the awards you’ve won or the clients you’ve serviced. If you’re a writer, it helps if your work is already regarded as good, solid prose.

So get out there. Network. Meet people. Know people. Editors and art directors will be much more likely to read your solicitation if they already know you or your work.

2. Don’t spam your customers.

Let’s be honest — if you’re going to free-lance, then you’re going to spam people at some point. It’s unavoidable.

You have to get the word out on what you can do for your potential customers. You can’t take the time to write a personalized message for everyone on your contact list.

Well, actually, you can. But don’t keep track of your time. It’ll only make you cry.

But be aware that editors and art directors receive multiple e-mails a day, soliciting free-lance work. They also receive tons of post cards from free-lancers and art agencies.

So find a way to advertise your wares.  Find a way to do it efficiently. But don’t blend in with — or add to — the rest of the spam these folks receive every day.

3. Fill a niche.

One big reason for the success of my little project, I’m certain, was that it was the right approach to the right story at just the right time.

Elections are a big story. And this was a big, complex election piece that contained info most readers would find interesting and even included a minor interactive element — rare for a print piece.

And the timing was good, too — my first e-mails went out just as some papers were having their first election meetings.
So you can’t pitch what you enjoy drawing or painting or designing or photographing or writing. You have to pitch projects that editors want to buy. You have to pitch projects for which that editor will spend money — money the editor doesn’t really have — to buy for her readers.

Your subject matter must be compelling. It must be a real asset to any paper that buys it. It must be something the paper can’t get from any other source.

4. Price your work carefully.

It’s been nearly a decade since I did free-lance work, so I was very, very rusty on pricing. I know about what we paid for free-lance centerpiece art at the Pilot, though, so I used that as a starting point for my price structure. Naturally, I asked a little more from larger papers than I did from smaller papers.

One respected visual leader — and a great pal — who bought my graphic advised me I was underpricing my work. I told him I was “pricing it to sell” — I hoped to get it into more papers by pricing it a little lower.

But he had a great point. Find out what your work is worth and then ask for it. But don’t be afraid to negotiate.

5. Infographics can be very difficult to free-lance.

I’ve sold free-lance illustration work. Typically, it’s fairly easy to find a format in which you can save your final piece and that your client can open or place on a page. EPS, PSD, JPEG. Whatever.

I even sold a free-lance photo — only once, though. And man, was that an easy paycheck, from technical point of view.

But graphics? They require a lot of work. Not only do you have to research and write them, but then you have to make sure there are no errors. Sure, your client will put it thorough their copy desk. But if you’re trying to serve that client well, then you need your free-lance graphic to be as perfect as you can make it.

If you’re suddenly working by yourself at home — with no copy desk of your own to back you up — it can be a little scary. At least, it scared me.

Also, this project was unusual in that it was something I could offer to multiple papers. Most free-lance projects are single-paper ideas. You’ll find most papers aren’t prepared to buy a free-lance project that other papers are buying, too.

6. Offer a variety of sizes or products.Of the papers that turned down my offer, a few said they didn’t have the money. But far more said they couldn’t find the space to run it. Newshole is tight these days.

If I had to do it over again, I would have tried harder to offer editors two or three sizes of my graphic. Perhaps, say, a four-column-by-full-page and a half-page version in addition to the full-page version.

More options make for more possibilities — especially the possibility of selling an ad to put below your piece. Savvy advertisers are always looking for clever content to sponsor.

So find a way to maximize the options you offer to your potential clients.

7. Offer immaculate customer service.

Invest time in building pages to precise sizes and with precise fonts to match the needs of your clients.

Make life easier for them and they’ll remember your effort — and your results — the next time you come calling.

8. Think local.

Local is where it’s at in newspapers these days. Papers are cutting back on their wire report — to the point of perhaps even killing their memberships to the Associated Press.

Therefore, if you’re hoping to make a sale, try to offer editors something they won’t get from AP or MCT graphics or from nationally-known free-lancers. Look for local stories to illustrate.

9. Think interactive.

Yeah, yeah. If I could do do multimedia work, I probably would still be employed.

But three editors I contacted asked specifically if I could build a multimedia version of my graphic. Never mind the fact that web sites featuring interactive electoral maps are a dime a dozen. There was a tremendous hunger for this sort of presentation.

I could have offered it, I might have made additional sales.

10. Don’t count on making free-lance a career.

Hey, I’m grateful to sell the pieces I did this week. And I feel like I did a pretty good job for my clients.

But let’s be realistic. Newspapers have cut back not only on their staffing and newshole, but also on their free-lance budgets. Editors simply don’t have the money to outsource much of their design or graphics work.

Editorial free-lance may not earn you a full-time paycheck anytime soon, so it’d be best not to count on one. At least until you become more established.

—

So, Deborah, there’s your answer. That’s what I’ve been up to lately in the free-lance arena and some tips to help you get started. Write us back and give us a link to your online portfolio, willya?

Meanwhile, there are a number of you guys out there who are a lot more experienced in free-lance than I am. What tips can you offer Deborah and me? What mistakes have you made?

All advice willingly accepted.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 9:14 am and is filed under Charles Apple, Elections, Graphics, Innovative ideas, Job changes, Networking, Resources, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.