My life, my talent and passion; All goes to waste?
Posted by Laskie in Confused on Apr 4th, 2011 | 11 commentsI am 24 years old African, talented and self-taught graphic and web designer. I have never been employed (because I don’t have no school papers, I droped out of college because I couldnt afford to pay fees).
I am trying to make it as a freelance designer but I don’t know where to start while totally broke. I can’t pay for a poster ad, I have designed my personal site but I have no money to put it up. I cannot borrow a bank loan either because I have no salary security. I feel that life is unfair to me, all my friends I grew up with are rich and don’t want to associate with me now. They consider me a looser because I dont have a girlfriend, always broke and stay indoors 24/7. They dont know I have talent in design and spend 15 hrs a day trying to improve on it.
Any one out there, give me a practical advice on where to start, give me hopes or something, I really need to make it in life and help my family out of poverty, despite not being able to finish college. Where can I get someone to fund me just to be able to start off. Am sure with 2 clients I will be able to pick up, I believe my work will sell out and bring in more clients.
11 Responses to “ “My life, my talent and passion; All goes to waste?”
Leave a Reply
Subscribe
Sounds more like you are dealing with depression, not with life being unfair. You have allowed yourself to become a victim to circumstances. As an African American near your age with a similar disadvantaged background, I know how it is. My advice to you is to get out more and look towards God for motivation. Change the way you think and set goals, then put passion behind it. It took me almost 7yrs to get my bachelors and there were many obstacles but I made it :) you can too! MAKE A PLAN… maybe you will have to work as a server in a restaurant or get loans to pay for school or to get your website up but u can do it!!
Truth: Advice given to me about working and/or getting a job.
#1 Until you get a job, your job is to get a job. So dress the past and spend eight hours a day doing it.
#2 If it don’t make dollars it don’t make sense/cents
#3 Any money coming in is better that none.
Move to canada we pay for immigrants to go to school anyone can make it here as long as their determined and hardworking and if you have talent bonus
nevermind sorry to bother you
a site I would look at if I were you is. elance dot com. I have used them to help hockey teams & businesses who were looking for talented designers. Companies and individuals will post up requests for projects they are wanting help in. It cane be logo designs, website design, brochure design, graphic designs, mailings, etc and so forth.
You would register yourself as a provider and post up what you do with examples, etc. and then you bid on peoples work. I’ve used companies and individuals on the site about 10 times over the past 5 years. The company elance takes a small % of the final bid price for their service they provide to you. I have never been let down with the quality of the service from either elance or the companies/individuals who provided me with there skills and services.
Check out the site, see what other companies are doing in your field, see what elance charges you for providing what they do. I hope I was helpful
Ay up ‘cannot tell’ whats with the, ‘never mind sorry to bother you’ reply? Sort it out dweeb!
put an ad on craiglist or expatriates!
This post is a scam. This is a leadin for a request for money.
Just because it contains the words ‘Africa’ and ‘poverty’ doesn’t mean it’s a scam. The guy is asking for practical advice on how to get out of his situation not for cash.
I pity you that you think all of Africa is just begging for money
P.S. what kind of name is alphandomega? You think that you’re God or something?
Thanks ya’ll. Am taking that advice of elance.com, seems its gonna work with me.
Sites for template sales:
themeforest.com
Upload your designs, people buy them, you get paid.
woothemes.com
Submit your design for inclusion on the site.
sortfolio.com
Similar to elance.com.
Web design is not difficult/expensive business to get into. Download only free software like gimp, aptana studio, and lots of firefox add-on’s like Firebug, webdesigner, fireftp. Adobe software is good, but it’s not worth the money because all the open source stuff these days does the job as well or better.
If you’re having trouble with hosting fees, check out free hosting services and buy a domain name that masks the hosting site’s URL (you still have to buy the domain name, but that’s 10 bucks a year). Or you can build your own web server with an old computer:
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutori.....-for-free/
If you need business cards, check out vistaprint.com. They offer free cards so long as you let them print their logo on the back. Sounds ghetto, but no one will look down on you for having a business card to hand out.
As for getting business, advertising is not everything. The best business comes from word of mouth. Build one great website and the business will start to come to you.
Also, these sties are useful:
webdesignerdepot.com
freelanceswitch.com
alistapart.com
dezinerfolio.com
That’s it for my 10+ years experience in the business (without a degree, and with a positive cash flow). Best wishes to you!