Don’t ignore the easy stuff
2007-05-21 19:00:38
At this stage of an internet startup (literally days from launch), all the trivial little details you put off til later come back with a vengeance. Something as insignificant as a checkbox on a signup form has now teamed up with the ‘password reminder’ link that goes nowhere, the wording on the about page and a million other things that were easy to do at the time, but now form a collective behemoth of work, that really needs doing - and fast.
It’s the easy stuff
that’s the hardest to finish - because there’s no satisfaction in doing something easy, so it gets put off til the last minute. Lesson learned - don’t ignore the easy stuff, unless you prefer it in king-size chunks.
So here we are, at that stage where we have to do all the little things that will probably go un-noticed on launch day, as well as the harder stuff like making sure we have a steady stream of job listings right from day one.
I’m not complaining - the feedback we’ve ha
Launch Date, Beer and Todo Lists
2007-05-17 09:47:30
We had a very productive meeting yesterday in the pub, our table scattered with scrawled task lists, timeframes and an assortment of beer and whiskey to bring some sanity(?) to the procedings. Having started with a vague jumble of ideas and things we “oops, forgot to do last week”, we eventually had a pre-launch task list for each person about the size of a post-it™ note (last months list was 4 pages long).
So after another round of drinks and ideas being thrown around, we made our way home clutching our tiny todo lists looking pretty damn pleased with ourselves for being “geniuses and stuff” and muttering the final launch date like mental patients on day release.
Gizfolio will launch to the public on the 30th May 2007, which gives us about 2 weeks to make final adjustments to the site, send off more paperwork to companies house, get the business phone number in place (so our members can call us), arrange advertisement, investment, and anything else that ends
Read more: Launch
, Lists
Video Tour 2: Communities
2007-05-07 12:59:04
Here’s a quick clip showing job listings, some folios and the new communities in action..
Read more: Communities
5 Freelance Tips for Beginners
2007-05-03 22:37:37
If you’re just starting out as a freelancer, here are 5 tips that might be helpful in avoiding some common pitfalls. Feel free to add your own tips/experiences via the comments box…
Get it in writing - A written contract will protect both parties and make sure clear, measurable goals are laid out. This could save valuable time if the project requirements change, and also give some protection from legal disputes if any arise. Trusting the other person/company is not enough, especially when money is involved.
There’s no such thing as a ’standard contract’ - read the agreement fully, and if you’re not happy with a clause, ask for it to be changed, re-worded, clarified or taken out. Although it’s usually the employer who writes the contract, it should be agreed by both sides, and if you’re told “It’s a standard contract, it can’t be changed” you should be very suspicious. Pay particular attention to how deliverables
Read more: Freelance
Almost there..
2007-04-29 05:03:03
The site is almost done, and we’ll be sending out the last round of invites within the next week or so. The community page just went in, as well as big improvements to the profile search engine. As it stands, the site is now 100% functional - it just needs proofreading on the ‘about’ page, and the help/FAQ needs finishing (lots of Q’s without A’s) and a bunch of non-website stuff that needs sorting.
Another video tour is on its way showing the new features since video 1, and shortly after, we hope to go live. We’ve put an obscene amount of work into getting it right, and will continue to make improvements after launch.
If you’ve sent an email requesting a free account, we have you on a list and will be contacting you soon - if you haven’t yet, get in touch before the launch and we’ll fit you in - remember to send a link to your work so we know your request is genuine. We want to give free accounts to those who’ll benefit, whic
Read more: Almost
The story telling machine
2007-04-21 11:39:28
Gizfolio isn’t just about uploading a series of images, it’s not just about getting paid for your skills. Unlike the traditional freelance sites, it’s about building communities, which is ultimately the best way to market your talents to a targeted audience.
Instead of choosing categories in the hope that someone finds you, you start and join communities that share a common interest, so a photographer would join the photography community, making him easy to find and interact with, while sharing knowledge with other photographers - and his portfolio is being seen by the right people.
But what if you also dabble in web design, illustration or animation? No problem, you can join any number of communities, and if there isn’t one that fits, you can create one - so instead of labelling yourself with a limited selection of categories, you can tailor our site to fit your individual needs.
This is when your portfolio starts to tell a story
- about you, which makes it re
New Features & Gizmo’s
2007-04-15 08:36:16
The 2 main things we discussed recently was the need for a strong community aspect to the site, and a way to avoid members being lost among a huge list of others as the membership grows. Looking around on some popular freelance sites, and speaking to freelancers about their experiences, it seems most other sites swamp you with profiles and portfolios, making it very hard to find the right person for a project. Some of the people we spoke to say they pay a membership fee only to get lost on page 50, which is pretty useless. The worst case was one site that required a large image linking back to them even though you’ve paid for the privilege!
The solution we’ve come up with is, instead of categories and sub-categories for skills, such as Illustration, Photography etc.., members will be free to start mini-communities based on their area of interest and expertise. So there’ll be a searchable community for each category, members will be able to join exsisting communities o
Read more: Gizmo
Video Tour 1: Features
2007-04-12 11:51:47
We’re almost ready for a public launch, so here’s a clip showing some features of the site. We still have a handful of free accounts to give away to talented freelancers, so send us an email at mail@gizfolio.com to get access to the site before it goes public, and a free portfolio! Anyway, here’s the clip…
So what is Gizfolio?
2007-04-03 14:48:11
Gizfolio is a website that brings freelancers and potential clients together in one convenient place. Freelancers can maintain a public portfolio, which consists of an image gallery, a public profile and a biography. Clients (or buyers) can search through portfolios and contact freelancers directly, or post job listings and wait for offers to be made.
The front page (above) forms the hub for all recent activity, from recent images to featured profiles and job listings. There’s also a page for browsing jobs (or projects), and a page for searching portfolios - making everything just a click away. We offer various account types to suit everybody, from individuals to professional studios. We’re aiming the site at artists, illustrators, photographers, web designers, and anyone else in the creative industries, but equally, we want the site to become a useful resource for anyone searching for the right skills for a project.
We’re launching in 2 phases, and right now we&rsqu
About this blog
2007-03-31 15:16:02
Welcome to the blog! We’ve been building a company called Gizfolio Ltd for about a month now, and having recently been formally registered with companies house and the website almost finished, we thought it was a good time to share our progress with the general public.
We’ll be posting regular updates, including the ups and downs of an internet startup as we continue build it from the ground up. The website www.gizfolio.com (or www.gizfolio.co.uk) will allow freelance artists, designers and all creative professionals to advertise their portfolio, bio and services to targeted clients, and allow those clients to post projects in the form of job listings on the site. More details on the business model will be revealed later, but we intend to do things quite differently to existing portfolio sites.
Watch this space for more details… or better still, bookmark it! ;)
What makes a great portfolio?
2007-05-24 17:32:41
This is a question we asked ourselves when drawing up the plans for Gizfolio, and one we hope we can answer through the features we offer to our members.
In this fast paced modern world, a creative professional has much less time in which to grab attention and distinguish themselves from the competition, making the initial impact of a portfolio more important than ever before.
When I look at portfolios, especially on the internet, I find myself scanning across the page for about 3 seconds, by which time I know if I like it or not, and whether to close the page or dig a little deeper. If a portfolio requires me to scroll vertically (or worse, horizontally) before I get a sense of what’s on offer, I move on pretty quickly.
So a good portfolio to me, shows the entire person with little or no effort on my part - a great portfolio lets me dig deeper and find out more without really having to think. When you’re made to think consciously about how to navigate the page, or find c
Read more: makes
Pre-Launch Digest
2007-05-27 02:10:02
The workload is insane - It just turned 7am here in the UK, and I’m still working on the site (since yesterday), trying to get everything ready for launch. At about 4am, instead of calling it a day like any sane person would, I decided to make some major changes to the way images are picked for the front page, which was a bigger job than I thought, and now that it’s done, instead of calling it a day I decided to write a blog post about how I get no sleep. You can’t argue with logic like that.
Guarantees - Often overlooked by web ventures, but we’ve been looking at the kind of guarantees we can offer our paid users, as a gesture of goodwill kind of thing. We’ve come up with something along the lines of..
If your account doesn’t pay for itself in 6 months, we give you 6 months free.
..simple, straight to the point and no bull. Just how we like it. The fact that an account will probably pay for itself with only one job means most users won’t have
Read more: Launch
, Digest
Confusing emails
2007-05-30 03:55:11
Just a quick post to clarify, if you got an email telling you the site will open within 24 hours, and how to sign up for your free account, the site will not be open until 5-6pm GMT today. I sent out 20 last night, and the replies are flooding in from confused people, so humble apologies for not being clear in the email.
Early testers didn’t have this problem as we let them in with a password, but since we’re removing the password today, we thought it was a good idea to give out the remaining free accounts at the same time.
So there we have it.. the site will open at 6pm GMT Today. The activation code in the email is for the signup form, not the password prompt that pops up.
Any problems as always, don’t hesitate… support@gizfolio.com
Read more: Confusing
We’re done! (ish)
2007-05-29 02:59:24
The site is finished and ready go live on Wednesday. After 4 months of sleep deprivation, 6000 cups of tea and countless design changes, it’s time to take a day off before the real work starts, and I have no intention of getting up before the crack of noon tomorrow.Email invites will go out to the last handful of free members just before the site opens, and we look forward to seeing new faces start to appear on the members list.
Also, if you’re wondering if the launch will mark the end of this blog, it won’t. The ’startup blog’ will carry on as we take the company through its first year, find new ways to help freelancers and clients, and anything else that pops up along the way.
I’m hoping to get some photos up in the next week or so, and introduce you properly to some of the people and places involved, unless they make us look ugly, in which case you’ll get another cartoon.
Building an effective portfolio - Part 1
2007-06-03 09:18:41
Getting on the front page
The front page of Gizfolio is the hub of all recent activity, and getting on there can increase your visibility and lead to more work. Priority is given to higher quality work, and images with proper thumbnails and descriptions. An image without a thumbnail is scaled down to fit a 128×128 box and doesn’t look as good as a manually uploaded thumbnail, so will not make the front page. There are 3 ways to reach the front page…
Recent Images - These are nominated by the editors who are scouting for new and interesting thumbnails to show. Once added to a very short list, those images are shown at random. Your images will not appear here without a thumbnail.
Featured Profile - These are picked at random from all Gold and Platinum members. You don’t have to do anything to appear here, but make sure you have an eye-catching bio and avatar to encourage clicks to your profile.
Editors Pick - A single image is hand-picked by an editor and will
Read more: Building
, effective
Launch Update
2007-06-01 10:29:45
Yeah I know, we look all smug and you probably want to punch us, but it’s because we just launched gizfolio.com after months of late nights and beer fueled ‘design sessions’, so excuse us while we bask in our own glory before getting back to work.
Nick Bardsley (pictured left) has offered a partnership between Gizfolio and his company, Springfield Management Training, which means we now have the benefit of Springfields business expertise, and we’ll be taking care of the companys promotion, so ‘Giz HQ’ is moving to Hull City Centre, where we’ll be sharing a building with Nick & co.
Our new address is:- Shackles Chambers, 7 Land of Green Ginger, Kingston-upon-Hull, East Yorkshire, United Kingdom HU1 2ED
Also, a huge welcome to our new members, who’ve been busy uploading some really stunning work. We’ll be featuring some of our favourite portfolios on the blog as a regular thing, so keep it coming, and enjoy the site!
Read more: Launch
, Update
Artist Interview: Barnaby Ward
2007-06-08 21:55:29
In the first of a series of interviews with some of our favourite artists, designers and photographers from around the world, I spoke with illustrator, Barnaby Ward about his work..
Name: Barnaby Ward
Location: Barbados
Website: http://somefield.com
Email: info [at] somefield.com
Originally from Barbados, Barnaby studied graphic design in Toronto, Canada where he became involved in a small online based artist/design collective known as Thoughcrimez. He had a few exhibitions and focused mainly on abstract, design oriented work.
He eventually returned to Barbados where he pursued a career in design. In his free time Barnaby works obsessively on large, personal comic projects and drawings of girls in odd situations.
Tell us a bit about yourself and what your work involves..
I’m a graphic designer by trade, so the ‘art’ I do is mainly after hours and more personal than professional. I’ve been drawing since day one, and have always kept it up, but it wasn’t
Read more: Artist
Building an effective portfolio - Part 2
2007-06-08 15:27:59
Social networking offers huge benefits to those who embrace it and it’s here to stay, so why do portfolios still insist on feeding content the old fashioned way? Wouldn’t it be great if your portfolio could reach out into communities, and become part of the global discussion?
Well, Gizfolio makes a giant leap towards this with the way communities work. A community is the best way for a buyer to find a freelancer with the right skills, and by being active in the ‘illustration’ community, you’ll be found by people looking for illustrators (and so on), and by taking it a step further, you can put your best work into the community by way of dynamic links, which update when you update your portfolio, making each community an extension of your own portfolio.
The more active you are in your respective communities, the more your portfolio propagates itself and reaches out to potential clients. So if you want to stand out on gizfolio.com, the sky’s the limit
Read more: Building
, effective
How much should a freelancer charge?
2007-06-19 17:56:56
This post was inspired by looking through the keywords used to find our site, and since it’s a question that crops up quite often, I’ll try to answer this difficult question as best I can, although I fully expect this article to be corrected and appended by any freelancer wishing to comment, and please do share your thoughts, as there’s no definitive answer to this.
Let’s start with a simple question, How much is your time worth?
One of the main benefits of freelancing in any sector is having control over your time. You decide which projects are important, and how much time and effort to invest in each, and if you’re selling yourself short, or working day and night for less than you’d make in a regular job, you should seriously consider why you started freelancing in the first place.
As a freelancer, this control comes at a cost - lack of security. You never know from month to month just how much work you can rely on, unless you’re in the envia
Read more: charge
Gizfolio Part Deux
2007-06-26 21:34:22
It’s been a busy week, contending with major floods as well as trying to prioritise a torrent of ideas and fixes for the site, the usual pub meetings and all the daily issues of actually being live that make the pre-launch days seem easy.
I can probably sum up this week by offering a snippet from an MSN conversation with Calvin..
<Calvin> brb, getting sandbags.. I think my cat is drowning
<Brett> k
Disaster averted - no drowned cats, and the topic returned to the usual “How can we make Gizfolio better?” and after less than a month since gizfolio went fully live, we have a much better insight into the way people use the site, and features that would really improve the experience, so the idea is this..
Instead of slowly releasing these features, we’ll be working on some big changes behind the scenes, and launch everything in one go sometime around monday 9th July, to coincide with the advertising funding we should have by then. So it’ll be like a
8 Things about Gizfolio
2007-06-30 04:57:50
Oh no! We’ve been ‘tagged’ by fuelmyblog and have to post 8 things about us.. the pressure!! Seriously, I haven’t even got around to writing a decent ‘About us’ page yet, which should be a good indication of (1) I don’t know who the hell we are, and (b) I can’t blog for toffee.
Every time I try to write something concise, interesting or even remotely accurate about who we are, my brain just quits and barfs up any old !@*ks so I hope you’re reading this with an appreciation of the effort that’s gone in…
Gizfolio was founded by myself and Calvin Innes earlier this year, and is part of a ‘collective’ of startups and established companies involved in everything from illustration to clothing.
We’re based in Hull, East Yorkshire, which is in the North of England. (map)
I never sleep. While you’re sleeping, people in a different time-zone are stealing your ideas.
It’s 5am right now. I was up at
Features Round-Up
2007-07-02 12:13:10
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 opti
Startup Essentials For Freelancers
2007-07-07 20:27:10
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
Read more: Startup
, Essentials
, Freelancers
Creativity vs Business
2007-07-06 16:41:39
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 contra
Read more: Creativity
, Business
Creative Arts Competition
2007-07-18 16:34:42
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.
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 2
Job Listings Overhaul
2007-07-18 09:34:07
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!
Read more: Overhaul
Surviving the First Year of Freelancing
2007-08-03 08:13:16
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.
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.
Get advice from an organisation like Business Link or Princes Trust. They can help you
Read more: Surviving
, First
Competition Update
2007-08-10 09:02:02
**Update
d - 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.
Competition Winners
2007-08-14 07:06:47
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!
Read more: Winners
Site Updates
2007-09-10 11:05:55
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 dea
Read more: Site Updates
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