Practical Business Tips for Creative Pros

Theresa Stone

The Graphic Artists Guild is an advocacy organization working to uphold and improve standards and protect the rights of creatives. It publishes the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook, the benchmark for Pricing and Ethical Guidelines for the art and design industry. Now some of the content of the Handbook is available as a free, downloadable PDF.
The Handbook excerpt, entitled “Promote, Negotiate, and Make Money: Essential Business Practices for Today’s Creative Professional,” contains practical advice you can use right away, on such tricky topics as these:
• negotiating and evaluating offers
• handling failed negotiations
• drawing up estimates
• bidding on projects
• pricing jobs
• dealing with usage, reuse and royalty issues
• choosing a compensation structure: per diem and hourly
• deciding which expenses are billable
• structuring cancellation fees
• getting the money you’re owed
• marketing your business
You can download the excerpt here.
The complete Graphic Artist’s Guild Handbook is a Guild membership benefit.