Launching New Services and the Overall Importance of Consistency

In this ​post from her website, Amy Schmittaur of Savvy Sexy Social, shares the necessity of doing free work in order to get paid work. 

 I want to launch a service of making and selling hand painted cards. Before I can officially offer this service though, I have to make several cards, that I don't know whether or not they will sell in order to give people a visual.

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​Although I don't need clients to make these sample cards for, I also have to do work that may never make me any money in order to show potential clients or buyers.

Those of us who work for ourselves don't need a degree to get work. What we do need is examples of work we've already done in the field we're trying to break into. This shows a potential client what they can expect from us. People are very possessive of their money and they want to know what they're going to get for it. Eventually we need to organize these examples into a portfolio, but that could be another post entirely.

Creating these work examples will inevitably involve doing some work for free whether for clients or not. People need to see the kind of paintings I make before they're going to hire me. If I want to sell paintings, of course I need to work in order to have something to sell.

I want to put a disclaimer here. By no means am I saying you should let people suck free work out of you. You are the one who decides when you will work for free, no one else. All I'm saying is that if your goal is to make a living at something you must do it consistently no matter what, and you must have things to show people before you even launch your business or a new addition to your existing business.

I think I've made my point. That's all for now. I'll talk to you again next week.