Adding Another Service..

[Gemma Rowlands]

Now that, as many of you will have seen, we're thinking about moving to work from home roles, I have decided that I want to go a step further. At the moment, we're editing work but not publishing. Though I don't want to go down that road yet, I would very much like to get into illustration. Does anyone have any previous experience or advice about this particular sector to help me out a little? Of course I will advertise roles, but I am really wondering whether the profits would be worth it, or whether we would be just as well leaving things as they are.

It's a very tempting prospect, and one more step towards full publication, which I would love to achieve in the future!

 

[Pete Brindle]

I think it could work well, and a good thing to do would be to have a look around and see who's offering their services on a freelance basis. If you hire them to do a few bits for you, you can then make it into an official role if you would like to.

 

[Gemma Rowlands]

I think it could work well, and a good thing to do would be to have a look around and see who's offering their services on a freelance basis. If you hire them to do a few bits for you, you can then make it into an official role if you would like to.

Yeah, I don't want to hire someone properly full time just yet, because they might just be sat there for most of the time with nothing to do. So I will definitely have a look around to see what's available!

 

[Pete Brindle]

Yeah, I don't want to hire someone properly full time just yet, because they might just be sat there for most of the time with nothing to do. So I will definitely have a look around to see what's available!

There are actually some quite decent freelancing websites where you can find people like this. Or you could place an ad in a local paper? That way, you'd actually get to meet the people as well!

 

[Robert Frost]

Probably late to the party but agree with Pete on the freelancing. Loads of sites out there. When I was looking for design stuff for my literature I asked on freelance sites and got amazing responses and went with the one who impressed me most (seeing their portfolio too) and it worked well

 

[Gemma Rowlands]

Thanks, I have decided that I will go down the freelance route, because we just cannot afford to hire an actual member of staff at the moment. But who knows, maybe in the future we will have the budget for it. I suppose this is a decent way of trying to find people who are up for the job!

 

[Pete Brindle]

Thanks, I have decided that I will go down the freelance route, because we just cannot afford to hire an actual member of staff at the moment. But who knows, maybe in the future we will have the budget for it. I suppose this is a decent way of trying to find people who are up for the job!

Maybe if you advertise when you're looking for the job that there is a chance that this could become a more long term thing in the future, you might get a better calibre of candidates applying? I know that's kind of how we built up our business, taking on freelancers one at a time and then taking them on as actual staff, and it is something that has worked well for us so far. Hopefully we can do this in our new place as well, as it's much cheaper, at the beginning at least anyway.

 

[Mike Turner]

Take people on as a trial as well for maybe a month and say you will decide whether to hire them or stay working with them after that. It is a good idea as it means you're not stuck with people who you don't feel as though you're able to work with. It will save you a lot of stress if you find you have to let someone go if you only have to put up with them for a short amount of time rather than a year long contract.

 

[Gemma Rowlands]

Take people on as a trial as well for maybe a month and say you will decide whether to hire them or stay working with them after that. It is a good idea as it means you're not stuck with people who you don't feel as though you're able to work with. It will save you a lot of stress if you find you have to let someone go if you only have to put up with them for a short amount of time rather than a year long contract.

This is a good idea. We were going to put them on a month's trial anyway, we always do that when we get new staff. They could be the best and most professional people in the world, but sometimes their style might not fit our company so it just wouldn't work. We have to do our best to avoid that so would never just sign a contract without some kind of probationary period before doing so.

 

[Lauren Turner]

I say go for it, girl. What's the worst that could happen? You realise that you don't really have enough business to add for the new service, so you stop offering it. At least you can say that you tried, and did your best to make things work for you. A lot of people wouldn't even bother to do that. I have experimented with a lot of different things in the past and trust me, some of them didn't work out, but I'm not worrying about that now because I still have the things that I know have always worked for me.

 

[Branded Merchandise]

Wherever you can, getting a freelancer makes more sense than an employee (don't have to pay NI etc) and it also means you can work on a project to project basis rather than employing someone who may not be busy if the work dries up.

We used a freelancer site (pph) for an element of our business and it's working quite well. We found someone good (although admittedly it did take 2-3 attempts!) and we give them work whenever required. If the work ever required full time attention, then we could sort something out, otherwise the arrangement is working well

 

[Lauren Turner]

Wherever you can, getting a freelancer makes more sense than an employee (don't have to pay NI etc) and it also means you can work on a project to project basis rather than employing someone who may not be busy if the work dries up.

Yeah, this is true. If you can find a freelancer who doesn't mind being called upon whenever they're needed, that does sound as though it could be viable for financial reasons as much as anything else. It will be good to hear how you get on with this when things are up and running for you, so please keep us updated.

 

[Gemma Rowlands]

Wherever you can, getting a freelancer makes more sense than an employee (don't have to pay NI etc) and it also means you can work on a project to project basis rather than employing someone who may not be busy if the work dries up.

We used a freelancer site (pph) for an element of our business and it's working quite well. We found someone good (although admittedly it did take 2-3 attempts!) and we give them work whenever required. If the work ever required full time attention, then we could sort something out, otherwise the arrangement is working well

Financially, as long as we can find a GOOD freelancer (or group of freelancers, possibly) there's no reason that this couldn't be the best option for us. The only issue is that freelancers can have their work changed so quickly that they might not want to be working for us for as long as we'd be hoping to have them for. But I suppose that's bridge that we'd cross when we came to it.

 

[Pete Brindle]

Have you decided what you want to do about this yet? One thing that is positive about doing it is the fact that if you're able to give your clients a fuller service, it makes things easier for them to get their work published, so they won't need to go anywhere else. That might encourage them to use your company rather than any other one.