Question by MuzikIsMyHeart: I want to start a graphic design business as a beginner in the field?
I want to start a business and would like to know:
Where to find a good printer that can work with my designs? Online or local, etc..?
How to get started? How do you fill orders?
I am a beginner, and am confused on how I get the product to my customer. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Best answer:
Answer by Astuma
pick a design,pick a graphic design school,go to www.elance.com,advertise.next check the internet.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
Well best of luck on your business, graphic design can be very profitable assuming your good at what you do and enjoy the work enough to maintain a high level of professionalism.
The first thing you’ll want to do is probably get a feel for the market prior to spending much money, I would so some research on other graphic design companies and use some free advertising sources like craigslist and posting on message boards/blogs to generate interest in your business.
Obviously as a graphic designer it’s important to have a website where customers can go for information so that’s something I would look into, if your good with graphics you probably know a bit about programming and considering a website is only about $ 10.00 a month through Yahoo and etc. I would recommend getting setup with that and see how much interest you generate.
As far as accepting payments and filing orders most of it would probably need to be done on a per order basis. Unless of course your selling designs that you’ve already made in mass, in which case it could be setup for them to pay for the product then download it from your website and etc.
Otherwise if it’s local work or other design work you can simply e-mail it, put it on your website for download, and a variety of other options depending on the source.
For payment I would check into a few options, PayPal is very popular and although I don’t recommend them for people who like to get paid and stay paid I think they are very beginner friendly.
I use a payment processor called Prosper Merchant Services, it’s basically like PayPal but is a real merchant account that takes a little more time to get setup but is generally much more convinent and gives a lot of flexability.
I would suggest giving them a call or signing up on there website if you find yourself in need of a payment provider, plus it never hurts to make sure you can get approved to accept credit cards prior to starting a business since it can be very costly to have a business running and not take payments from credit.
PS. Also check out the website in source for a good printer and information.