This is a topic I’m particular passionate about at the moment and I’ve been talking about it myself quite a bit. In fact I’ve restructured my website and business model around the idea of credit and collaboration.
One of the most important things you can do as a freelancer is identify your own weaknesses and find the best people you can to fill the gaps.
I’ve worked for agencies myself that you do some work for thinking this will be great for your portfolio and when you ask if it’s ok to talk about it they tell you no. It amazes me that these people do this.
If you think about it from a marketing point of view, open collaboration and crediting benefits everyone involved. The end client is getting a better product and the agency/freelancer or freelancer/freelancer or agency/agency are getting twice the exposer. If I work on a site with a great designer and we both put that site in our portfolio, each crediting the other, we’ve both just doubled our reach. We’re both advertising each others work and if/when a future client contacts one of us thanks to that work the likelihood is we’ll team up again.
It just makes sense to me.
To this end crediting is one of the early discussions I have on every project. It’s even a part of my standard contract.
Great post Geri. More people should see the importance of this.
Ryan Taylor
This is a topic I’m particular passionate about at the moment and I’ve been talking about it myself quite a bit. In fact I’ve restructured my website and business model around the idea of credit and collaboration.
One of the most important things you can do as a freelancer is identify your own weaknesses and find the best people you can to fill the gaps.
I’ve worked for agencies myself that you do some work for thinking this will be great for your portfolio and when you ask if it’s ok to talk about it they tell you no. It amazes me that these people do this.
If you think about it from a marketing point of view, open collaboration and crediting benefits everyone involved. The end client is getting a better product and the agency/freelancer or freelancer/freelancer or agency/agency are getting twice the exposer. If I work on a site with a great designer and we both put that site in our portfolio, each crediting the other, we’ve both just doubled our reach. We’re both advertising each others work and if/when a future client contacts one of us thanks to that work the likelihood is we’ll team up again.
It just makes sense to me.
To this end crediting is one of the early discussions I have on every project. It’s even a part of my standard contract.
Great post Geri. More people should see the importance of this.