Are you looking to focus your business on a particular clientele or market? Would you brand yourself by producing work with a similar sort of aesthetic, while also catering to your clients? I would suggest you not focus so much on wanting to stand out, for now, and ensure you have a solid idea of which market(s) or where you plan to advertise your business, and the competition out there that would be sharing that advertisement space, and most importantly, what you see your business as now, and where it could potentially go down the road.
Have you started throwing around ideas for any logos?
Thanks for replying
Yes - my market is a little small where I am now, and of course as an amateur, I still have a lot to learn. My rates starting out would reflect that, and I think a modest rate to start out with would be in the neighborhood of $20/hour. The business would primarily be targeted towards small business in the area. The market I'm dealing with is rural northeastern Maryland. That being said, I live in a somewhat "artsy" little town on the river (I work in an art gallery in my town part-time), so there are a lot of quaint boutiques, galleries, and restaurants in the heart of the town. That's the clientele I'd be marketing myself to, at least for now. In terms of catering to a client, I would require the person to outline the scope of the project, any copy - like text or images - they needed me to use, and project deadlines.
I suppose when I get a little bit better at this and my skills are more built up, I could cast a wider net to surrounding metro areas, too (though competition, particularly in the tech industry, seems pretty cutthroat and actually worse in large cities). In the future, I'm very open to possible employment by a company, doing work for them which I'm already doing now, albeit on a smaller scale (event/product marketing and strategy, web and graphic design, and writing) - remote work ideal, but I understand that is difficult to come by. I've also seen several websites, like Fiverr and Upwork, designed for freelancers to advertise their services - but the competition's brutal! There's people on there willing to do graphic design for five bucks an hour(!) Hmm.
As for the business logo and other branding, I have been visualizing the possibilities. A bit later down the road, I'd like to have a nice, quality website up and running, containing samples of my previous work in an online portfolio. I have done this before using Wordpress, for my theatre and acting stuff.
Thanks for taking the time to respond to this. I appreciate any insights I can get... I'm a small town girl! LOL