HONESTLY.... How much do people make with Flash??

[dumb-dumb]

Originally posted by sploenk
If you can work for 50 weeks, 6 days a week, 8 hours a day and you do your job well, you can afford to buy a nice home and drive a BMW 323i.

(if you have a girlfriend: you can rent a house and drive a mountainbike)

. . . . heh... the most seemingly accurate answer i've found thus far.

peace|pal|www.dumb-dumb.com

[Freaky Flash Fiend]

Originally posted by dumb-dumb

Originally posted by sploenk
If you can work for 50 weeks, 6 days a week, 8 hours a day and you do your job well, you can afford to buy a nice home and drive a BMW 323i.

(if you have a girlfriend: you can rent a house and drive a mountainbike)

. . . . heh... the most seemingly accurate answer i've found thus far.

peace|pal|www.dumb-dumb.com

And if you have a wife that makes a lot more money than you...you can have the house the BMW the mountainbike and a girlfriend. lol

[jmstammen]

Hey Eynovation,
You're hired! My syntax is alway getting me into trouble! -- Keeping me up to 4 in the morning!


Dumb-Dumb,
If you are interested in freelancing - there are a lot of online rescources and methods I could recommend. The two most effective (in my opinion) would be

1. Utilize all online job boards and placement firms. Aquent, The Creative Group, Monster, Talent.Monster, Dice.com, Headhunter.net - on and on. Spend time posting resumes, getting feedback and interviewing over the phone with various organizations, HR, and Agents. Have headhunters and firms start trying to place you - this will help reduce your (already) overwhelming amount of effort to find work. Almost every job board, headhunter and placement firms have plenty of "contract" jobs.


2.Start calling design and AD firms for work. Believe it or not, many companies still outsource work. (and they would rather pay you $35/hr than a placement firm $50/hr for you!) I just finished a job where I had a guy from NY complete a project solo - and he got paid $3400 for 3-1/2 weeks of part time work. You will certainly benefit from at least picking up the phone or emailing people in your favorite design firms than if you did not. Most people are happy to spend 5-10 min. talking about the industry - and who knows - if you hit off - work will start coming your way. I recommend contacting firms/companies that you are impessed/affected by/or can relate to - you are more likely to have a "match" this way.

From what I see, it's the programmers and IT specialists that are having a really hard time here in the US recession (getting laid off all over the place - and having to reduce their rates) - But creatives are still in great demand. 3 years ago HTML and coders were on the top of the world - creatives will be there from now until the next 3 years. I am already seeing insane offers for "loyal creatives" (ones who do not intend to "firm hop".) I just read 3 trade article that said "good loyal creative directors" are in extreme demand!

Mostly, spend some quality time on your online portfolio. There is no substitute for that in our industry.

By the way, i am in Orange County, Ca. Irvine to be exact.

Cheers,

Joe

[sploenk]

[i]
And if you have a wife that makes a lot more money than you...you can have the house the BMW the mountainbike and a girlfriend. lol [/B]

hahaha...lol... That's the real business men talking

[dumb-dumb]

Originally posted by jmstammen
Dumb-Dumb,
If you are interested in freelancing - there are a lot of online rescources and methods I could recommend. The two most effective (in my opinion) would be

1. Utilize all online job boards and placement firms.

2.Start calling design and AD firms for work. Believe it or not, many companies still outsource work.

Mostly, spend some quality time on your online portfolio. There is no substitute for that in our industry.

By the way, i am in Orange County, Ca. Irvine to be exact.

Cheers,

Joe

. . . . well, it seems like the game plan i've been working with is pretty consistent with what you recommended. my online portfolio will be done by tomorrow, at the latest. i've been working on it as my full time job for almost three weeks now and i'm really happy with it. i appreciate you taking the time to drop me some advice - it really helps me out to hear what others recommend, seeing as i'm isolated to talking to friends that are currently struggling as i am.

wish there was some way i could pay you back for your help! all i have over here in massachusetts is cooling weather and turning leaves...

peace|pal|www.dumb-dumb.com

[rh71]

Hey I'm in NY... not the city, but 30 minutes away on Long Island. I work for a big big company ... and they started me out at $50k a year and a half ago. Not even in NYC... this was BEFORE I picked up Flash and ColdFusion (competitor to ASP), another certification, and 2 more years of work experience.

True that I don't do Flash exclusively for the site I work at, but I could command a much larger salary when the time comes for me to ask again. Point is... here in NY, it's pretty easy to ask for $50k doing Flash alone. The real question is how do you get yourself hired. It's nearly impossible in NY right now... I have a few buddies that have been looking for months. Freelance? Even tougher.

-------------------
http://www.rh71.com

[dumb-dumb]

Originally posted by rh71
Hey I'm in NY... not the city, but 30 minutes away on Long Island.

The real question is how do you get yourself hired. It's nearly impossible in NY right now... Freelance? Even tougher.

-------------------
http://www.rh71.com

. . . . so what would you recommend? another thing i'm curious about is being certified in various things. how important is that, what are you certified in, do you wait until your company puts you through a certification program or do you come to the table already certified prior to being hired, and anything else i should know about all that?

overwelmed|pal|www.dumb-dumb.com
[Edited by dumb-dumb on 09-06-2001 at 02:47 PM]

[rh71]

What I'd recommend is to get your experience elsewhere first. I'm assuming you're asking this because you want to get a job in NY... or eventually do. Build up your experience so that you're more marketable, then the opportunities will double. I know of 2 people looking for web work in NY and they have experience. They at least have some chance of stumbling upon interviews, whereas someone who is looking to do this as an entry-level thing has virtually no chance in this market right now. That's just from what I see and heard... from colleagues too.

Certifications... I don't think they're important especially if you're in the design field. Most of the popular ones right now are for networking anyway. My certification was just for i-Net+, a stepping stone to the Master CIW Designer certification which is just a personal goal. It's more for building websites and not anything specific to applications like Flash (though it asks certain questions that only experienced Flash designers would know). Of course, having certifications in the IT field would put you ahead of many others, if you have job experience to back it up too... so I'll just say that they can't hurt. Again, I've gone through my 2 certifications on my own, because I wanted it and not to get a certain job. I'll just try to get my company to pay for education for the Master CIW one. Companies will NOT often pay for your certifications unless it meets (or appears to) business objectives... either yours or theirs. So I'd come to the table already certified. Again, it can't hurt. That's what I would do...
[Edited by rh71 on 09-07-2001 at 01:33 PM]

[Jookbox]

at scient i was making $65K with 4 years exp. scient charged the client $250 for EVERY hour i was at their site. no wonder they went out of business. i'm making less now, but a lot of the "designers" here in los angeles have been weeded out. i feel sorry for them.

[pgpaul]

Hi!

I have the same problem. I'm from Romania and I think
the best way to get more USA projects is to have a friend
in the USA to send projects to you.

I have one in Italy and one in USA but still search for other projects. I's a hard decision for me: I want to left the company where work now as fulltime employee and become a freelancer but for this I need more outside projects.

[womble1]

I see a lot of people on here saying that if you can't program then you will be stuck in the confining niche of being a designer making less money, but thankfully for those of us who will never be hardcore programmers that's not necessarily the case. I think I know why a lot of them have that impression though. It's because they are limiting their view of design to just designing for the web. True, if you are going to class yourself as a 'web designer' then you probably do need more web development skills like programming. However, the graphic arts industry is a large one consisting of many different facets. There is a whole other media that people tend to forget on here - it's called print, remember that papery stuff that isn't on screen? Companies need more than just a presence on the internet, websites usually tie in with and co-exist with print material used for marketing and communication purposes. If you can work across both those mediums then you will be better off for it. For those web designers on here that are worried about whether they need to expand or risk becoming redundant perhaps you should consider expanding yourself as a graphic artist. Learn how to work in print, learn some marketing/advertising, know how to plan out a corporate branding strategy and maybe learn prepress so that you know what happens when you are finished with your layout and can design with that in mind. What I am saying is that I agree with them that you shouldn't limit yourself to just web design but I don't agree that programming is the answer for everyone. Obviously some jobs pay more than others, for example someone working in production would probably make less than the lead designer on the same job. There are many different jobs such as designer, illustrator, production, prepress etc. and they might appeal to you more than programming. Incidentally, professional colour correctors can make pretty good money if they're really good at what they do.

Designing graphics for the web is fairly simple to learn at home for the simple fact that it's pretty much based on what-you-see-is-what-you-get. I don't mean to say that you're all using wysiwyg editors to do your layout, I mean that you can work in screen resolution, you don't have to worry that your images might look beautiful on screen but look terrible when printed and so on. Also, the requirements are pretty low since you are using low res files and don't need loads of memory or disk space to work with large print files. It's because of this that I can see why so many people dabble in it and are self taught then decide that is what they want to do. Use it as a starting point and expand your skills in design if that's what you enjoy but don't feel you need to program because that's what is expected. Don't take this as an insult to web designers, there are a lot of print designers now learning to design for the web because they realise that they need to expand their skill sets as well.

On the other hand, if the development side of web design is more your thing, then what they said about increasing your back-end skills is a really good idea.

Sorry if this is a bit long winded and not part of the original topic but it was brought up so I thought I'd add my feelings on the subject.

[dumb-dumb]

color correction...
ungh...
that used to be the bane of my existence!

i agree with what you're saying. i think another reason web design is so appealing is that i, being a 22 year old recent college grad, am starting off on a more even plane in the web design field than, say, having to compete with a wealth of talented middle aged traditional graphic designers in the design for print fields.

also, i am drawn to the interactivity of what can be developed for the web. i've fallen in love with flash because it merges my favorite fields: animation, design, audio, and programming. for me, it's like, well, i enjoy designing, i enjoy working with animation and motion graphics, i love music, and programming interests me, what can allow me to work with all of these to some degree? i can't think of anything else but flash.

now, if i can only get some damn studio to hire me to do what i love... argh!

peace|pal|www.dumb-dumb.com

[rh71]

Well said before.

As for getting someone to hire you... build up your portfolio with the spare time you have now and it'll be easy from there... they all want experience and it doesn't have to be at some big company... as long as they see you know your stuff and have worked with it already... you're good to go. No use in just dreaming about it right? Motivation is key.

[dumb-dumb]

it'd be killer if you checked out my work and threw up some feedback on my site check thread (if you have time, of course).

here's the link:
http://board.flashkit.com/board/show...hreadid=204267

i'd be overjoyed to find some criticism regarding what i need to do to get myself hired. i have a bunch of resumes floating around and i'm currently on the second wave, meaning i'm following up with second e-mails and telephone calls. i have experience, i have an edumakashun, and i have a cool (i'm hoping) website, what am i doing wrong?

while i'm job searching i am, like you said, keeping busy. i'm designing a site for a friend and doing my own personal work. i don't wanna get rusty and, besides, i enjoy doing it.

peace|pal|www.dumb-dumb.com