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03-24-2012, 06:39 PM
#1
derek lapp is offline derek lapp
Status: design rockstar
Join date: Jan 2005
Location: guelph, ontario
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derek lapp is on a distinguished road

  Old  what do people use TF for?

i'm curious. i'm sure the staff have stats and a good idea of their target audience, but i'm curious as to what that is, simply to know what kind of crowd i'm engaging with.

since this place opened (what, 2005? sometime when i was in school) i've always felt a disconnect between my definition of the term freelance, and the rest of the user base.

to me, freelance is defined by the way the business is run, and not the service provided. IE you operate by yourself and come and go as you please. whether you're a locksmith, installing gas piping, design, development, house keeping, etc. regardless of your product/service, the defining factor is that you are small, have minimal overhead, and most notably do not have a legal separation between personal and business assets. knowing this, the way one operates could (should?) be conducted the exact same way as if one was employed, or running a company: you have a product or service, and a market who's problems will be solved by this, you engage them and do business accordingly.

where this disconnect i feel comes from the marketplace. maybe it changed, but in the last 7 years, because i've never dealt with it, but it's never made any sense to me. here, people create something WITHOUT a defined purpose or objective, and what's more confusing is that people com here looking for that. it just makes no sense from a business perspective. as the buyer, you either have to then pay for customization - at which point why didn't the seller just offer customization services and show examples of a framework, not a purchasable, out of the box template - or you have to customize it yourself, again, at which point why didn't you just do it yourself, or get a framework to start with and do it yourself?

maybe it's because i define myself as more than just a designer or a developer. i'm a marketer. i don't just know how to use photoshop, i know how to use it do achieve a specific result, a result i chose because that result is what's going to make my client's brands/products noticeable on the market.

so, having said all that, i'm curious, what does anyone here use tf for? i obviously am here to engage not only potential clients, but my fellow professionals and service providers - not to compete with them or simply to "do business", but to engage them, communicate with them, discuss with them and most importantly understand them.

all i can really say is, that's been my outlook for the last 7 years since i joined, and as far as i can tell, i'm the only one who's really come back and participated on a consistent basis.

Thanked by 2 users:
Artashes (03-25-2012), Lowengard (03-25-2012)