freelancing work advice

Question

This is not related to any community but i have no otpion left in life but freelancing. But, there is much competition among freelancers as well. I want to know which adobe app should i master with which i can earn my basic needs BUT WITH VERY MUCH LESS COMPETITION. I mean when a job is posted on freelancing sites within 4 minutes there are 50 proposals. So, i want to master that adobe APP which has very less competition
thank you

Conrad_C · Accepted Answer

You asked “which adobe app should i master with which i can earn my basic needs” with less competition. The answer is that isn’t the real question, because it is usually not about one app, it’s about production in general.

For example, InDesign and the others are just tools, like in a toolbox. No one uses only a hammer or only a screwdriver. What the professionals do is use the correct combination of tools in the most efficient sequence to meet the project requirements on time.

In the same way, learning a single app is often not enough. If you are hired to produce a job in InDesign, and you are an InDesign expert, that is great, you can lay out pages. But those pages usually need images and graphics. To produce the images correctly, you should know Photoshop well enough. To do the graphics correctly, you should know Illustrator. If they ask you to adapt the same graphics for social media, you should know Adobe Express, and maybe a little about animation. So to be better than your competition, you would need to understand the overall production requirements and how multiple apps need to be coordinated within it.

Then there is the question of meeting job requirements. Now you need to know whether your InDesign job is for print, or online, or what. Because you must set up InDesign differently depending on whether the job will be printed on a press, downloadable as a PDF file, or viewable as an EPUB document. Each of those uses different units of measure, different color models, etc. So your expertise must extend beyond the software and cover production knowledge in general. For example, if you become expert at how PDF production works, you could build a PDF book by combining InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator, but you can use the same knowledge to also do it using similar applications from other companies.

So don’t get trapped into thinking it’s only about a single “best” Adobe app. It is not about any one app from any specific company. It is about being able to deliver a finished product using whatever combination of tools is required to meet production requirements for a specific delivery medium.

And, I agree that freelancing in this area is more difficult than ever, first given low-cost international competition, and now AI might soon do the most basic jobs (look at what Adobe is starting to do in InDesign with the new AI-driven Auto Style feature).

Another thing...some freelancers became more successful because they developed better skills for marketing and selling their services. It set them apart from the freelancers who only know how to use software.

James Gifford—NitroPress · Answer

I going to go further on this than the prior answers, and not in a happy way.

Super short version: There is no such thing as freelancing in the graphics and publication market any more. It's a very longstanding traditional niche that has simply disappeared for a number of reasons. Don't waste time trying to get into it... especially if your motivation/qualification is that you happen to have an Adobe Suite subscription.

Let's start with that. First, examine the statement the tool is not the task until you understand it. No amount of mastery of a tool — and I mean mostly software tools here, so let's focus on that — gives actual mastery of any task you perform with it. There has been a long, slow curve of actual skill declining in the face of expert button-pushing, and I can think of few more on-point examples than InDesign itself. Super-mastery of the tool doesn't give you one whit of artistic insight, esthetics, design experience or any of the other traditional components of design and publication development. (Here's my touchstone example: there are millions upon millions of extremely expert Word users, with certifications and training and so forth. What microscopic percentage of them are best-selling authors, or even successful published writers at all?)

And it's clear you're a newcomer, still learning the ropes, so unless you're a brilliant designer who just happened to come around to InDesign, you've got a long way to go before you have skills much worth selling.

So let's turn to that. Until fairly recently — maybe a decade ago — journeyman skill with any publication tool (even Word) was enough to get jobs and commissions to turn piles of stuff into books and magazines and brochures and PDFs and web pages. But now... the market is so beyond grossly oversaturated that only those pros who have a long-established reputation and client list are paying the rent. And many of those have watched their business slowly shrink, because very few new clients are coming their way despite their "star power" and reputation.

Those who are new to the game and may have basic mastery of ID and Photoshop and Illustrator can get into the game with absolutely no hurdle... you don't even need an office, a phone line and a business card any more. Just list on Fiverr or UpWork or any other "hire me" site, down to Craigslist, and away you go...

...nowhere. Because every one of those sites already has very, very established workers with all the stars and ratings and prior client upvotes and recommendations. Lots of them. And most people who have a book or a business project or an event banner to be produced are naturally going to tend to those established names over either the "rising stars" or the uncountable newcomers. So it's a self-perpetuating cycle, as many such "service" niches become.

And yes, the rising ones and the newcomers do get clients... by essentially giving their work away. Doing jobs for such low rates, and putting up with clients more established workers would pass on or drop jobs (the kind who understand nothing about the work and want major change after major change, for example), and even after a year of that, still having such low overall ratings it's a scramble to land each new client.

And then... even that tier is battling against the overseas contingent, mostly in India, who will do yet bigger jobs yet cheaper, down to something like "I'll pay you to let me do this job" — so the contingent of clients looking for cheap, with no real idea what this work really costs on a quality level (or with someone who has, say, adequate English or grasp of a production's audience) go to them, and some never even recognize what crappy work they got for their time and money.

So the whole idea of doing freelance graphics, publishing, web services, etc. is as drowned as the Titanic's ballroom. To dive in and expect anything like success means you'll likely drown, too.

Either master InDesign and its associated tools (although over in the Photoshop forum, it would be the other way around) for your own reasons and projects, and make your name and money from those results (e.g. a book on something you wrote and published, rather than a book you did for a client)... or reach a level of technical mastery and basic design skills that will get you hired by a company that uses that skill set.

But freelancing, just because you have the apps, is something that died out about the time of the first-gen Macs. And freelancing, just because you have the skills, has become such a commodity item that you might as well be a kernel of corn trying to get hired to become a corn flake.

(My basis for saying the above? About 40 years of doing it, as corporate lackey, high-priced consultant, contract designer, and gunslingin' freelancer, in every mix possible and with all the tools that have evolved over that time... and someone who has simply given up on the contract-work sites because I, too, am crushed between the established ranks and the endless tide of day laborers. I find all of my work through word of mouth and corporate postings, and wish I could go back to the challenging, fun "freelance" days. But they no longer exist, for any of us that don't already have five stars on UpWork.)

The good news is that you've found the single best place to help guide you to professional mastery of ID and the other tools. Welcome; ask all the good, focused questions you will have. It's why we're all here.

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