2024 - the year of ‘firsts’ and ‘restarts’.
A year in review.
Regardless of how long you have been self-employed for, the learning never stops. And 2024 for many reasons was a mixed bag, let's say. Ultimately, you want to end the year feeling accomplished and that you have achieved the things you set out to back in January. Often these things do get ticked off, and some nice surprises happen too. Sometimes life happens, you get unlucky or someone just leaves a negative review… because ‘the internet’!
For me, 2024 was a year where I decided that I needed to learn more, restart a few things that clearly were not working, and re-evaluate parts of my drawing practice and my business. It can be a bit scary, especially when you have been ticking along quite happily for a while. But what is life without a little risk, and you don’t learn if you don’t change things up.
Here is a brief rundown of some of the ‘firsts’ (the good and the not-so-good) and some things I have restarted too. I hope that by reading them, they give you some reassurance that it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been self-employed; there are always new chapters, you can always pivot, and it is never too late to make a change or start something new. You just need to be brave…
This year, I had my first:
Original piece of illustration as a commercial commission, and it was also the biggest piece of work I have ever done! (You can read all about that project here)
‘Case’ raised against my Etsy shop. I had not done anything wrong; it was done out of frustration by the customer because I simply reiterated Etsy’s policy and didn’t immediately cave to a demand that was unreasonable. But it was still stressful and the process to sorting this on Etsy is not the easiest. Etsy always favours the buyer not the seller, so you will always be on the back foot which is incredibly frustrating! The quickest way to resolve a case against your shop - before you shop is suspended by Etsy I may add - is to refund the customer in full to close it. I will be moving away from Etsy this year, but more on that at a later date, I think.
Multiple of rejections for client work all in one week. Rejections happen all the time with client work, and it doesn’t faze me anywhere near as much as it used to. But to get a fair few all in the space of 5 days wasn’t the best week! There is an appropriate phrase to use here probably… something to do with waiting for buses!
Submission for my largest ever invoice! One thing to remember about freelance, for all of the rubbish times (see above), there will always be times that cancel them out.
12,000 online sales milestone, which was a pretty hefty one!
And I had some restarts:
I took my email list back to basics, and started again. To be honest, I am still trialing all sorts of formats. I still don’t have a specific direction for it, and I’ve had more unsubscribes than subscribes in the last 6 months. I am just unsure about what I want my email list to do / be for. I want it to appeal to everyone, so you can get a snapshot of my work, my shops, what I post here on Substack, client projects etc. But I still don’t have the balance right, and I am fighting with Mailchimp - so I think I need to change email providers sharpish too.
I restarted my blog, and turned it into a Substack which I love! I truly enjoy being here, writing things in a longer format has been one of last year's highlights.
I restarted my learning journey and joined a marketing course. I have always loved to absorb knowledge, and though I have plenty of skills and things I am good at, I found last year that I was getting stuck with marketing. Social media shifts so quickly, I wasn’t able to keep up, and I definitely wasn’t having fun anymore. You don’t need thousands of followers to get client work, or to show you are a good illustrator, but the reach certainly helps. I really enjoyed Hannah’s course - The Best 90 Days Ever - that I have signed up for the entire year this year. If this sounds like something that might help you, here is a link to her website.
I explored challenging the way I work, and spent a good chunk of time trying to learn a new way of creating imagery, only to find I hated it. I got really in my own head about it, and decided to try new things that seemed popular, or styles that seemed to be commissioned a lot at the moment. Only I found that it just isn’t me, and I was forcing a square peg into a round hole! I didn’t enjoy creating anything like that and I think it showed. Instead, I want to spend my time exploring more of what I enjoy.
Every year that goes by nearly always throws up challenges and anomalies. But it is how we deal with them that shows our resilience. If you’re a small business owner, you need resiliency by the bucket load! I personally think it’s really courageous to say “I want to go back to learning”, or “I don’t think this is working, maybe I should try something else”. Yes some of these things won’t bring in revenue straight away, but they will pay for themselves in the long run - one way or the other.
A belated Happy New Year to you all, and I hope 2025 brings amazing creative opportunities, fun briefs, lovely clients, and a few shop orders along the way.
Until next time,
