Do you ever get the feeling that you can’t afford to be a professional scrapbook designer? It is starting to seem to me that trying to build a career in this industry requires making a rather large and risky financial investment, and that the only people who can afford to build a career are the people who don’t need the money to survive in the first place!

Scrapbooking as a hobby has become increasingly costly as the price of embellishments goes up and more techniques are incorporated, which often require the purchase of expensive tools. Scrapbooking as a business (or trying to) is even more expensive because you have to consider the shelf life of products when you use them, keep up with changing styles of design trends, and also use a particular company’s products if you are applying for a design team or entering manufacturer contests. (I know that there are designers who say that it is possible to get published using older products. While I do believe that is true to a certain extent, it is nearly impossible to follow a trend towards retro/graphic design when all the supplies you have on hand are shabby chic floral designs!) All of this product turnover for trends and purchases for specific projects results in needing more budget to work with, especially if you are in a situation like me and don’t have a local scrapbook store to be able to purchase just what you need as you work. Because I have to do my shopping online and at occasional events like conventions, I have to guess at my future needs and load up on supplies for the foreseeable future when I have the chance. This results in my later having to make additional special purchases if something is then announced that requires the use of specific products, and it results in waste if trends change before all of my purchases are used.

And that is just the actual cost of the scrapbooking itself. The price tag gets even higher when you add in the non-scrapbooking costs of trying to make it as a designer. While some of these things may be “optional” expenses, they can definitely help to market the designer and build their career. Such items as an online presence like a resume and blog, travel to trade shows and industry events, and materials such as business cards, portfolios and marketing handouts to use at those events, all are part of the price of doing serious business as a designer.

With all these start-up expenses, I believe only those with some money to invest can make a full-fledged effort to start a design career. Is it possible to make money, to earn a return on that investment financially? For a select few, I believe it is possible…but only for a select few. A designer can increase their income possibilities by diversifying into teaching or writing. If they become a “name” designer, land a lucrative manufacturer design position or become a product designer, the income can be lucrative. Beyond that though, profits are hard to earn.

After what I’ve seen and experienced in my time around this industry, my advice to other aspiring designers is this: Do it for the love of it, dream that you will someday get something for it, but don’t do it for the money. That’s a bad investment.

…means Susie Scrapbooker must be a design team member!

In today’s scrapbook industry, it seems that every magazine, website or store (online or local) has been assembling themselves a “design team” to provide them with design content. In some cases, these teams are well compensated for the work they provide. In many other cases, companies that know they cannot afford to compensate designers very well do not expect a large amount of effort in return from their designers. But a third group of companies seems to see offering the term “design team member” as a free pass to expect excessive levels of effort from their team members in return for little-to-no compensation.

A call for design team members was recently posted on a message board frequented by aspiring and professional designers. The position listed the following requirements on a monthly basis:

• Two layouts and one altered item, well photographed and posted to the company’s gallery and also two other online galleries along with detailed descriptions and instructions
• One article with pictures
• One product review
• Host one challenge or contest
• Participation in monthly design team chats
• Daily posting to the site’s message board and gallery
• Two ads per month placed on other sites with links back to the design team site
• Put the design team in your signature line on other sites (but listing your other teams in your signature on this team’s site is not allowed)

And what was being offered as compensation for what sounds like essentially a full-time job? The monthly compensation package consisted of a free $20 kit and a 25% discount on further purchases, to a maximum discount of $25. Oh, and the design team members got the chance to buy incoming merchandise before it was posted for public sale.

To their credit, most of the designers I know that saw that design team call dismissed it as what it was – ridiculous. But the sad thing is that this site will likely get the near slave labor it wants from designers desperate to put the title “design team member” on their résumé.

And that is the root of the problem, I believe. Many designers overestimate the value of being able to put “design team member” on their résumé and there are many companies willing to take advantage of that fact. With so many sites, stores and companies having design teams today, being able to credit a design team that no one has ever heard of on your résumé is not really very useful. Unless the person reviewing the résumé is familiar with the particular company and it’s representative design work, the credit is of little use to the designer. But what about being able to credit a prestigious team that is recognized in the industry for quality design work? There is certainly a definite advantage to that for a designer! So how does a designer decide if a particular design team position is right for them?

The key is figuring out where the balance is to create a business relationship that is beneficial to both the company and the designer involved. Of course this can vary for each designer and each company. A company may not be able to afford much financial compensation, but a small workload requirement may seem reasonable to a designer in exchange for product they would have bought anyway. Or a designer may want to get in on the ground floor of a company they think has a lot of potential for growth so they may gamble and accept less compensation early on in the hopes that their investment of energy will earn financial rewards and opportunities as the company grows. Financial compensation in different amounts may be acceptable to different designers. We all have to set our own price.

Whatever we each decide our design skills are worth in the marketplace, we should all try to remember that they are definitely worth something. If our skills weren’t worth anything, would so many places be trying to avail themselves of those skills by assembling their own design teams? Companies aren’t hiring design teams to do designers a favor! There is something in it for the team’s employer as well. Obviously designers’ skills have some business value to these companies. We should expect to be compensated in some way that reflects that and is satisfactory to us as well.

Designers, don’t undervalue your skills. The companies that want to take advantage of you are hoping that you will.

As the big contests come and go this past year, I find myself not even entering most of them. CK Hall of Fame, Memory Makers Masters, PK Power Team – all of those contests will pass this year without an entry from me. I feel like I don’t have enough of a chance at winning to justify the time and effort spent on entering. I feel like my time is better budgeted to other projects. So for now I am sticking mostly to smaller things like manufacturer contests or magazine page calls. But I am finding that playing on a smaller field raises my hopes and expectations….making it even harder when they come crashing down.

The few times that I have entered large contests or calls, I really haven’t had any high expectation for myself. The prime example of this was with the Simple Scrapbooks Coolest Album Contest last year. Because of the scale of the contest, I really did not have any expectations for my entry. It looked like calls had been completed and I was happy congratulating the anonymous winners on my message board and not really all that disappointed or let down that it appeared I was not a winner. After all, I hadn’t really been expecting to get a call for this kind of competition! I had entered for the fun of it. And then to my utter disbelief the phone rang and suddenly I was talking (or more like stuttering actually) to Stacy Julian on the other end! And the biggest part of the shock was that I really felt I had so little chance that I really wasn’t all that surprised or disappointed thinking that I hadn’t won anything.

In contrast, when I enter a call of late for a magazine or for a design team, it feels to me like I should have a better chance of actually getting somewhere with my submission, especially if it’s work of which I am really proud. I do let myself imagine getting the call or email and seeing it in print or getting the position for the company. It seems attainable when I’m submitting for a more ordinary call. And so I get my hopes up. And then they are crushed when inevitably the calls go out, or the winners are announced, and I am once again left out. It’s those supposedly small rejections that actually hurt the most – because you think you actually have a chance to begin with.

Rejection is an inevitable part of this business of freelance design and submitting. So how do you pick yourself up and continue on, instead of being worn down by the repeated blows? I’m sad to admit that I am still working on the solution to that. Does anyone know where I can get steel plated armour for my self-esteem?