Before you read this article I want to warn you that the professional advice you are getting is coming from a 19 year old. I was a little wary of that fact, but another fact is that the kid was able to create a career doing what he loves to do without a formal education and I think that merits listening to what he has to say.
First I want to give a little background information on myself. My name is Remington McElhaney and I am a 19 year old freelance motion graphic designer. Hopefully my age doesn’t scare you away just yet from continuing to read this article, because I believe I have some good information to share.
I live in Northern Idaho, so jobs working with After Effects are fairly hard to come by. I began working in restaurants when I was 14 and quickly worked my way up from dish washing to full time dinner cook. I would work in the summer at a fine dining restaurant on the lake and in the winter at a local ski resort cooking.
Now one year later I work full time doing what I love, and I have clients all over the world.
However my passion was always working with After Effects. I would come home after working 10 hour shifts and then play around in After Effects until 2 am in the morning. Then last December I stumbled upon a site called Elance which is an online job marketplace where clients can post jobs for freelancers/companies to bid on. I thought it was interesting and I might be ready to start getting paid for what I do so I sent out a few proposals. Long story short, within the first month I had 10 projects. I realized I either needed to quit my job freelancing, or quit cooking.
Now one year later I work full time doing what I love, I have clients all over the world, and I am currently ranked #34 out of 91,766 providers in the Design/Multimedia category on Elance. So I’m going to share a few tips and strategies to help get you to the top during 2012!
