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I think a good Linked-in presence and good connections on there is very useful. Instagram and Pinterest tagging so you get picked up in the right searches. Some commissioners look at Behance. ... And having portfolios on places like the AOI (I think SCBWI may have a directory, too?) and childrensillustrators.com can be useful. Your own website with good SEO, too, for when people are googling something in particular and you fit (though... that one is more likely to net people who are not used to commissioning illustration, I have found and who therefore have ridiculous budget expectations that they won't share until you've spent a day putting together a really detailed quote and then faint when it's way outside the stock fee they had in mind!)

When I was doing a lot of commissioning illustrators (in educational publishing in the UK) each publisher had their go to two or three agencies (usually with one first choice one who they preferred working with - different one for each the publishers I worked with) they looked to first and only when we couldn't find someone there (which we mostly could) then start researching in other ways, an then that was a combination of word of mouth and googling (this was before Instagram was big/existed). Oh, and for the majority of them it was flat fee full buyout and there were lots of reasons why it wasn't possible that all *could* have been got round if really needed, but it would have to be a super special project for that to be the case.

Nowadays, most artwork in the projects I work on in the business is commissioned in-house and almost all of it goes overseas and predominantly to Indian outsourcing companies.

o of them

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