Your Profile
Preamble
In my head, this is what the journey to becoming a professional illustrator looks like. There are some 3489 steps you need to take depending on where you are and where you need to be. (very scientific)
Every day you need to take as many steps as you can while not burning out, that’s called your pace. Over time you inevitably reach your goal, if you can stay the course and keep the pace.
Cleaning up my fragmented selves
There are some things you can do, that if you get right will have a positive compound effect if you do them. And a compound negative effect if you don’t or if you do it wrongly.
One of them is filling up your profiles.
Online profiles are free advertising to the service you provide. The obvious profiles you want to get right are all your social media. Get it up to date and consistent. All of it should say ‘You are the person who does what.’ Otherwise, it’s a lost opportunity.
Over the past 15 years, I mush have created hundreds of profiles, on all manner of platforms. Imagine hundreds of versions of me contradicting each other living on the internet. If I’m lucky I left the profile blank and that does not add to the noise.
Imagine if all those hundred profiles said that ‘I’m Adam Ming, a professional Children’s Illustrator’. Imagine if all the thousands of emails I’ve sent all linked back to my portfolio.
I earlier this year I signed to work on a book with a big publisher and bestselling author. This was a direct result of cleaning up the fragments of me on the internet and direct them to a single focal point.
Here’s what I did
I simplified my name to Adam Ming, it’s short, easy to remember, and it’s not a competitive name on the internet, everyone I knows either calls me Adam or Ming, so I put them together so everyone knows we’re talking about the same person.
I got the domain Adamming.com, and put 10 of my best pieces of work up there (there’s 50 now, but I started. with. 10)
I got an email Adamming@hey.com
I put my email on all my social media and a link to my website.
I outdid myself on number 4 and used a service called site.bio so that all my social media pointed to all the others and I only will need to update one place.
Imagine an art director stumbling upon me somewhere, they could easily follow me and find me around the internet, pick the work they liked, and send me an email to ask if I was interested to work on the project.
Since then I’ve been working hard to bring in as much of my other presences into alignment. I’ve done Linkedin, Behance, Pinterest, Tumblr, and today Skillshare.
Let’s talk about skillshare. Thousands of people do the some classes I do, and they will be doing them for years, some will see and like my work in the galleries. If I don’t fill up my profile, the best I can get is a ❤️, but now that I’ve filled out my profile, there’s a chance that someone who likes my work might find me, maybe hire me.
Steps (Suggestions)
Use your name. If you don’t like your name change it. E.g ‘Andy J. Pizza’ is not a real name. Pick and Stick.
Get ‘yourname.com’
Get ‘yourname@emailprovider.com’
Use Linktree or site.bio to list all your socials and domain together
Strategically fill up all the profiles that you have
In your bio be specific about the service you want to be known for in 10 years and write that down, claim it. Say, illustrator, don’t say aspiring illustrator.
Do all this soon yes there maybe 3489 steps. Some steps just come before others. Because every day you don’t sort this out is a day someone might be giving up trying to find you.
If you’re subscribed to this thing, I’ll talk to you tomorrow :)
Find me here: https://bio.site/AdamMing