Create your own profile or hire someone?

2ndTimeEpiphany · July 2011

What if hiring someone meant trying someone who is just starting to do adoption profiles, so their experience is limited?

I love to do this kind of thing, but my issue will be time above all else.

What do you think?

futuremrsofficer · July 2011

I made mine in powerpoint. I was surprised by how easy it was.

Dr.Loretta · July 2011

I loved doing mine, but the requirements can vary so much I wouldn't want to hire out.

farmweddinggirl · July 2011

I did ours, and while very time consuming (and overwhelming at times), ultimately I am glad I did it myself rather than hiring someone else. If you have the design skills and the desire to do it yourself, I say go for it!

Go_Dawgs · July 2011

Hi! I'm the one who posted Regina's name on facebook.

I did my own profile and also website, and it took me FOREVER. I'd never done either before, and not knowing what I was doing made it a very time consuming task. It sounds like you have done this type of thing before, though.

It can't hurt to play around with some programs and see if it's something you want to spend the time doing. I would have hired someone if I had found someone who would do it for a price that I felt was reasonable (the best I found was $650).

If you do have someone else do it, I think that having experience making digital books is what is most important, and not that they specifically have done adoption profiles. The part that is such a pain is just learning a new program, especially if you are technologically challenged like me.

Based on the work that Regina has done for me, I personally wouldn't hesitate for a second to have her do my own profile. In fact, the next time we adopt I will definitely use Regina for this. I hired her for a business logo, letterhead design, and to build a website. I actually hired someone different before her, and wasn't happy with the result. Then when I gave Regina an idea of the look I was going for and the colors I like, she came up with something that I absolutely loved. She is also incredibly responsive, usually responding to emails within a few hours, and she had a really quick turnaround time. I know this sounds like an advertisement for her, and I swear I don't know her or anything, but was just so impressed by her work that when I found out she is into digital scrapbooking, I brought up the idea of getting into doing adoption profiles.

As far as your specific agency's requirements for size of the book, length, etc, and what you are wanting in the book, I can't imagine any of this will be a problem if you just tell her. When she was building my website, she was incredibly accommodating to a ton of requests that I made, including changes along the way (that were mostly my fault for changing my mind about something that I wanted).

Would you be the free one she is doing? If so, you have nothing to lose by using her.

I can see how some people would enjoy creating their profile and not mind spending the time. That just wasn't me. If you think you would like for someone else to make yours and your only hesitation is that she's never specifically done an adoption profile before, I really don't think you would regret going with her. She's awesome and I'm excited that she's interested in doing this so I can have someone who is reasonably priced to recommend to clients and friends.

Go_Dawgs · July 2011

I can't believe I posted such a long response about this, lol

2ndTimeEpiphany · July 2011

No, I would not be the free one she is doing, but she said we could work out a price after I saw the finished product. I hate to do that though and perhaps my hesitation is because I haven't worked on ours at all yet and don't even know where to start. I'm not sure what instruction to give her at this point and would hate to have her waste her time if I discover it's not what I'm looking for.

mabella · July 2011

I did both (two adoptions) of ours and created our website. It was time consuming, yes, but I enjoyed doing them both. You can PM me if you want the link to our site and our profile.

Good LUcK!

ByHisGrace7 · July 2011

I really recommend doing yours if you don't mind putting a little bit of time into it. Mine only took an evening or two to do and it is only about 6 pages. The hardest part for me was the Dear Birthmother Letter that I used for one of the pages. I did mine in Picaboo and even though it can get expensive I always got lucky and always found half off coupon codes. It was nice because I could have them sent straight to my consultant and after that straight to my agency. It turned out so nice and I saved a ton of money by not paying someone extra to create this. You can also create photo books on Kodak Gallery and I'm sure there are some other picture websites. The great thing about these sites is that you can take up a whole page for a Dear Expecting Mother letter and still have plenty of pages for pictures with a few sentences under each picture.

I've seen people create theirs in Power Point and once even in Word and they all looked great. They just printed them out in color and then took them to Kinkos to have more copies printed and to bind them.

ByHisGrace7 · July 2011

P.S. If you want to see just how easy it really is send me an email at maryme107 at yahoo dot com and I can send you the link to my Picaboo book.

Go_Dawgs · July 2011

2ndTimeEpiphany:
No, I would not be the free one she is doing, but she said we could work out a price after I saw the finished product. I hate to do that though and perhaps my hesitation is because I haven't worked on ours at all yet and don't even know where to start. I'm not sure what instruction to give her at this point and would hate to have her waste her time if I discover it's not what I'm looking for.

Yeah, I can understand your hesitation with this. That said, you are doing her a favor by helping her get experience with this. Even if you end up not purchasing it, it would be valuable to her if you would agree to her using it as an example on her website so she can sell more profiles in the future.

Good luck making your profile, whichever route you decide to take!

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