Sophie (Chanko) Dare

I've never quite understood the appeal of “building your brand” and “marketing yourself” online before.

Why do I need a brand? I don't have a company, and I'm not trying to sell people anything!

But after spending many days at home these past few weeks, watching other girls on Instagram (in their 20's, just like me) hustling at their self-made businesses and continuing to make a living, even when the rest of the world is in an economic collapse...

...I figured I could take a few tips from them, even though I'm not a professional life coach or a cosmetics salesperson.

I may not have a business or a product or service to sell people (yet), but what I do have is the humble beginnings of

Being a part of this community, the beta version of Coil, has gotten me thinking about the big picture: I want to continue to blog, to create, and to get paid for it. I want the long-term freedom of bringing in an income from home and being able to work on my own terms.

Heck, all I've done for the past two weeks (being quarantined at home and not working) has been writing blog posts, reading other bloggers' content, and improving my graphic design skills! It must be my passion if I'm willing to sit, staring at a computer for hours on end doing it, right?

I love blogging, I love Coil, and I'm in this for the long haul. So I figured it was time to step up my game and

I started with coming up with a color scheme; visual cohesiveness works wonders for your professional image, especially on social media profiles like Instagram.

I used Canva to create a grid, and I inserted my favorite colors to use in graphics and text- and so was born my brand color palette!

I used my favorite colors (blush pink, rose gold, yellow, sage green, light gray), bright yet subdued, as well as some staple neutrals.

Next, I thought that the color scheme needed some more cohesiveness- a way to make it flow better- so I made a moodboard, using photos from Google, Pinterest, or Tumblr that combine my colors in a more visually pleasing, aesthetic way:

I personally am IN LOVE with the way the moodboard helps me visualize the way my color palette fits together – I can't recommend it enough if you're trying to figure out any sort of color scheme.

Finally, I created some slides for my Instagram story highlights (in my brand colors, of course) to make my profile more cohesive:

My highlights contain animated slides that I designed in order to educate people about Coil and tell the story of my experience on the platform, as well as a place to save all of my photos from Ecuador, photos of recipes I make, and information about my Fiverr page.

I also created a linktr.ee in order to keep all of my important links in one place in my bio:

All of this designing and branding took me many, many hours, and my computer was not very happy with me running design software for that long (MacBooks aren't supposed to sound like jet engines, last I checked). But it was honestly the most fun I've had in weeks, and I can't believe that I am blessed enough to have the time, resources, brainpower, creativity, and platform to put in this work on my small-time online career. I can barely call it work – more like passion.

Thanks for reading!