Reputation posts

When Google Plus was launched a year and a half ago, it set in motion a multitude of changes to the search landscape. From this point forward, getting traffic from the famed search engine is no longer about the number of backlinks you have.

A personal element was added to the search. The problem most small businesses have discovered over the past 18 months has been how to work with this new...

Are you trying to grow your freelance web development or design business? Do you want to spend more time designing websites and less time trying to figure out what the client really wants and needs?

By finding the right web design niche, you can increase productivity and revenue and make your freelance business more profitable.

Web design is a competitive industry, but there are excellent opportunities for those with clear goals. A Google search on “freelance web developer United States” yielded over 51 million results, yet the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Outlook Handbook reports that IT jobs for web developers, information security analysts and computer network architects are expected to grow by 22% between 2010 and 2020. According to the website, “Employment of web developers is expected to grow as e-commerce continues to grow. Online purchasing is expected to continue to grow faster than the overall retail industry.

I earned my BFA in ’98. Learned to layout feature pages and create infographics for the local daily paper. I earned a Photoshop ACE in ’03. My most recent full-time contract was pure mock-up design work.

Yet for the last year and a half I have debugged code 40–50 hours a week. I read about code, I wrote about code, I talked to other people about code. Imagine that: a non-coder figured it out.

Still, “write code” is a broad phrase. Some languages are easier than others. Some languages require an understanding of...

Doing business in the age of social media and online communities is not the same as it was some 20 plus years ago. It’s not enough to just have a great product or good customer service, you need great customer service and this could mean going back to the old ways.

Today I’m going to discuss with you the significance of getting personal with your business and why it’s more important than ever to ‘be friends’, so to speak, with your customers.

You...

Clients are an important part of any business. But when it comes to web design, clients are everything! Whether it is an individually run enterprise or an establishment owned by several stakeholders; acquiring new clients and retaining old ones is an essential aspect for maintaining your web design business.

With increasing competition on the Internet, it can take a great deal of hard work to expand your client base and continue to retain existing jobs. Businesses invest a lot...

An interesting thing about working as a freelancer, while the area of expertise may vary, is that many of us will share the same experiences time and again.

Even without a connection in the fields in which we freelance, there are some lessons that are universally relevant, and that certain experiences will come to teach us.

When working in any field the last thing you should ever expect is to reach a point where you have nothing left to learn. So we tend to approach each experience with knowledge hungry arms wide open. Looking to learn whatever this new project or interaction will teach us. Only sometimes, the things we learn are not always pleasant. Or easy to take.

In fact, in a turn which makes their impact even more...

Obviously you are reading this blog. Why? You learn something that helps you become a better designer is the popular answer. Blogs inform, educate and entertain. Then there’s The Oatmeal, which is just weird but people love it.

Webdesigner Depot is just one of the top design blogs and, as I tell the editors for the blogs for which I write, “get this article published quickly before it’s covered in another blog!”

Sometimes I submit an article just as the same subject is published elsewhere.

AAAAARGH! you scream as you exit the meeting. So, your great idea was turned down by someone at work or a client. Is that failure? Yes, but not on your part. You researched the idea, market, demographics, and, like most creatives, have a finger on the pulse of pop culture. So, why didn’t it fly?

Most of the time it’s because the world is filled with frightened, self-involved, visionless, jealous robots masquerading in business attire that hold the key to moving forward with innovation. Am I being too tough on the middle management? I can never gauge my displeasure with the lack of innovation that causes society to backslide with the opinions of others. I feel that stagnation is decay.

There is a question that hiring managers like to ask interviewees, thinking they are trapping the poor saps in a sticky web of words:

“What do you do when you are finished with your work?”

Most people will not know how to answer. The hiring managers are looking for “ask for...

When you start working with clients you have to understand that the work you produce is not just about how good or bad a design is. It has a lot to do with the way the design fits into the wider spectrum of things.

Does this design fall in line with the overall theme of the company?

Does this design ‘say’ what the company tries to say?

In some instances and with some clients, you don’t even have to make a ‘great’...

Right now, we are surrounded by so many great sports leagues. Whether you prefer baseball, basketball, football or even hockey, you can flip to ESPN and catch some pretty great highlights and news.

Not everyone is big into sports (or at least not the popular ones), yet no one can deny the entertainment value that sports give us day in and day out.

Personally, I am a huge NBA junkie (go Celtics!). With the recent close of the 2010–11 season, I picked up on some implied rules that typically guarantee a team some measure of success.

I...

“Learn how to be happy with what you have while you pursue all that you want.” – Jim Rohn

More and more, as the scope and lucrativeness of the Internet increase, web designers are becoming highly sought after. As the design profession gains in demand, its practitioners are put in an interesting position.

The opportunities for growth appear to be limitless, so it is up to each designer to determine their own life path.

It is a...