These interviews are mainly of designers who run their own businesses. While Jon may not spend all his time running a business now (and we’ll get onto that later) he certainly fits into this group very well.

He’s a native of Montreal, Canada and picked up web design by teaching himself while working at a call center.

Jon’s background and hobbies strike a familiar chord (get that one!) amongst those I’ve interviewed so far. Jon is a guitarist and has a love of creating things and “seeing how things work”.

It’s amazing how many of the web designers I talk to are musicians and love all sorts of creativity. They also usually have an interest in the technology of the modern world. Jon is no different.

After a few years of making websites for family, friends and clients he stopped working at a call center and became a fulltime freelance web designer.

It’s funny because I thought I “knew” Jon from corresponding with him so regularly online for maybe 5 years. But having just talked to him I realise that what I knew was only the tip of the iceberg.

So, just for the record, here is the order of sites that Jon started, built up to be successful, and sold in order to move on to bigger and better things.

• FreelanceFolder
• Design-Newz
• SpyreStudios
• MediaLoot

If you look at those four sites, you’ll find that each one is highly trafficked (and we’re talking tens of thousands of visitors a day) and has an extremely high authority within the design niche.

This is testament to Jon’s ability not only to set up and maintain hugely useful blogs but also to know when and who to sell them to. It’s important to note that Jon didn’t throw them out to Flippa and see who’d bid the highest price. He sold them to people he knew, for example, he sold FreelanceFolder to Mason Hipp who was already an advertiser there.

Jon is very modest about his involvement. But, especially when you consider English is only his second language, setting up these amazing sites has been an incredible achievement.

Working with a team

Jon now has a job! Setting up and selling four successful websites secured him some incredible contacts. He used these to get some amazing freelance gigs, but these contacts also led him to working for BuySellAds the online advertising network.

After being shut in a room working by himself for so long, Jon has really warmed to chatting with a team everyday. He obviously really enjoys the camaraderie of getting together with like-minded people to build a great product. And, who wouldn’t?

You can do it – just go with the flow

But let’s go back to Jon’s amazing achievements. Jon modestly puts this down to “going with the flow” and I think there’s something in that. Now, “going with the flow” doesn’t mean laying back and seeing where life takes you. There’s a proactive element to starting loads of sites and seeing what works.

This philosophy reminds me of the spirit of the book “Screw It, Let’s Do It” by Richard Branson, where you really get a sense of the enjoyment of entrepreneurial activity. I seem to remember the Virgin boss saying something like, “Wouldn’t it be fun to start an airline? Let’s do it!”

A lot of these successful sites started with a thought in Jon’s head. For example, one day he thought: “wouldn’t it be great if there were quality design resources all in one place at a reasonable price?” And so he created it.

That’s not to say it’s easy or that all these ideas come off. Most of them don’t. But you’ve got to keep trying.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

On the other hand, life as a web designing business owner is brilliant. You get to work on your own terms. You can be creative. And there’s a lot more good stuff besides.

However, because it’s a new industry and because of the freedom, web designing has unique challenges. And one of those challenges is to decide when the client is right and when the client is wrong.

Because it’s not all black and white. Sometimes I hate to hear designers slagging off their clients. It’s an easy trap to fall into. Just have a look at ClientsFromHell.com.

OK, it’s funny. We can all laugh about it. But that doesn’t help us. What do we do when the client makes a suggestion that we think will be detrimental to their business? You can’t just poo-poo someone’s big idea.

And, look at it from the clients viewpoint. You’ve heard the joke, haven’t you?

“How many web designers does it take to change a lightbulb?”

“Does it have to be a lightbulb?”

Sound familiar? Now get off your high horse.

For starters some ideas clients have are original. You don’t see Flash intros, background music and vertical navigations these days. Why? Because they don’t work! But you can’t just say that to the client. They can, understandably, say: “if no one else’s doing it, that means we’ll stand out for being original and thinking outside the box!” Which is a good sentiment. But still wrong. So how do you square the circle?

I’ve had many of these situations and, luckily, clients aren’t from hell and they are actually reasonable human beings. So here are some practical things you can actually say to clients when you believe their ideas are a little off.

Vertical menus

“Nowadays people expect to find a horizontal menu across the top of the website header. Doing something else is likely to result in higher bounce rates, less pages per visit and less conversions.”

Too many items in navigation

“Seven is the magic number when it comes to short term memory. Remember you’re competing against all the distractions of the modern day. It’s great to keep things simple.”

“Use this color, my wife/son/aunt likes it”

“That color won’t show up against the background and will make it hard for the visitors to differentiate and therefore this would make the website harder to use.” (Say this even if the color will show up against the background. You’re the expert!

Background music

“Background music, to me, seems unprofessional. Streaming music can cause the website to load slowly which is bad for visitors and looked on unkindly by Google. The antidote to this is to loop a shorter music sample but this gets repetitive and is annoying for the visitor. You want visitors staying on your site for hours not a few seconds.”

“Plus there’s a problem with people already listening to music before visiting your site as well as people visiting your site from public places where they won’t appreciate the sound.”

Flash intros

“You want your visitors to perform a desired action on your site (typically, leave their email address, buy a product, contact you, etc.) You should do everything you can to remove barriers from the path towards this and facilitate this desired action. A flash intro or splash page is one more barrier. We should work towards removing these barriers not putting them up.”

You can do it

You can communicate with clients to build them a website they are happy with that meet your usability standards. I’ve honestly hardly ever had the “clients from hell” that everyone talks about.

Realise that this is a new industry and half our job is one of education and communication.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

This small rectangle of color provides the user with an visual teaser which they can click or tap in order to find out more or read a whole article.

More and more WordPress themes give you options to use featured images on your archive pages. Regular readers of my blog will know that I use Genesis (affiliate link) and, of course, Genesis offers this functionality.

To display a featured image in my main blog page (and on all other archive pages) you go to Genesis > Theme Settings and choose the following options:

Above you can see that I’m only displaying the excerpts of the post rather than the full content which is a good idea for many reasons not least because it shows more of your blog posts in a smaller space on the archive page. Also, you can see that I display featured images of 150 pixels square by every blog post.

All well and good. But why stop there? This is only scratching the surface of what you can achieve with featured images and Genesis.

Using featured images wherever you want them with Genesis

How about creating a home page with multiple featured image sizes of articles from various categories with author gravatars as well? You can do it with Genesis. Here’s how:

The above video is part of my video course Creating a Business Website with a Responsive Design where you can follow step-by-step design and development of this site Crea8iveDesigns.com.

In the video above and the blog post below I will be explaining how to create three widgets that each display a different featured image, headline and excerpt from a blog, like so:

So, quite a lot there. Let’s break it down step-by-step.

Remember all the changes you make in Genesis should be to the child theme rather than to the Genesis core files.

Set your custom size for the featured images

If you want to create a different size of feature image (other than the defaults of 150 pixels square and 300 pixels by 235 pixels) you can by adding the following to the functions.php of your child theme:

/** Add new image sizes */
add_image_size( 'home-featured', 367, 210, TRUE );

The above creates a featured image of 367 pixels wide by 210 pixels high of every image added to posts from now on. The featured image has the name in the widgets of “home-featured”. We’ll be coming on to widgets later.

Set up your widget areas

OK. What on earth are widgets? Widgets are user-friendly ways of adding content to various parts of a WordPress website. The usual area where people use widgets is the sidebar but I’m increasingly using widgets in other areas of a WordPress site as their usage is easy to explain to clients.

So, in order to create our three widgets with featured images, headlines and excerpts on the home page, we first need to create three widget areas. And we do that by adding the following code in the functions.php.

/** Register widget areas */

genesis_register_sidebar( array(
'id' => 'home-left',
'name' => __( 'Home Left', 'crea8ive' ),
'description' => __( 'This is the left section of the homepage.', 'crea8ive' ),
) );

genesis_register_sidebar( array(
'id' => 'home-middle',
'name' => __( 'Home Middle', 'crea8ive' ),
'description' => __( 'This is the middle section of the homepage.', 'crea8ive' ),
) );

genesis_register_sidebar( array(
'id' => 'home-right',
'name' => __( 'Home Right', 'crea8ive' ),
'description' => __( 'This is the right section of the homepage.', 'crea8ive' ),
) );

The above code creates three (at the moment empty) widget areas that will be visible on the right hand side if you go into Appearance > Widgets in the WordPress backend, see below:

Great, we’ve got our widget areas, all we have to do is to drag widgets into them, right? Wrong! We have to make sure we actually have pages in our site that display these widget areas first. And, to do that, we’re going to create a custom page template in Genesis.

Displaying widgets on custom page templates

In this example we’re creating a custom page template and populating that with widgets in order to build up a home page with all sorts of exciting things going on.

I have to say at this point that I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Lee Hodson and his amazing article How to Make a Genesis Page Template That Uses Widgets.

In order to create a custom home page I created a text file called front.php and added it to my child theme folder.

And inside this text file I put the following:

<?php /*
Template Name: Front
*/ ?>

<?php
add_action( ‘genesis_meta’, ‘cre8tive_front_genesis_meta’ );

/* Add widget support for this template. If no widgets are active, display the default Genesis loop. */
function cre8tive_front_genesis_meta() {

if ( is_active_sidebar( ‘home-left’ ) ) {
remove_action( ‘genesis_loop’, ‘genesis_do_loop’ );

add_action( ‘genesis_loop’, ‘cre8tive_home_left’ );
add_action( ‘genesis_loop’, ‘cre8tive_home_middle’ );
add_action( ‘genesis_loop’, ‘cre8tive_home_right’ );

add_filter( ‘body_class’, ‘add_body_class’ );
function add_body_class( $classes ) {
$classes[] = ‘cre8tive-front’;
return $classes;
}
}
}

function cre8tive_home_left() {

if ( is_active_sidebar( ‘home-left’ ) ) {
genesis_widget_area( ‘home-left’, array(
‘before’ => ‘<div class=”home-left widget-area”>’,
) );
}
}

function cre8tive_home_middle() {

if ( is_active_sidebar( ‘home-middle’ ) ) {
genesis_widget_area( ‘home-middle’, array(
‘before’ => ‘<div class=”home-middle widget-area”>’,
) );
}
}

function cre8tive_home_right() {

if ( is_active_sidebar( ‘home-right’ ) ) {
genesis_widget_area( ‘home-right’, array(
‘before’ => ‘<div class=”home-right widget-area”>’,
) );
}
}

genesis();

There’s quite a lot there so let’s break it down.

The first three lines create a new page template called “Front”.

<?php /*
Template Name: Front
*/ ?>

(When creating a PHP file for a home page template it’s much better to call it “front.php” as “home.php” confuses things.)

You then choose this template for your home page in the Page Attributes of the WordPress Page editor.

Moving on down the code on our custom home page template called “front.php”.

add_action( 'genesis_meta', 'cre8tive_front_genesis_meta' );

The above fetches meta information (such as the page title, page description, etc.)

Then you have the following function named “cre8tive_front_genesis_meta”.

function cre8tive_front_genesis_meta() {

if ( is_active_sidebar( 'home-left' ) ) {
remove_action( 'genesis_loop', 'genesis_do_loop' );

add_action( 'genesis_loop', 'cre8tive_home_left' );
add_action( 'genesis_loop', 'cre8tive_home_middle' );
add_action( 'genesis_loop', 'cre8tive_home_right' );

add_filter( 'body_class', 'add_body_class' );
function add_body_class( $classes ) {
$classes[] = 'cre8tive-front';
return $classes;
}
}
}


The first bit is_active_sidebar tests if the sidebar widget area is active. If it is active (and I’m planning to always have it active) it performs the following tasks:

remove_action( 'genesis_loop', 'genesis_do_loop' );

The above removes the default genesis loop that displays posts’ content normally.

add_action( 'genesis_loop', 'cre8tive_home_left' );
add_action( 'genesis_loop', 'cre8tive_home_middle' );
add_action( 'genesis_loop', 'cre8tive_home_right' );

The above displays the three widget areas. And, then:

add_filter( 'body_class', 'add_body_class' );
function add_body_class( $classes ) {
$classes[] = 'crea8ive-front';
return $classes;

The above creates a CSS class for the body element. This can be really useful for changing the style of any part of your custom template page. For example, if you wanted the headings of this particular page to display differently you could just add .crea8ive-front h1 style to the style.css.

And finally, you define the functions for the three widgets:

function cre8tive_home_left() {

if ( is_active_sidebar( 'home-left' ) ) {
genesis_widget_area( 'home-left', array(
'before' => '<div class="home-left widget-area">',
) );
}
}

function cre8tive_home_middle() {

if ( is_active_sidebar( 'home-middle' ) ) {
genesis_widget_area( 'home-middle', array(
'before' => '<div class="home-middle widget-area">',
) );
}
}

function cre8tive_home_right() {

if ( is_active_sidebar( 'home-right' ) ) {
genesis_widget_area( 'home-right', array(
'before' => '<div class="home-right widget-area">',
) );
}
}

genesis();

The above code get the widgets to display provided there is something to display in the widgets. And then, finally, the genesis(); loads the remainder of the Genesis loop.

But you’re not done yet!

Adding the widgets

Lastly, you actually add content to the widgets via the Appearance > Widgets section in the WordPress backend.

This is the simple user-friendly bit you can do once you’ve done the more difficult coding bit.

You can drag what you want into these widget areas – menus, tag clouds, category listing, a calendar, a search bar, whatever. However, for the purpose of this example we are using the Genesis Featured Posts widget that comes with Genesis.

The above are the settings I used to get the three widgets areas to each display a featured image (in our custom size), headline and excerpt.

The only difference between the three Genesis Featured Posts widget settings was in the “Number of Posts to Offset:” field, circled above. Here I entered 0 in the first, 1 in the second and 2 in the third, ensuring we get a different post each time.

Also circled above is our “home-featured (367×210)” custom featured image size which we specified in the functions.php.

The end result is the three featured posts with a large featured image on the home page here and in the screenshot below.

You can do it

So I hope this shows you how easy it is to get any page to display just about any combination of posts with any size of featured image with Genesis and WordPress.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

I knew that Paul was great in interviews because I’d heard him on Blogcast FM interviewed by Srini Rao. And, if you are into podcasts like I am, I can only recommend you download a few there because, if you’re running your own online business, there’s nothing better to help you on your entrepreneurial journey.

Paul was originally asked to be interviewed on the high profile Blogcast FM podcast because he’d designed so many of the sites that belonged to the successful entrepreneurs on the show.

If you look at some of Paul’s work you’ll see that Paul is no ordinary web designer. He creates WordPress websites that don’t look like WordPress websites.

Use Your Creativity

Developing a creative side helps us become happier and healthier people. This is not something that should be confined to art class at school.

Paul was always creative. Always drawing, making music, creating things. I believe the more we develop this side the more successful we become – although it may be through a circuitous route.

Paul gets bored very easily but one can never be bored whilst being creative.

(One of these days I’m going to run a survey on how many designers also play a musical instrument but that’s another story.)

Communicating with the client

We talked about the issue of client communication.

Paul spends a special amount of time getting under the client’s skin. He talks about discovering the “language” of the client and finding out how the client communicates.

Someone who wants a website created may not always tell a designer all they need to know. Actually, if I’m honest, it’s rare that they do. The designer has to tease this vital info out of them. And I think Paul is especially adept at doing this.

In his book Be Awesome At Online Business, Paul outlines some telling questions you can ask your client in order to eek out the very essence of what their business is about.

Another great idea of Paul’s is to get your client to provide Pinterest boards of typography, colors, photography or graphics that they like. The idea of using moodboards to discover a visual language of an idea has been the mainstay of creative industries for decades and decades. There’s a reason for this. They work.

This’ll help you get inside the mind of a client better than asking them “what’s your favorite color?” Genius idea.

Developing a good portfolio

Paul does seem to have a way of cutting through the fluff and honing in on the heart of the matter. This attitude has meant he has never been out of work in 15 years of web designing (during the worse recession since the World War II and without spending a penny on marketing).

If you look at his website, for example, it’s not accompanied by the usual bells and whistles that other websites are. No distracting social media buttons (just a bespoke “Tweet this”), no unnecessary imagery, no line, color, drop shadow nor footer copyright line is tolerated.

Just as his own website is minimal and easy-on-the-eye, so are those of his clients. It’s a ludicrously simple idea: only create work you’re happy with and you’ll only have work you’re happy doing coming your way.

Paul puts it in a characteristically simple way: “only do work you’ll want to put in your portfolio”. You may think that Paul can get away with this attitude because he’s an established, successful web designer. But this was his attitude when he was starting out.

Paul, like me, designs and develops the websites he creates. But has, in the past, found himself coding other people’s designs. And this is another type of work that Paul won’t touch anymore. In order to design a website you have to know a bit about web functionality and when you have just a visual to go on there are too many unanswered questions.

At this point of the interview, being a novice interviewer and probably busy thinking of the next question, I started rambling about taking over other people’s code which was slightly off from the point he was making. But, being strict about the jobs you take on is the valuable take-away here.

You can do it

Paul obviously has talent and has worked very hard as well. But I think the main thing I got from this interview was Paul’s uncompromising attitude to his work. If we want to spend time on this planet doing something we love … then we better make sure we do something we love.

So, when you next find yourself doing joyless work ask yourself, is this really getting me where I want to be? Am I proud enough of this work to be able to put it in my portfolio? If the answer is “no” then see if you can improve the quality in a way that would be beneficial to both you and the client.

And, it’s no good thinking (as I would), “oh, it’s OK for the privileged few established web designers to be able to pick and choose like that, I’ve got to pay the bills!” Paul was like this from the get-go, and I’m sure he had bills to pay as well.

Thanks, Paul, you gave us a lot to think about.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

What are you going to do, whether you’re 18 years old, 28, 38, or 48 years old and looking for a job? Are you going to be shuffling round town armed with a business card and a resumé? Well, good luck to you, if that’s what you’re doing.

There’s nothing wrong with shuffling around town and meeting people, of course, but don’t hand out a resumé. Nowadays, the best calling card is a book and, failing that, an online reputation. And, at the heart of your online reputation – whether you’re a company, an individual or both – is your website.

So, I thought I’d lay down 5 “must have’s” for your online business because I see so many people getting these wrong. It’s not their fault. So many people come from an old brick-and-mortar business background and were schooled in the old advertising mantra – “pay the ad man and watch the customers come through the door”. They expect a website to be the same. Pay for a website and watch the traffic come and ask us for business.

Unfortunately, as we all know, it doesn’t work that way.

1. Blog

I must admit I am a bit fundamentalist about blogging and I like to think it’s a solution for everything. You want to leave your job? Start blogging. You want to make money? Start blogging. You’re feeling upset? Start blogging.

Whereas the traditional resumé tells people what you’ve done, a blog shows people what you can do.

A blog should be about you, your company, your industry. It should convey your message. What is particular about you and the way you work.

Are you always trying to explain the same thing to customers? Write a blog post about it. This way, the next time you have to answer the same question, all you have to do is so the potential customer the article. It’s a non-threatening way to introduce somebody to your brand.

Added to this, an active blog will draw in targeted traffic from search engines and social sites with good old content marketing.

If you still don’t get blogging, read this.

2. Contact page

OK, so we all know that every business website should have an easy-to-navigate-to contact page, don’t we? That’s a given. There’s almost a standard proceedure to have a “Contact” link in the top navigation bar, along with “Home” and “About”. I’m all for it. If people expect to see these links on your site you could be harming their experience of your brand if you don’t give them want they want.

But, along with a contact form on your contact page, a couple of clickable elements can really make the experience special for the visitor.

So, the phone number: +44 (0)7762 383 426 – click that on a smartphone and it’ll open up the dialer for you. Here’s the HTML for that:

Phone: <a href="tel:+447762383426">+44 (0)7762 383 426</a>

And a clickable email address:

The above email address link will open up your email client with my email address in the “To:” field and give you “Enquiry” in the “Subject:” field. Here’s the JavaScript for that.

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
var username = "rob";
var hostname = "robcubbon.com";
var linktext = username + "@" + hostname;
document.write("<a href=" + "mail" + "to:" + username + "@" + hostname + "?subject=Enquiry" + ">" + linktext + "</a>")
//--></script>

3. Having a responsive design

And, having your phone number clickable is a bit of a waste of time if your website isn’t mobile-friendly. If you want your website to look beautiful and be readable on all devices – computers, tablets, phones, whatever – is to get a website with a responsive design.

There are more and more responsive WordPress themes added to the WordPress themes directory everyday. My preference is for Genesis whose new themes have been responsive for quite some time now. Read my article on how to make a website responsive to smartphones and tablets for further information.

Making your website responsive is not difficult. Creating an app for iPhone, Android, iPad, etc., is more difficult and more expensive. The choice is yours.

4. Google Authorship and Rich Snippets

Do you want your face in the Google results pages? Google is the big daddy of search so it makes sense to do what they want. With Google Authorship they are aiming to link all the content you create around the web to your Google profile.

Google have changed the way to claim authorship as initially it was a tad confusing. Now you can do it in three steps:

• Verify your email address on Google+. Make sure this is an email address with the same domain as your website, so Gmail addresses won’t work here.
• Add your website to your Google+ profile. So go Google+ > About > Links > Edit add all the websites you contribute to.
• Add a link from your website to to your Google+ profile. If you have an author box, link to your Google+ profile, adding “rel=author” in the link.

If you don’t have an author box here’s another tutorial to help you.

Now what could be simpler than that? Well, quite a lot really. However, Google’s Rich Snippets Testing Tool will tell you if your site is marked-up correctly or not.

5. Google Places for Business

It could take you months or even years to appear in the Google search results for a particular search term. But, for a 5 minute time investment, you can appear in Google Maps and come up in searches for keywords you can determine.

Head over to Google Places for Business and spend a bit of time adding your business to Google Maps. Add images, add video, spend a little bit of time on your business’s description.

Maybe you have an online business and live in the back of beyond – I would still argue the case for Google Places for Business.

If you have a brick and mortar business then there’s certainly no excuse. And, when you build your Google+ Page, select the Local Business or Place type – it’s impossible to reverse this decision later!

You can do it!

You can create a viable online business that will outlive you and provide for your offspring!

Of my above 5 website essentials above, 4 of them should only take a few minutes. Take time to add these bells and whistles to your website. Put some love and care into it.

As Mo Farah would say: ‘Anything is possible – it’s just hard work and grafting’. Enough said!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

One of the very many benefits of interviewing various creative business people for the Design and Marketing podcast is that it takes me away from my small world.

During the last few years on this website I have mostly written about what works for me. When I was starting out online in 2006-2008 I basically wrote any old rubbish blog post and I would receive a bit of targeted traffic. And, because we hadn’t experienced the worst economic recession since the Second World War yet, I got work from my blog.

But, one thing you can be sure of in life and on the internet is this: change.

Things are different today. You have to market yourself through your website, through social media and through relationships. And someone who knows that is illustrator David Cousens. I spoke with David the other day to talk about how he’s managed get paid to work from home drawing pretty pictures for the last few years.

David works with his wife Sarah (when she’s not seeing to the kids).

Since an early age, and I mean a very early age, David liked to draw. He found at infant school that a story with a drawing in it would always earn him extra marks. There’s general web marketing lesson here, by the way:

• Tweets with images get more attention
• Facebook posts with images get clicked on more
• Similarly with Google Plus
• Blog posts interspersed with images are more likely to be read the whole way through. (Don’t even think of publishing a blog post without an image. OK, I know Seth Godin does it but I’m talking about us mortals here )

So, everything is better with imagery, we got it. Here’s one of David’s masterpieces:

We spoke about many things. But one of the most interesting of the business-related matters we talked about was David’s success in finding a great platform for his work through Twitter. Because of connections he’s made through Twitter he was able to join a respected group of illustrators to further showcase his work. How did he do that? David drew an interesting analogy…

Imagine that you’re in a party…

David actually talked about being in a pub. As not all my readers may be acquainted with the British public house so let’s say: imagine you were in a any social situation like a party where there are lots of people all talking with each other.

These conversations are loud – the party is fairly noisy – and you can hear all of them. Now, imagine there are a couple of attractive young women talking about clothes and shoes. Do I join in the conversation and say, “I know nothing about clothes and shoes but I think you two are both really attractive”? Would that result in a long meaningful conversation or a lasting relationship? No. (And, trust me, guys, I’ve tried. It doesn’t work.)

So, David advocates joining in conversations on Twitter where you can add something meaningful to the debate. But also, make a comment that fits within the flow of the conversation, not a comment that necessarily needs acknowledgment.

He organically developed his circle of Twitter followers back when #FollowFriday actually meant relevant people would follow you if tagged.

Viral … (I can’t believe I just used that word on my blog)

Being an illustrator with a very eye-catching style, one of his images has gone almost viral on Tumblr. This was a job for a client which fell through and, instead of filing it away in his portfolio, David shared it on all his social media sites.

The above image has had an amazing 11,000 shares and reblogs on Tumblr. This may not get David any clients but there’s no such thing as bad internet notoriety.

Give a little love and it all comes back to you

David wasn’t taught how to turn on a computer at art school so he’s picked up all his technical skills online. I know myself how amazingly supportive the design community can be. I have lost count of how many times I’ve been helped out of web development hell by a kind soul of a forum.

David makes sure he helps people when he’s given the opportunity. As do I (in the last half hour I have issued WordPress advice to two of my readers, coincidently.)

You can do it

You have to make sure you have a product that people want. But, with this in place, you can build up a useful network and find work by interacting with the right people on social media. This requires subtlety and perseverance.

But don’t just take from your social media world. You have to give back too!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

The above video on speeding up WordPress is part of a course I’m doing on Udemy about blogging, optimization, WordPress, social media and relationships. Please check out my other course on Udemy: Creating a Business Website with a Responsive Design.

With wonderful high speed broadband we now get impatient if a page takes time to load, and sites that leave us starring at a blank screen for more than a second will have the back button hit on them faster than you can say “snail”.

Google has made page loading times an increasingly important ranking factor recently.

So, if you have a slow site no one’s going to hang around to consume your content and no one’s going to find you on Google either. Put simply, page loading times are of paramount importance.

The need for speed is something we’ll always be thinking about as website owners. But I thought I’d write about a few of the biggest wins I’ve had over the years in the endless struggle against slowness. Watch the video above which gives you a practical demonstration of the advice below, and then … tell me what you think!

Check your site with Google PageSpeed

Google PageSpeed is a suite of tools that can help you optimise the performance of your website. I use the Chrome extension (extensions for other browsers are also available).

Select a page of your website, open Developer Tools (Cmd-Opt-I; Ctrl-Shift-I), and click ANALYZE and the PageSpeed tool will give you a score out of 100 and make suggestions about how to improve loading times.

If you’re not sure how to implement any of the suggestions – particularly the maximum and medium priority ones – then contact your host and see if they can help you.

However, the score may well improve after you implement the following…

Load a caching and/or minify plugin

One of the best things you can do to speed up a WordPress site is to load a caching plugin.

These caching plugins store a special cached version of your site and present it to visitors immediately without performing a number of database queries as is normally the way a website would be served.

These plugins need to be configured correctly and, again, you should consult your host on the best plugin to use as well as the correct configuration. Two of the best caching plugins for WordPress are W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache.

Another important point to remember with caching plugins is that the special cached version of the site may not be the most up-to-date and, especially when you make small development tweaks, it may be necessary to delete the cache to ensure the development tweak is affected.

I’ve also seen great results from WP Minify. Please see the video for more information on these.

Cut down on the amount of plugins you have

Make sure you don’t have loads of plugins activated. 15 should be the absolute maximum.

• Deactivate unnecessary plugins
• Delete deactivated plugins
• Check on the WordPress Plugin Directory. Are you using plugins that haven’t been updated recently or have a poor rating.

A great way to check to see if you have any “problem plugins” loaded is with the P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) plugin. It’s another plugin, I’m afraid! But all you have to do is activate it, run a scan and it’ll quickly show you which plugins are slowing down your site the most. (After that you can deactivate it and delete it, if you wish.)

Also, you can change the order that your plugins are loaded and/or selectively disable plugins by any post type or URL with the Plugin Organizer plugin. A plugin to organize plugins – love it!

Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) stores your site’s files in various locations around the world and it will serve your content via your host  from the nearest server to your visitor. So visitors from Europe will receive content from Europe; visitors from Asia will receive content from there, etc.

I would recommend MaxCDN. CDNs need to be configured in tandem with your caching plugin. MaxCDN (affiliate link) will give you adequate directions on how to do this with W3 Total Cache and SuperCache.

Use a good host

Sometimes you can make all the tweaks you like to your WordPress installation but, if your host stinks, these tweaks won’t do you any good.

This site is on a great UK host I recommend called Vidahost (affiliate link). And there are some great, recommended VPS hosts and some great shared hosting companies.

Obviously dedicated hosts will be generally faster than VPSs, which should be faster than shared hosts. However, this is not always the case. You can be pleasantly surprised with a good shared host although that may be down to luck as you’ve been put on a relatively empty server. If you’re serious about blogging then go for a VPS or dedicated.

Optimize your database

As part of general WordPress good housekeeping, you should optimize your database every month or so, especially if your site has been going for a few years and has loads of posts and comments.

You can use plugins like WP-DB Manager to delete unneeded post revisions, unapproved and spam comments, etc., and repair your database with one click.

Use a good theme

There may be some badly written themes out there. You are much better off using one of the well-reviewed premium themes out there. I always recommend Genesis because it’s superbly coded and well-optimized.

But there are loads of other good themes out there. And you can’t go wrong with any of the default WordPress themes, like the amazing and responsive Twenty Twelve.

Optimize your images

The images on your site are likely to be the files with the biggest sizes of all. So it makes sense to optimize them as much as possible. Photos like the ones above should be saved as well-optimized JPGs. Use PNG-8 and GIF for flat color web graphics. And only use PNG-24 when you absolutely have to – when something has to be particularly well cut-out, usually.

When optimizing JPGs, I usually put the quality at around 40-55% depending on the image.

And, always make the image size the same as the size it’s displayed on the page. Never cram a larger image into a smaller size on the page – that’s just wasteful!

Use image sprites

An image sprite is a collection of images put together on a single image. What’s the point of creating a single image sprite? A web page may have many small images, for example social media icons. All those images generate multiple server requests and all have to be downloaded individually whereas an image sprite is only requested and downloaded once thus speeding up the page load time.

On my site, look at the top left hand corner, you’ll see a row of images which are icons of the various social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) If you hover over any of them they go from black and white to color. Neat, eh? To create this, please see my post on creating social media profile buttons – HTML and CSS.

Above is the image sprite used for the profile buttons.

And above is another one I’ve made for another site. If you want to use any of these, get in touch. I have the HTML and CSS.

Keep an eye on your HTML

Another great way to “keep an eye on your site” is to make sure a particular page’s HTML validates. Go to the W3C Markup Validation service and check a blog post or your home page.

If the page is littered with HTML errors then it might be time to pick a new theme. See if you can see where the errors are coming from – it may be you are using a poorly coded plugin and there maybe a better one you could choose.

A few HTML errors may not slow you down but bad HTML, in the very worst of cases, could cause your site to stick or hang on some browsers.

Use post excerpts on your archive pages

This is a blogging, SEO, usability and speed related piece of advice!

An archive page is either your blog’s traditional home page with the last 10 posts displayed, or a category page, an author page, even a search results page. A page which lists multiple posts.

It is best to have this page display only extracts of the posts rather than the full post with all the images, movies or anything else it may contain.

This seems like pretty basic advice for any savvy blogger but I’m constantly surprised by the amount of times I see full posts on archive pages.

Every theme handles this differently. For some themes you may have to edit the theme’s PHP files to show excerpts on the archive pages. On the Genesis theme framework, under Theme Settings > Content Archives, I choose “Display post excerpts”.

You can do it

No matter if your site is one month, one year or one decade old, you’ll always be trying to get your page loading times down.

I hope you will find one or more of the above suggestions helpful. If you have any other suggestions please leave them in the comments. Let’s talk!

Further testing

Google has a speed tracking service tacked onto Google Analytics you can set it up here for your site. This enables you to see how long it take for different pages to load for different users. You can segment by browser type, country and all the other usual categories you get with Analytics. More about Google Analytics site loading tracking here by Matt Fox.

Many thanks to Leora Wenger for her advice to use the P3 plugin to monitor your plugin performance. And many thanks to David Waumsley for his advise about the Plugin Organizer.

There are some links that are affiliate links in this article. If purchases are made through some of these links, I will receive a commission although the price to the purchaser will be the same. If you’re not happy with this feel free to purchase the product via a Google search.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

The fantastic thing about this interview was that I didn’t really know Matt Shuey before I spoke to him. We were introduced via Google+ which is becoming a remarkable place to network.

It was wonderful to speak to someone half way around the world about web design business and find that we agreed on so much.

Here’s one bit of advice to web designers that I very much concur with:

Learn the basics!

It’s important to learn how websites work. Web designers should learn about design (how the website looks and functions for the user) as well as development (how the website works “under the hood”, so that’s HTML, CSS, PHP, JS, WordPress, etc.)

You should always be able to create a beautiful visual of a website in a graphics program first. Matt and I believe that this work in the primary stage will stop problems occurring later.

We both agree that web designers need to learn how to code and that they should understand both the design and the development sides.

Both Matt and I struggled with static HTML sites. Matt then went on to learn PHP server-side includes before coming to WordPress via an unfortunate Joomla detour. I lucked out by being introduced to WordPress back in 2006.

How to compete against website templates

Matt has been in the business for a long time. He’s gone from static HTML to WordPress-based sites for his clients. Recently he’s recognised potentially stiff competition from the WordPress template business. Nowadays, virtually anyone can buy a template from WooThemes, bung a logo on it and charge a client $700 for their “new, bespoke” website. This is competition at the lower end of the market (and I’ve warned against cheap and easy website builders) but it’s competition none-the-less.

His answer? Build templates.

Matt is now in the process of creating multiple templates for his own clients. Eventually his clients will be able to buy templates directly from his site, which is a form of web design business passive income that interests me.

With templates, Matt points out, that clients need to choose one that is 99% what they want, otherwise a custom solution will be necessary.

SEO and diversification

Matt has kept up with SEO since he first started designing websites in 2002. And it’s changed so much in 10 years – hell, it’s changed so much in the last 10 months!

In order to compete and ensure constant income streams, Matt has had to diversify his web design business into other areas, like SEO.

The SEO industry, Matt concedes, has a terrible image problem of fly-by-night, salesy-types offering high Google rankings by dubious means. You need to work hard with a client, persuading them of the on-going effort that is necessary. Matt provides his clients with content for their websites which is then linked to and shared in a natural and white-hat manner.

As Matt provides value in this way – both to his clients and to the internet as a whole – he is rewarded with repeat income and ongoing recommendations.

10 Worst Websites of 2013

Matt mentions in our interview a great post on his site that is a example of “link bait” or an article that will attract a lot of links or social media shares. The 10 Worst Websites does have some painful examples of awfully badly designed sites.

Above is my “favorite” – only the fifth worst website of 2013 (1995 more like!) Surely there aren’t 4 worse than that?

You can do it

You can stay in business for as long as Matt has, but only if you are prepared to really know your stuff and stay ahead of the game by observing the threats and maximizing opportunities in the way he has.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Last year, I made $8,553 passive income. And the year before (I wasn’t really counting) I made around $1000. So I’m really trying to “up my game” on the passive front. However, it ain’t easy!

My passive income

My target for this quarter was $3,000 – let’s see how I’ve done.

My passive income for these reports is divided into two sections: product sales and affiliate sales.

Sales of my products

I’ve been trying (and trying hard) to get more products out there. In fact (see below) having a product ready before the end of this quarter was one of my goals.

So far, my products are these two e-books:

• How To Get Clients about how to set up online, blog, use social media, relate, communicate, start an online business.
• Running a Web Design Business which is about, er, running a web design business.

Here are the sales from these books from the last three quarters:

Ouch! I’m noticing a trend here, and it’s not one I like.

My new product!

These last two months I’ve been locked away creating a course at Udemy called Creating a Business Website with a Responsive Design which is a 4 hour video course where I teach how to create this site. The whole experience was enjoyable apart from giving me a ScreenFlow-related RSI injury (I couldn’t move my neck for a few days!)

Above is a video about the responsive design course I created. The course is also part of a larger project which will eventually be a membership site over at RunningAWebDesignBusiness.com.

The course has only just been published and so far has 13 subscribers so I’ll include the passive earnings from this into my next quarterly report.

Affiliate commissions

Affiliate commissions can be earned where a special type of hyperlink on your site is clicked to a product seller’s site and a purchase is made. For example Genesis – a WordPress theme, WPML – a WordPress plugin and iContact – an email delivery service.

In a word, disappointing. So, what happened? Well, people are obviously buying the Genesis theme less and maybe that’s because I haven’t done any Genesis-specific tutorials recently and, as you will see below, my traffic has taken a nosedive since Christmas, although that’s only really my calendar traffic trailing off for seasonal reasons.

Another reason was not keeping my eye on the ball. I’d made a mistake on Commission Junction and some affiliate links had been working but not paying. You have to watch out for things like that.

Totals

So, if you add my income from sales of my e-books this quarter, $537.62, together with income from affiliate sales, $1499.33, you get a total of $2036.93. This is well under my target of $3,000. Poo!

Business report

Specific business targets

Here are my specific targets that I set three months ago and more targets for three months’ time.

So, having missed my passive income target so spectacularly, I’ve set the same target for the next 3 months, $3,000 – let’s hope the new Udemy course is a success so I can reach that by the end of June 2013.

And, as for the traffic, this is perhaps the most worrying stat of all. As I get such a boost towards the end of the year because of the immense calendar traffic I get, I really haven’t been noticing that the rest of the site isn’t performing so well. I have to address this issue and, at the moment, I’m not sure how. Any ideas would be gratefully received. So, I’ve set a target for 40,000 visitors for the month of June, that’s going to be a challenge.

General business targets

Right! Now time for some tough love. My passive income figures are moving in the wrong direction and the traffic figures are disappointing. I’ve got to get serious here and do something!

My products so far have been generally well-received. My two e-books, How To Get Clients and Running a Web Design Business, have netted me more income than if I’d been charging a client an hourly rate.

Passive income is cool!

I’ll endeavour to create more products. One of my goals from the last quarter was to create a video course and I have at last done that: my responsive design Udemy course which has just been accepted (see video above).

So I’ll therefore try to create two more video courses by the end of June. Hold me to it!

Indicators

Now my follower numbers …

If anything, we can see that YouTube is maybe growing faster than anything else. Another reason to create more video courses.

Personal goals

One of my personal goals for 2013 was to help people. I’ve been trying with this although with mixed results. One idea I had was to do a free website design and development for some organisation or non-profit that needs help. Let me know if you have any ideas on this.

I’ve been keeping up with my physical fitness and T’ai Chi, although sitting at a desk for long periods really doesn’t seem to help!

What do you think?

So, another quarter, another business report. This one was difficult to write as it wasn’t the most successful three months. What do you think of my plan to create new video courses? I’m always pleased to hear your feedback.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

As I am increasingly busy and after much thought and consternation, I have decided to sell HelloMyNameIsE.com(PR3), WPblogTalk.com (PR3) and Emarketing-consultants.com (PR2) as well as a basket of other sites at Flippa.

UPDATE: The sites were sold for $460.

Why am I doing this?

They’re too much work, put simply. I want to put all my energies into this site and GenuineHypnosis.com. I’ve made some mistakes with some of these sites, I’ll be the first to admit. It’s only fair to say that the WPBlogTalk.com domain fell foul of the Penguin update this time last year. However, I think that a few more quality links to this site will override the “bad links” that caused this.

They are all 100% original, branded, authority sites with aged domains and quality links to them. All are built with love.

HelloMyNameIsE.com

This is the site I’m finding it the hardest to let go. This site originally started as WordPressSEOMarketing.com, and then WPblogTalk.com (PR3) (both domains are also for sale). Maybe changing the domain twice was a mistake.

This 6 year old domain has quality in-post links from TechCrunch, TheNextWeb, ReadWrite and EndGadget. It’s a great authority, branded blogging and tech blog with over 100 quality, unique articles! Unique design on Studiopress’s Genesis theme.

Domain Authority: 40; Page Authority: 47; Linking Root Domains: 137; Total Links: 995

This comes with branded Twitter profile (1,580 followers) and Facebook page.

Emarketing-consultants.com

7 years old. Unique design on premium responsive Agency theme by Studiopress with over 20 quality, unique articles. This is a ready to go SEO, SM and Web Design business. Add this to Google Maps and you have a business.

Domain Authority: 36; Page Authority: 45; Linking Root Domains: 73; Total Links: 4457

mu-sik.com

8 years old. Quality design based on premium responsive Magazine theme by Studiopress with over 70 quality, unique articles. About music!

AndroidFunk.com

7 years old. Quality branded blog about the Android platform, apps, games and devices.

Domain Authority: 31; Page Authority: 43; Linking Root Domains: 95; Total Links: 1085

Quality design and logo based on the premium responsive Magazine theme by Studiopress with over 20 quality, unique articles.

Other sites/domains for sale

• http://www.FineFlashGames.com/ – Over 340 posts of Flash Games. WordPress blog with premium MyArcade plugin loaded.
• http://ChronicCorner.net – 5 years old. About marijuana/canabis.
• http://EffYou.org – 10 years old. With a lot of high quality links.
• http://zcologia.org – 8 years old. With a lot of high quality links. Was PR4.
• http://WordPressSEOMarketing.com
• http://WPSEOMarketing.com

Most of the sites are fully search engine optimized WordPress sites with responsive premium themes & all the required plugins installed, all ready & done for you!

Most of the domains are aged domains. I have researched them using tools like RegisterCompass and purchased them as soon as they dropped. Check them on DomainTools and OpenSiteExplorer. All these links and this authority still count when they link to your site.

I can transfer domain ownership to the successful bidder from NameCheap and GoDaddy instantaneously. I can provide details to facilitate moving of sites’ contents and/or provide files, databases and logins.

Extra giveaways:

I will give the successful bidder free copies of my premium e-books: How To Get Clients and Running A Web Design Business.

If you’re interested in buying any of these sites

Either contact me or bid on Flippa.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

If you want to start a podcast you could do no worse that to go to the podcasting expert, Pat Flynn at SmartPassiveIncome.com. Here’s Pat’s Complete Step-By-Step Podcasting Tutorial. It contains 6 videos containing over an hours’ worth of viewing.

However, I thought I’d do my own podcasting set-up guide and try to include only the most essential points for beginners. Another reason why I created the above video was that I have started a second podcast at GenuineHypnosis.com. So I show the whole podcast publishing process from beginning to end.

What you need to start a podcast

I could go on for hours and hours about equipment, passion, speaking talent (of which I have none), etc. But, basically, I think you need three things in order to start a podcast:

• An idea. Just like when you start a blog or a new website, you need to have a reason for doing it. Ask yourself, how can I help the podcast’s audience? The Design and Marketing Podcast seeks to help designers with business and businesses with design and the Genuine Hypnosis Happiness Podcast seeks to make the audience happy.
• Audio. Ah, yes, in order to start a podcast you’re going to need some audio! Here’s some words on podcasting equipment. Personally, my favorite tools are Call Recorder for Skype, Audacity, GarageBand (Mac only, I’m afraid), Levelator, Blue Snowflake USB Microphone and, er, that’s it!
• A brand. Your podcast is a brand just like your site is a brand and you are a brand. It needs a title and a logo. The logo has to be square and you need to save two versions. One 300 x 300 pixels; the other 1400 x 1400 pixels in size.

Above you can see the two square icons/logos for my two podcasts. There’s a real art to designing icons that work at both very big and very small sizes. I chose the easy way out and kept them simple.

How to experience podcasts and iTunes

Most people’s experience of podcasts comes from iTunes. They go along to the iTunes store and search for the type of podcasts that they will enjoy. They can then download a particular podcast episode MP3 and listen to it on their phone or MP3 player with headphones or earbuds.

Personally, I’m usually listening to podcasts during any sort of “downtime” I have. So, that’s when I’m going to the gym, driving the car or using public transport. It’s a great way to educate yourself while you’re doing something else.

And, because so many people do this, it certainly pays to get noticed on iTunes. So, make sure you set up your podcast feed and tag your MP3s correctly as I explain in the video.

But, also as Chris Ducker explains, the 8 weeks period after you are accepted onto iTunes is crucial. You are more likely to be amongst the first podcasts people see in iTunes once they have selected a particular category in the “New and Noteworthy” area.

Aside from iTunes, the other podcast-specific places to register your podcast are: Stitcher, BlackBerry and Zune: v-robgr@microsoft.com.

So, once you start podcasting, it’s essential you get into your rhythm quickly and keep on publishing new episodes regularly. Just like blogging, really.

You can do it!

Spend 30-40 minutes chatting with a really interesting person and share it with people. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Podcasting really is as easy as that – although it does take time. It’s another way of putting great content out there and, what’s more, you’ll learn from it.

Are you thinking of doing a podcast? Let me know. Also, tell me what you think of my podcasting video tutorial.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Louise Myers is a fantastic example of a designer who has never stopped learning.

You have to listen to this interview because there is so much to take from Louise’s inspiring story.

The main points I got from her story were:

• Everything changes
• Have a cushion
• Be flexible
• Specialise
• And keep trying!

Everything changes

Louise’s background is in catalog design and at one point in the 90s she probably thought she could go on doing that forever. However, that work dried up for several reasons – not the economy, for once. But, it shows you that you can’t really rely on anything – and especially not in this business.

Have a cushion

If you have a good year and make lots of money – put half of it in the bank! This is the way Louise was brought up (and me as well!) and this is invaluable advice for freelancers.

Be flexible

Although Louise had set up her work from home business around catalog design she had to adapt to survive and she branched out into all sorts of other areas of graphic design. She has diversified in order to grow her design business.

Specialise

However, you don’t want to be a jack of all trades and a generalist because then clients won’t be able to pigeon-hole you and never know when to call you! All successful graphic designers have some sort of specialty that people can associate them with.

And keep trying!

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm, as Winston Churchill would say. Louise can bear testimony to this. She may say that her success was in part due to luck but I’m not so sure.

So how did she do it?

The thing with the traffic? Simple, she kept on trying. This time last year, Facebook was moving all its (fan)pages to the timeline layout. Louise wrote a post about it. Bang! The rest is history.

If you blog and blog and blog, sooner or later, you’ll hit on a subject that has huge demand. Because the Facebook timeline page design was so new, there wasn’t so much written about it on the web. Louise had chanced upon a goldmine of visitors – that later became a goldmine of subscribers, and then and a goldmine of customers. Learn more by listening to the interview.

You can do it

As Louise has shown us, if you score a blogging “home run”, you’ve got to pick up the ball and run with it. That terrible mixture of sporting metaphors means: if you’re getting great traffic blogging about a particular subject, blog more about that subject. And then, productize!

Pay particular attention to social media. And by that I don’t mean tweet, share and like, I mean react quickly to any social media changes to layout and visuals. I have found out myself these are a particularly rich vein of traffic. Just last week, I posted about the new YouTube channel art and already I’ve had over 1,000 visitors to that page here and over 500 video views of the movie at YouTube.

Social media is going more and more visual and graphic designers can capitalize on this!

Don’t be ashamed of your naked Facebook page! Go to LouiseM.com and sign up to her mailing list to find a host of cool social media design tips. And I would also advise you to get her great e-book: “Create your Facebook Timeline Fan Page to Look Great and Engage Fans” on PDF or Kindle.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

YouTube have just rolled out their new channel design to the masses. So, why should we care and what do we need to know about it? Well, we should care because it’ll make our YouTube channels look great on all “three screens” (TV, desktop and tablet/mobile). And, as we’re talking YouTube, here’s a video showing me uploading my channel art for the new YouTube layout which should tell you all you need to know.

(Sorry, I sound a bit tired – it was 2am this morning when I recorded it!) Basically, to make the most of the new YouTube channel design, you need to do three things:

• Head over to youtube.com/onechannel, scroll to the bottom and click “Get Started” (you can switch back later if you don’t like the new channel layout, but I wouldn’t if I were you!)
• Create your “channel art” (the huge banner across the top), an image 2120 pixels by 1192 pixels. Save as a JPG. Remember only the middle fifth of the image is viewable on the desktop version.
• Record or set a video for your channel trailer. Go ahead and view mine, I’d love to know what you think.

So, with all of the above, this is how my channel now looks:

Download New YouTube Channel Art

As you can see from the above video, although the size of the channel art is 2120 pixels by 1192 pixels, you can only view a horizontal strip of maybe 320 pixels high.

If you click on the image below you can download a PSD to help you design your YouTube channel art.

This downloadable PSD is of the correct size (2120 pixels by 1192 pixels) and has the viewable area (for the desktop view) marked out in layers.

Once this is uploaded you can see how the different crops work on different devices.

Add your channel trailer

Recording a new channel trailer is perhaps more important now as it plays automatically as soon as someone (a non-subscriber) arrives on your channel page. So I immediately jumped on ScreenFlow and recorded this:

I would advise you to make it short and try to inform the visitors as quickly as possible what they can expect from subscribing to your channel.

You can do it

You can become a YouTube video star! I would advise absolutely everyone (yes I mean everyone!) to set up their own YouTube channel. It only takes a few minutes and recording video has never been easier.

One of the many benefits of video is that it creates a stronger connection between you and your customers. I have only just started to show my face on my videos (that took a lot of courage, I can tell you!) and I’ve already noticed more people reaching out to me as a result.

And, subscribe to my YouTube channel already!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Click here to subscribe to my “Design and Marketing Podcast” on iTunes!

Have laptop, iMac, Cintiq; will design

It’s probably misleading to describe Karen as a “travelling graphic designer”. But, as you’ll see from the interview, Karen has lived and worked in 4 different places in the last 7 years – Johannesburg and Durban in South Africa, Ireland and Gibraltar. And during this time she has successfully set up office, found clients and run her graphic design business for her existing clients without any interruption.

(More about running a design business whilst travelling here.)

One of the familiar characteristics of the successful graphic designers I’ve been speaking to recently is that they all provide an exceptional product for their clients, which ensures repeat business. You can only go so far with marketing and web presence. Karen has consistently relied on the quality of her work to get more work. She does great work for one client who recommends her to the next client, and so on.

Working while travelling

She’s “taken” her original clients with her everywhere she’s been. She was working for her Jo’burg clients in Durban; took her Durban clients to Dublin; and now she’s in Gibraltar she’s working for clients in South Africa, Ireland, Britain and the US!

She picks up work wherever she is but picking up work from the host country hasn’t always been as easy. Karen described Ireland as a “tough nut to crack” in terms of getting work, until she realised that you have to get out and meet people (usually in the pub) in order to secure contracts.

Getting clients

The work comes from recommendations, meeting people face-to-face, 3rd party design sites/social media and the website – Karen has her portfolio at OmegaRed.co.za and her blog at KarenMcDade.com.

Karen has been very active on “social” design sites like Dribbble, DeviantArt, Behance, etc., which gets her name out there and secures her reputation within the community.

She has also had her work used in Advanced Photoshop magazine on three separate occasions. She found being published in a high-profile industry magazine extremely validating and all this exposure leads to getting more and more work.

You can do it!

It’s clear from the interview that Karen finds herself in a blessed position. She is running a design business, working from home doing something that she loves to do.

Of course it helps to have a talent like Karen’s but she’d never received any formal training. She just sat down in front of Photoshop after she’d left college. What happened after that was a mixture of hard work, persistence, talent but, above all, a passion about what she does.

If you are passionate about your digital creations you could do a lot worse than to listen to the interview and get inspired! I was.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

You should, of course, be concentrating on creating the best products and providing the best services. That’s a “given.” But there is a reliable way of creating an ongoing stream of income. This is to use internet marketing strategies generally and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specifically.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

One of the most powerful ways of getting people to your website is to optimize it to increase search engine traffic. This systematic process, known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will bring organic traffic to your website from the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) of all the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

In a nutshell, here is how it works:

• Create useful, keyword-rich content.
• Place some of this content on your own website. It’s advisable to create this content on a WordPress blog as WordPress is fairly well optimized straight out-of-the-box.
• Create some of this content on other websites to get backlinks. This is known as off-page SEO. For instance, you can write articles for article directories, or Web 2.0 properties or, even better, do guest blogging with high authority sites in your niche.
• Promote this content through social media.
• Develop mutually beneficial, genuine relationships with other bloggers in your niche.

What are keywords?

Keywords are the phrases being searched for on Google, etc.

The whole purpose of this exercise is to try and get high rankings in Google for your chosen keywords. An example of a keyword that you may target is “freelance graphic designer London” (if you’re a freelance graphic designer based in London, of course!)

This may seem like a daunting task considering that there are millions of websites competing for certain keywords, but if you consistently update your WordPress blog with quality posts and get relevant inbound links from other websites, you will begin to see quality organic traffic from the search engines.

Tips on content creation

Content, as you may have heard, is king. This is even truer now that Google is developing new algorithms to measure the quality and relevance of content. This content should offer readers valuable information about your industry. Google has been downgrading sites with poor quality that at one time ranked high. The best way to create quality is to do it yourself.

I found it very difficult at first to create content. Who would be interested in what I had to say when there are so many excellent design blogs out there? Well, amazingly, people were interested in what I had to say. And, after a while, my writing and confidence in blogging improved. Here are a few tips:

• Write about what you know.
• Block-off a couple of hours each weekend to devote to writing.
• Get yourself into a relaxed state and meditate on what tools, techniques or practices have helped you the most this week.
• Think about who you’ve spoken to or received an email from this week. What did they talk about? Did they mention any problem or issue that was industry-related that you could write a good article about?
• Write quickly in a stream of consciousness style without worrying about spelling, grammar, punctuation or flow. Edit when finished.

The power of the long tail

Keywords are an essential part of your SEO. By using keyword research tools, you may be able to find the best keywords which can be defined as those that have low competition and high search volume. Highly competitive single keyword phrases are not as good as two word keyword phrases; but even better than two word keyword phrases are more descriptive keyword phrases. Search engine optimization experts have found that the long tail keyword phrases have a bigger total search volume and convert better than single or double word keywords.

The long tail is one of the reasons why you should keep blogging. You may find it difficult to rank for “graphic designer London” at first but it may be easier to rank for “freelance graphic designer photoshop illustrator London”, for example. If you write articles about freelance graphic design on the one hand and Illustrator and Photoshop on the other, you may rank for this keyword phrase, and land a big client as a result!

Here is a random page from my Google Analytics from the last fortnight. I have highlighted the phrases that could result – and have resulted! – in landing a client with thousands of dollars worth of business.

Keyphrases like “what is the hourly rate of a freelance graphic designer in London” and “what question is good to ask a graphic designer” are phrases that show buyer intent. They are exactly the sort of phrases someone would enter a search engine just before hiring a graphic designer. So someone looking for a designer and with money to spend will land on my website everyday for years and years!

And, all this because I wrote the following blog posts: How to Hire a Graphic Designer – 9 Questions to Ask (April 2012) and What rates should a graphic designer charge? (June 2009).

The long tail is typically low search but accounts for the bulk of what’s being search for online. Here are some mind-blowing stats:

• 54.5% of Google queries are greater than 3 words.
• 1 in 5 searches conducted on Google either haven’t been done before or at least haven’t been conducted in the last six months
• 70% of queries have no exact-matched keywords

“… it’s not just about dominating any specific keyword. It’s about having a really broad stable set of terms that people are searching for.” Fraser Cain from Universe Today.

More about the longtail here.

Nurturing relationships

I’ve have found my relationships with other bloggers have flourished quite naturally. In the real world you are friendly with people who share the same interests. So, you’re likely to get to know other bloggers in your niche by reading their articles and commenting on them and then, once in a while, by dropping them an email.

So, if you’re not doing this already. Reach out to other bloggers in your niche, comment on their blog posts, see if they’d like to do an interview with you in return for a link to their site, hook up with them on social media.

These relationships will pay dividends as these friends will eventually promote your stuff – usually without being asked.

You can do it

Here are 8 WordPress SEO essentials.

1. Put Keywords in Your Blog Title

You’ve identified some keywords that you want to perform well for. Put these keywords in the titles of your pages as much as you can without making it look unnatural. If your keyword is “web designer” then go to Settings > General and put those keywords in the title of your blog.

And, by installing and setting-up Yoast’s WordPress SEO plug-in or some other SEO plug-in (see next point), you can get the blog title in the all the pages’ titles.

2. Install an SEO Plug-in

My choice would be to install Yoast’s WordPress SEO plug-in or use a well-optimized theme framework like the Genesis theme but it’s important to understand what these SEO plug-ins do. The most important SEO factor on a page is the page’s title, so you should make sure that the heading of your page or post is at the beginning of the title then, if you wish, followed by the blog title. This can be set globally with an SEO plug-in.

3. Put Keywords in Headings

Words placed towards the beginning of the headings of the blog posts will be given more importance by Google than those towards the end. As explained above, the headings of your blog posts should be first in your post’s title. Use this rule when creating subheadings in your blog posts. If your blog post heading is <h1> then break each post up with subheadings of <h2>s. If your blog post heading is <h2> then break each post up with subheadings of <h3>s. Either way, it’s important to divide up your articles with subheads. It helps the visitor as it looks better and further informs Google as to what your article is about. So, the more keywords you put into headings and your subheads the better. (As long as the article reads well and it’s natural to do so!)

4. Get Keywords in your Permalinks or URLs

In the WordPress admin panel go Settings > Permalinks and choose a custom permalink setting.

5. Create Categories with Keywords and Write Descriptions For Them

Enough said.

6. Sitemaps, Google Webmaster Tools and Robots.txt

You can use Yoast’s WordPress SEO plug-in or a Google sitemap generator plug-in to create your XML sitemap. Once the XML sitemap is created you should go to Google Webmaster Tools and register your sitemap. Create a raw text file with this in it: User-agent: * Sitemap: http://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml Save the raw text file as “robots.txt” and upload it to the root of your server so it’ll be at http://yoursite.com/robots.txt.

7. Make Sure non-www Redirects to www or Vice Versa

Check in a browser to see if your site has just one version. Try http://yoursite.com/ and http://www.yoursite.com/ and if the non-www redirects to www, or the www redirects to a non-www then that’s fine you can skip this step. If not then Google can see these two different addresses as two different sites, diluting your site’s authority. You can contact your host to rectify this problem – there may be a setting to change in your hosts control panel. Or, you can redirect one to the other by editing the .htaccess file on the site’s root.

8. Insert Images Properly

Give your images a proper file name and a proper alt text. Enter keywords in here but only where it’s natural.

And, keeping it natural is a good message on which to end. There is no easy SEO tactic that will give you instant results. You have to provide quality, nurture relationships and engage in marketing for SEO to work. But, then, it’s great fun!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

And there’s a certain amount of envy from both sides. Print designers, although despairing at times with the baffling technology, are in awe of what’s achievable on the web. And web designers are covetousness of the permanence and immortality of the printed product.

So, here is some advice for web designers wanting to learn a bit about print. (And if you want to go the other way, read my article on how print designers should learn web design).

Resolution

To start, file size habits of the web and the print designer are totally different. The web designer should strive to keep the file sizes and the amount of information necessary to display a web page to the absolute minimum. Print designers when preparing artwork, however, should find the highest resolution files and not worry, within reason, about the file size.

So, images should ideally be the same size as they will be printed and 300ppi – not 72ppi. Or more. So if your client has provided low resolution images, see if you can trace their source and find the original higher resolution, larger images. Phone the photographer, if necessary!

Break the habit of a lifetime and stop worrying about file size!

Vector

Resolution concerns bitmapped images and photography. But if you’re talking logos, diagrams, straight lines, shapes, etc., it’s vector all the way!

Don’t understand the difference between bitmapped images and vector? Shame on you! OK, you’re forgiven. Bitmapped images are files like JPGs and PNGs. These files represent a photograph by assigning a color to a dot or pixel. Vector images, on the other hand, are represented as mathematical formulas that define all the shapes in the image. The major difference between bitmapped and vector images is that vectors can be scaled indefinitely whereas bitmaps can’t.

OK. Got it? So, if you’re designing a logo for a client, you should always produce the logo in Illustrator so it exists as vectors (not a crummy, low resolution JPG).

The last thing you want to be doing is messing around with logos as Photoshop files when if they are reduced and then increased in size they start to lose quality. A vector (and remember when you import into Photoshop, always paste as a Vector Smart Object) will never lose quality.

And, a vector is perfect for print production.

CMYK

For print we have a different color mode and a whole different way of thinking about color. The color mode for the web is RGB – a pixel is made out of varying degrees of red, green and blue light sources. The color mode for print is CMYK – offset printing creates tiny dots of varying degrees of cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

A bunch of tiny pixels together on screen and a bunch of tiny dots on paper work in similar ways. Seen from a distance they work together to create an illusion so that the screen or the paper presents an image or a design. It isn’t really there. Just like life is an illusion of consciousness but let’s not go down that rabbit hole!

So, when creating new documents for print in Photoshop and Illustrator, choose CMYK Color for the Color Mode. And, when creating a new document for print in InDesign, make sure the Intent is Print.

Black is black (I want my RGB back!)

And, if you’re changing a document from RGB to CMYK, make sure the black text is just 100K. RGB blacks converted to CMYK will add color to the other three plates (cyan, magenta and yellow) as well as the black one. This can cause havok in offset printing.

It’s much better to have printed text on one separation.

However, black color fills of large areas of paper can include the other colors, like C40 M30 Y30 K100, for example. More about black here: The Professional Designer’s Guide to using Black.

Providing files for the printer

The best format send to a printer is a high resolution PDF.

• From Photoshop (not advised), make sure document is CMYK, 300 ppi and the correct size. Save As… Photoshop PDF, choose PDF/X-1a:2001
• From Illustrator, make sure document is CMYK, 300 ppi and the correct size. Save As… Illustrator PDF, choose PDF/X-1a:2001
• From InDesign, make sure Intent was Print and the document is the correct size. Export as Print PDF, choose PDF/X-1a:2001
• From Word, OK, I’m joking!

A print-ready high-res PDF from either Illustrator or InDesign is best. If you’re unsure when to use Photoshop, when to use Illustrator and when to use InDesign read my article here.

Printing

Before you even think about sending a document to a printers, remember to get the finished document signed off by the client. That means, usually, you send the final PDF to the client and ask for their go-ahead before printing.

There’s a whole article that you can write about dealing with printers. You have to decide on paper stock, finishing, the number of print run, etc. This will depend on the brief from the client, what’s required and what’s available for the price.

You can do it!

I’m always talking about the need for web designers to diversify the services offered to clients. A web designer that doesn’t offer print services is simply leaving money on the table. The typographic and layout principles are the same in print and web design.

Offer business card, flyer, brochure services. Organise the printing and delivery of the collateral. Your clients will love you!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

This question occurred to me while talking to Alex Mathers from the RedLemonClub a site that offers advice for the freelance creative.

There was a time when I called myself a “freelance graphic designer” and had that as the title of this site. I wrote plenty of articles about how to get freelance design work, etc. While this certainly provided me with lots of business from Google (some good; some bad), I changed so that this site could be an authority on design and marketing and I began thinking of myself as a business owner, first and foremost.

What’s the difference?

For me, these are the fundamental differences between a freelancer and a business owner:

• Freelancers hire themselves out to perform certain tasks; business owners are building something bigger than that – bigger than themselves.
• Freelancers say “I do this” and “I do that”; business owners say “we do this” and “we do that”.
• Freelancers get paid per hour for the work that they do; business owners can get paid in their sleep.

What I think

I didn’t want people arriving on this site thinking, “this guy’s just a freelance graphic designer, that’s what he wants to be, I’ll only learn about what he does and nothing else”. I didn’t want to be limited in this way.

To me, the “freelancer” is still a sort of employee – still marching to the rhythm of the client’s beat!

Does it matter?

At the time, when I changed the title of this website from “Freelance Graphic Designer London” to “Rob Cubbon | Design and Marketing”, of course nothing changed. It made no difference.

I was still creating websites for clients, doing ad hoc design work for clients and advising clients on how they should market and promote their products and services. I was also still creating and selling my own products passively, outsourcing and building something that will be, I hope, bigger than me.

So, initially, there’s nothing in a name change. It’s just a label.

However, over time, I hope it will make a big difference to my brand. And I think it has already made a difference to the type of client that contacts me.

What do you think?

Do you label yourself? Do you think of yourself as a business, an entrepreneur, a freelancer, a designer? If you had to put a label on yourself, what would it be?

Now I’ve got that Jay-Z line in my head:

I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Alex is an illustrator (he actually also works for some Californian company that have something to do with search). Interestingly, he first started making money as a freelancer by submitting illustrations to iStock.

Fig Season by Alex Mathers

Now, Alex runs several sites – as well as the aforementioned RedLemonClub, he also runs ApeOnTheMoon showcasing contemporary visual art as well as the eponymous AlexMathers.net. He receives passive income from sales of various e-books, including Promo 3.0 [Kindle] which about how freelance creatives should promote themselves (I’ve read this and it’s excellent!) and his Google+ Guide which is about winning great clients through Google+ mastery.

How freelancers should find work

We talked about Alex’s philosophy on internet promotion in 2013. First of all, Alex was at pains to emphasise the importance of having a quality product. It might sound obvious but, believe me, many people don’t get this. Marketing is all about producing a quality product that people want to buy. Everything else is piffle.

So, if you’re a web designer, you must concentrate on making the best possible websites first and foremost. Strive for excellence. To a certain extent a great product is great marketing because people will see your sites and talk about them.

After that, Alex highlights the importance of developing real friendships with people rather than selling your wears in the traditional way. It doesn’t matter whether the relationships are with potential clients or not – but they need to be within your targeted niche. Then, if you provide value to these people, they will amplify your reach and potential.

Lost Bears by Alex Mathers

Location independence

Another interesting side to Alex Mathers is his travels. Alex lived in Sweden, Barbados and Jamaica during his childhood. However, more interestingly, this time last year Alex suddenly decided to go to live in Japan. He’d always loved certain Japanese illustrators and had friends there.

What happened to Alex while in Japan? He found putting himself outside his comfort zone extremely important and inspiring. Putting yourself in a difficult situation which you then live with and overcome can make you feel really alive and improve your productivity. I found this while living in Brazil for a month at the end of last year.

What you can do

At the very least, you must head over to RedLemonClub to download Alex’s free book: “9 Things Freelancers Absolutely Must Do to Land Lots of Quality Clients”. And let us know what you think about this interview in the comments below!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Even though I have written about creating a list and sign-up form in Aweber before, I have made some much better videos about it recently so I thought I’d share this important process again from beginning to end.

Of course, you don’t have to use Aweber. MailChimp and iContact are also great email service providers. The challenge is always to get their forms on your website in a seamless and branded way.

I’m doing videos in ScreenFlow these days instead of iShowU – thanks, Tara! – and as a result they are all in HD. So if anything is unclear in the videos, simply click on the Change Quality cog in the bottom right of the video and watch it in super-sharp high def!

How to create an email list and a sidebar sign-up form

In the first video I show how to create a list with a free incentive (in this case a free e-book and MP3) by:

• creating an email address in cPanel
• creating the four pages you need to create a list in Aweber
• creating a list in Aweber
• setting up a form in Aweber
• putting that form on your website and styling it with CSS so it looks how you want it to

Quite a lot! But the good news is it doesn’t take 10 minutes.

The four pages I create on a site first in order to These four pages are by no means essential to create but it does give your subscriber a more seamless and branded experience.

• A squeeze page
• A thank you page
• A success page
• An “already subscribed” page “whoa there, tiger!”

If you don’t create these pages your subscribers will see Aweber branded generic pages instead – apart from the squeeze page, of course.

A squeeze page is a page where you really sell your free offer and try to get the most sign-ups you can. For example, here is the squeeze page for the subscription list on this site. Once the visitor enters an email address and hits “Submit” they are taken to the thank you page where they are told they still have to confirm their email address by clicking on a link in an email they’ve been sent. The already subscribed page is for those who have submitted an email address that is already on the list.

You then set up a new list in Aweber and create a new form for that list (see in the above video).

In order to create a sidebar sign-up form I get the most basic HTML I can from Aweber and paste it into a text widget in the sidebar. Of course, I’m using the Genesis theme on WordPress which has widgetized sidebars, but if you don’t have widgets you’d paste it into the sidebar.php of your theme.

Styling up the sidebar form with CSS

Now comes the fun part – getting the form to look how you want it to!

In this video I show how you style up one sidebar widget without effecting the style of the rest of the sidebar. If HTML is marked up properly (as it always is with Genesis), you can use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to style up every individual element on a website or style up similar elements on a website (such as all the input buttons). Hence the “Cascading”.

So, this sidebar sign-up form pasted in as a text widget initially looks the same as all the other similar elements on the sidebar. They have the same background, the same padding and margin, the same type of heading, etc. I use Developer Tools in Chrome to identify the particular widget and see how to change the look of it. More about styling sidebar widgets here.

In Genesis, all widgets (and all elements) have unique identifiers in the HTML. In the example in the video, the text widget’s identifier <div id = "text-4"> this means if you add #text-4 to style up elements in the CSS, it’ll effect this particular widget and not all the others. CSS can be a nightmare to understand but if you keep at it and make mistakes, you’ll learn it!

Also, you can change the text of the form and add an image by changing the HTML within the text widget.

Adding other forms to the squeeze page

HTML from Aweber (or whatever email service provider you’re using) can be placed in the body of any WordPress page.

If you want to create other forms, you could just paste the same HTML from the sidebar text widget into a page. But I would go back to Aweber and go through the process of creating a new form first and grabbing new HTML. This way you’ll be able to track which forms work best on your website by seeing how many sign ups you get on each.

In the above video I show you how to do this. After I paste the HTML into the WordPress page, the first thing I do is to wrap it in a containing div.

<div class="signup-form">
paste in the sign up form HTML from Aweber here
</div>

This is, again, so that I can isolate this particular form in the CSS. It does the same thing as <div id = "text-4"> does in the earlier text widget example. The div class="signup-form" in the HTML is identified as .signup-form in the CSS; the div id="text-4" in the HTML is identified as #text-4. So dots for classes; hashes for ids. What’s the difference between a class and an id? The id should be used once on a page; classes can be used many times.

You can do it!

So on these videos it only takes me a few minutes to start capturing my prospects email addresses – one of the most desired tasks on the internet!

There are many ways to do it. You could use different email service providers – Aweber, MailChimp, iContact, for example. You can use their forms and their generic thank you pages, etc. But this is the way that suits me as I like to have control over the way things look on a website. And, it’s quick and painless!

What do you think? How do you put email capture forms on your website? Or, if you haven’t done this already, does this help you?

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

We talk a bit about John’s background in the east coast of Australia as well as contributory factors that led up to his decision to quit his stable government job to run a web design business on his own.

John is at pains to mention two books that led to this decision and they need to be read in order! Both books are by Robert Kiyosaki.

The first book (which I’d read but I didn’t have the heart to tell John I’d not gotten much out of it! ) is Rich Dad Poor Dad. The second is the Cashflow Quadrant. Both books explain how to acquire income generating assets to make money work for you rather than the other way around. I have just ordered the Cashflow Quadrant from Play.com (I’m boycotting Amazon). John made a point of mentioning these two books so I’m definitely going to give Robert Kiyosaki a second chance.

The big switch

Once you have decided to leave your job, the big conundrum is – when? John and I have different experiences of this but we both agreed on one thing: there’s never going to be a perfect time to do it, so “now” is always a good time!

John recalls the horror of leaving a $80,000pa job for life by saying he “crapped his dacks”, which translated from Australian into English means he pooped his pants! Here is some sage advice for those thinking of making the big switch:

• Only leave your full time job when you already have some great clients under your belt
• Only leave your full time job when you’ve cleared your debts and have a substantial amount of money in the bank (maybe 3-5 months of your current salary)
• Only leave your full time job after you have your brand, website, business cards, etc., sorted out
• Try to sort out some part-time work to give yourself a smooth transition

The sudden realisation of having bills and rent to pay with no money coming in drove John to get out there and bang down doors. John didn’t have the luxury I had of a two year smooth transition. While I was able to have clients find me over a period of time, John had to go round local businesses to find work straightaway. But, when something has to get done, it usually gets done.

Now John runs a thriving web design and development business – but that’s not the full story.

Passive income

As with every other interviewee so far in my Design and Marketing Podcast, John is a designer who is earning passive income. He is forever looking at how he can provide value in a product for which there is demand.

A lot of John’s products came from his “active income” or client work. For example, John created a CMS for an estate agency (realtor) and then sold it as a product to other estate agencies online.

With passive income, it is so important to create a product that there is demand for. If you have been asked to do something by a client, there is a chance that other people in the same industry will want the same thing.

John also sells web design business kits to other web designers and he has had great success doing this. Other than great e-books that explain how to set up a web design business, get clients and make money, these kits contain excellent documentation. In the kits there are:

• Web Design Contracts
• Web Design Proposals
• Business letters (Thank You Letters, Payment Fee Increase Letters, Business Prospecting Letters, etc.)
• Domain Name & Hosting Documents

… and many more. There’s something here for every conceivable web design business process – so that if you’re ever stuck for words in a letter to a client, you can just dip into these documents and copy and paste. John’s background in local and national government helps him to provide and present information that corporations like to see when setting up a project. So they will help you attract those large corporate clients you really want!

Running a web design business

I couldn’t let John go without grabbing a few assorted tips and tricks from his books. John has some really great ideas for managing projects like:

• priority surcharges
• late payment charges
• and adding additional features to projects properly

John emphasises that putting these extra clauses in a contract can save you from a heap of problems in projects and earn you more money!

What you can do

This really has been one of my favorite interviews so far. I urge you to listen to as much of it as possible if you’re running a design business or thinking of doing so. In fact, there’s great advice here for small business owners generally. And, don’t forget to check out John’s stuff at Web Design Business Kits.

By the way, that link and the other links to John’s site are affiliate links, meaning, I will get paid a commission if you decide to purchase any products through those links. If you do, good, if not, still good!

Please if you have any questions for John or myself, leave them in the comments below.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Everyone knows what Photoshop does – it’s the photo-manipulation software. It’s forced it’s way into the English language. You hear kids these days looking at a photo of a model saying “her skin’s been Photoshopped”.

But what other uses does Photoshop have? Is it a web design tool? Should you design logos on it? Should you layout a brochure on it? (Spoiler: No!)

When to use Photoshop

This immensely powerful program (originally conceived in 1987) as its name implies, is to do with photos. With it you can: design a montage; smooth a model’s skin; change colors within an image; put an image within another image; cut out and remove backgrounds; generally, it’s good for improving photos.

But it’s not all about photography. Photoshop is brilliant for making graphics and for visualising websites and apps. You can make buttons; add effects to text; create 3D objects; put titles on e-books.

Some would say Fireworks is best for web design but because of my familiarity with it I always visualize a website in Photoshop before I start developing.

You can position text, images and graphics and quickly decide on the best layout for a web page with Photoshop. Photoshop can also be used to optimize individual images for online output.

It’s not all good news, though. Photoshop – although excellent with graphics, photos and textual treatments – has limited typographical functions. Paragraph and Character styles only arrived in CS6 and it’s hard to get really creative with positioning type with Photoshop.

When to use Illustrator

Now I’m going to have to get boring and explain the difference between bitmapped images and vector images. Bitmapped images are files like JPGs and PNGs. These files represent a photograph by assigning a color to a dot or pixel. Vector images, on the other hand, are represented as mathematical formulas that define all the shapes in the image. The major difference between bitmapped and vector images is that vectors can be scaled indefinitely whereas bitmaps can’t.

Illustrator is a vector image editor. It excels when creating shapes, typography, illustrations, charts, diagrams, maps, etc. You can create logos, make boring diagrams look amazing, create icons (with zero artistic ability using custom brushes), even create awesome 3D effects.

So, Illustrator is good for, well, illustrations. So, no good from web then? No! It is good for web. In the more recent versions they have added “bitmap” effects such as blurring, drop shadows, etc., and you can set up your documents in pixels at 72 ppi for web. So, Illustrator, like Photoshop, is a graphics program suitable for print and web. However, it sides more towards vector graphics than bitmapped ones.

Again, all is not perfect with Illustrator. It’s great with typography, you have paragraph styles and linked text boxes, however, if you wanted to create a multi-paged document, Illustrator is not for you!

When to use InDesign

Which brings us nicely onto Adobe’s “Quark-killer” InDesign! InDesign excels when creating books or more lengthy documents. The typographic controls are excellent. There is the ability to edit photos or draw shapes with Bezier curves but these controls should be used sparingly, better to use the “expert” applications – Photoshop and Illustrator respectively.

InDesign would be preferred when creating magazines, newspapers, books, interactive PDFs, e-books, ePubs, etc. – for traditional and digital publishing.

InDesign is like Word on steroids without any of the annoying bits. It excels with typography, textual management, tables and layout.

Cross-over

As you may have noticed Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign are not mutually exclusive. You could easily do the same job on two of these applications. Laying out a page advertisement, for example, could be achieved by both Illustrator and InDesign. You can mock-up a webpage or app visual in either Photoshop or Illustrator.

In fact, over the years, the boundaries between Photoshop and Illustrator have been blurring. Illustrator has added Photoshop filters; and Photoshop now has added Shape Layers and Vector Smart Objects. It’s annoying that Adobe doesn’t take this further and add all of Illustrator and InDesign’s typographic controls to Photoshop; and add all raster effects to Illustrator. But that would mean you’d only have to buy one program and not two! Maybe there’ll be a Photoshop/Illustrator love child package coming soon!

An illustration I did starting in Illustrator and finishing in Photoshop

What you can do

Do you use Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign? What do you use them for? Please let us know in the comments below.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Wes runs a design shop in Los Angeles, California, and is known for having one of the best design podcasts on iTunes, The Deeply Graphic DesignCast.

But only a few years ago Wes was freelancing in Seattle. How did he get here from there? We talk about that in the podcast, here are some of the main points.

Offering other services

Wes has found that in order to attract and keep the quality, well-paying clients you need to diversify your service offerings. His company, the Deep End Design, offers print design, SEO, copy-writing and a host of other services instead of just web design.

If you are just offering web design you are almost irrelevant in today’s market place. The allied areas of SEO, copy-writing, social media profile design, etc., are just as important to a website’s success as the design is. So if you aren’t offering the complete package to your clients you’re really short changing them – and you’re earning less money.

Outsourcing

In order to be able to provide this one-stop service to the best clients you’re going to need help with development, SEO, copy-writing, you name it!

Wes explains how to communicate effectively with outsourcers and potential outsourcers in order to find the right people with whom you can form lasting relationships and grow your business.

Promotion

It was amazing how similar our experiences had been here. I found that by putting out good content that designers would like I was able to get good links to my site and gain exposure that way so that clients find me. Wes finds that by putting great content out with his podcasts he has ensured the same.

Doing great work

Probably the best part of the interview is where Wes explains how he’s stayed in business by continually impressing his best clients. He spends hours researching each new project. He looks at similar work online. He sees what’s worked in the past, what hasn’t worked, what’s been done to death. He gets inspired. He doesn’t just open Photoshop and go plonk, plonk plonk!

Dedication and pride in his craft have obviously served Wes well.

The interview with Wes McDowell

The fire outside my apartment a half hour before the interview

As I explain in the podcast, I was in Brazil when we recorded the interview and a fire had started outside my apartment just before. I was stressing about the Skype recorder as well as worrying about being burnt alive! Wes was so great at putting me at ease.

You can do it

Have a listen to the podcast as it will definitely give you some great advice about running your own design business. And, if you have any questions about this or the podcasts in general, don’t be afraid to ask!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Ever since this time last year, I’ve been more serious about setting goals and passive income targets and I’ve been sharing them here on my blog. Half way through the year, I reported on my progress on the first 6 months of the year (a total of $3331.00). And then, I made my income reports quarterly after the third quarter of this year when I’d made $2610.90).

So, what can I tell you now that all the stats, sales figures and goal achievements are in and correlated? Well, I still like cats …

Any old excuse to show a cute photo of cats. I have a Facebook mind! But I think I’ll put a picture of a cat in every income report from now on – it’ll make them easier to find through the thumbnail images on the archive pages!

My passive income

My target for the fourth quarter of 2012 was an ambitious $3,500. Here’s how I did (spoiler: badly). My passive income for these reports is divided into two sections: product sales and affiliate sales.

Sales of my products

I have two e-books:

• How To Get Clients my first e-book which I think is good but stubbornly doesn’t sell that well.
• Running a Web Design Business which is still a good book but sells much better, I think, because of the targetting of the title.

Here are the sales from these books for the 3 months to September 30th 2012 in comparison with the 3 months to December 31st 2012:

Bugger! However, I wouldn’t have noticed this reduction in product profits without doing these quarterly reports. Time to create a new product, methinks! See more below!

Affiliate commissions

Affiliate commissions can be earned where a special type of hyperlink on your site is clicked to a product seller’s site and a purchase is made. As you can see, I’ve made some money from Genesis – a WordPress theme, WPML – a WordPress plugin and iContact – an email delivery service, to name but three.

Calculating affiliate profits can be quite difficult as they all have different schemes and some of the affiliate CMSs leave a lot to be desired! I’m making excuses here because I might have made a few errors in the calculation of the 2012 Q3 figures. I think $715 from Bluehost was far too much and I don’t know where I got that from!

Totals

So, if you add my income from sales of my e-books this quarter, $607.33, together with income from affiliate sales, $2003.70, you get a total of $2611.03. This is under my ambitious target of $3,500.

Passive Income Annual Total!

Adding up all my e-book sales and affiliate sales gives you the following passive income totals for 2012:

Not bad, considering my passive income for the previous year was only around $1,000!

Business report

OK. So much for hard and fast figures. Now here’s the bit where I ask myself what exactly have I achieved in these last three months?

General business targets

I made three general goals for the last three months:

• Start podcasting. ✔ Target Achieved! Three podcasts published. Please check out my interview with Tara Roskell, how to design logos with Tara Roskell and my interview with Andy Sowards. Here is the link to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.
• Guest Posting. ✔ Target (sort of) Achieved! I’ve had guest posts published on Problogger, Business2Community.com and VandelayDesignBlog.com
• Create a video course. ✔ Target Achieved! I’ve set up Creating a Business Website course on Udemy which is available for free. This was to pre-empt a paid-for course I hope to be starting shortly!

I have to admit that I was fairly sure I would achieve these goals as I’d already done some of the work. I have chosen a much harder target for the next three month (see below).

Specific business targets

Here are my specific targets that I set three months ago and more targets for three months’ time.

I’m going to go through these now, one by one, and explain my thinking behind them.

• My passive income target was probably too ambitious. It stubbornly stayed at around two and a half grand. So $3,000 will still be difficult next time.  X Target Missed!
• Secondly, monthly unique visitors, I get a ridiculous amount of traffic towards the end of the year for my calendars. This is why my Q1 2013 target is lower than the actual number for Q4 2012. That’s going to be difficult. ✔ Target Achieved!
• Thirdly, number of guest posts published, this is something that I can do relatively easily but I don’t do enough because I’m a lazy arse. Can do better! X Target Missed!

Damn! I’m going to have to write some guest posts now. Boring!

Indicators

Now for the silly bit…

Mixed results. And, possibly, showing us that it’s getting harder to grow an audience due to the amount of competition. There was a reduction or at least a levelling off in the increase in my Facebook Fans and subscribers. And, my Twitter followers actually went down! This was because I unfollowed a load of people!

Business targets for next year

More than anything, I want to create a successful product at a higher price point than my two e-books. I’m sure this is possible. I know there is a market and I know I can create something of value.

I really hope in the next three months I can create a video course at RunningAWebDesignBusiness.com. The information will go into more detail than the e-books. I plan to create a professional business website “live” on video and go in much more detail about how to get good web design clients and run a healthy business for my fellow designers.

So, hold me to it!

Personal targets for 2013

I don’t want to only strive to make more money next year because, as we all know, money isn’t everything. I’m interested in helping people, whether it’s giving advice about business or graphic design for free or doing voluntary work in the community, and I hope to be doing more of this in 2013.

It was great to run my business while on holiday in Brazil and I hope to go to Thailand soon for a much longer period. I’m not quite sure when though. But, travelling will be a big part of 2013 with any luck. And furthermore, I need to get back into taking exercise (hitting the gym and doing my T’ai Chi as much as possible from now on!)

More income reports

Do you like to read about how much money other people are making? I do. Here are a list of some of my favorite bloggers’ income reports (without mentioning Pat Flynn who’s too obvious):

• Ana Hoffman at TrafficGenerationCafe.com is great for general blogging and marketing tips – check out her October 2012 figures.
• I’m a big fan of Steve Scott, here are his September 2012 figures.
• Justin and Joe of AdsenseFlippers.com run a cool business out of the Philippines setting up and flipping niche sites. Read their November 2012 income report.
• Kristi at NerdyNomad does very well with advertising (something I’ve failed at miserably so far). Here’s her November 2012 breakdown.
• Prolific blogger, Tom Ewer from LeavingWorkBehind.com, gives us revenue and costs, active and passive. Here’s how his November 2012 went.

What do you think?

I’ve written a few posts like this now. Are they helpful to you? Or am I getting a bit repetitive?

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

She also runs hugely successful kids websites at FreeStuff4Kids, FunPlace Database as well as Homeschool Roundup which is about teaching your kids at home rather than sending them to school – which I think is a great idea. She is also, together with her husband, in the process of adopting a child from Russia.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I was an Army brat, so while I was born in Texas, I was blessed to be able to live in many places, including Germany as I grew up.

Do you have any design qualifications?

I went to college in Texas, but it was for music rather than for anything design related. I just never had the opportunity to do much art and had no real exposure to graphic design – I discovered it later in life.

How would you describe yourself now?

Christian, wife, mother, teacher, learner, designer, coder, blogger and aspiring painter.

What made you decide to do design?

Hmmm… I don’t know really. It was something I discovered gradually. I got started doing web sites with Geocities (in the olden days, mid-1990’s), designed a few logos along the way and enjoyed that, and then in 2005 I started working with WordPress and tools like Photoshop and Illustrator and was hooked.

With little training, you’ve had amazing success in the last few years. What do you attribute that to?

I started RandaClay.com in 2006 as a way to try and get into professional web design. I had only done a few designs for my own sites and for churches, but really wanted to focus on designing for WordPress.  God blessed me with plenty of work and in the end, success comes down to providing great service. Happy clients tell others about their good experience and referrals are the best way to keep regular business coming in. Also, building a good network of colleagues who do the same kind of work has been extremely helpful.

What persuaded you to keep going in the early days?

I kept going because I enjoyed the challenge of learning more about design and code with every new site.  For me part of the fun is in figuring out how to make WordPress do something I’ve never tried before.

I believe your passive income (money from advertising, theme sales, etc.) represents a similar or larger income to your client work. Can you tell us about this?

Yes, my sites like FreeStuff4Kids.net and DivaThemes.com for example, are not completely passive, but they do continue to earn money even when I don’t have time to devote to them. FreeStuff4Kids earns money through advertising (Google Adwords mostly, though I have some network ads as well), and it has been successful because much of the traffic comes from search engines which is a good match for Adsense ads.

DivaThemes requires time for support, and new theme development, but it also earns passive income on all the themes that I’ve already completed and have for sale. DivaThemes works because I develop themes with a specific group in mind (women) and there are still relatively few reasonably priced, well designed themes for women. I am my own customer. I am a female blogger, so I know what my audience is looking for.

You have two kids, you run 8 sites (at least) and you homeschool your kids. Do you have any productivity tips that help you get through your heavy workload?

Well, the first thing to know is that just because I own that number of sites doesn’t mean I actually work on them all as regularly as would be best. One thing that helps with productivity is being able to work on projects in small pieces. If I have 5 minutes I can sit down and make a small amount of forward progress on a site.

What do you do to relax?

To relax, I like to watch movies and play games on my iPad, and read a good book.

And, lastly, looking back on the last 5-6 years, is there anything you wished you’d done differently?

I am not one to look back and wish I had done things differently much. I think everything we attempt, every direction we go, every success and failure we have makes us who we are. However, I do wish I had jumped on the premium theme bandwagon WAY earlier.

What advice would you give other graphic/web designers wishing to grow their own businesses?

Several things are key to building a freelance business. First, obviously you have to do quality work. Second, and equally important, is you have to exceed your clients’ expectations. Make it your goal to absolutely WOW your clients with your responsiveness, flexibility and excellent results. You want your customers to talk about you. Make your goal customer satisfaction, not income. The income will follow.

What can we learn from this interview with Randa?

I’ve interviewed a few web designers recently who’re adding passive income to their client-based income (Steven Snell, Andy Sowards, Tara Roskell) and they all teach us different lessons in running a successful design business. Here’s what Randa has taught me:

• Don’t be afraid of failure. 5 or 6 years ago Randa didn’t know anything about Photoshop, Illustrator or WordPress, and now look at her. She’s started so many successful sites. She didn’t do that by worrying about whether she could do it. She just did it.
• Product targetting. I think DivaThemes has done really well because it is aimed at a market Randa knows really well – mommy bloggers. Most themes seem to be made by men for men. Seriously, where would you go to get a specifically feminine theme for a blog? Divathemes – I can’t think of anywhere else! Genius!
• Positivity. Read what she said above: “I am not one to look back and wish I had done things differently much. I think everything we attempt, every direction we go, every success and failure we have makes us who we are.” It’s a good attitude to life. Don’t look back in anger. Don’t worry about the destination. Enjoy the journey. And learn!
• And, finally, produce quality. Make sure you really wow your clients. Another quote: “Make your goal customer satisfaction, not income.” Says it all!

Thank you, Randa!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

This is 5 minutes away from my front door

So, I’m writing this post from Recife in the northeast of Brazil!

One of the many things I love about running my own design business is that I can work when I want. Now, I can work where I want.

Preparation

As we all know, perfect prior preparation prevents poor performance, and this is true of running your business abroad.

In the video above you’ll see how I sync all my relevant files on two computers (my workhorse iMac and my MacBook Pro for travelling).

I submitted a question on the Apple Support Communities and I got told about a neat free app called SyncTwoFolders which, er, syncs two folders. You don’t want to be endlessly copying over stuff from one machine to another and thinking to yourself “I’ve done work for this, this and this client, I need to copy this, this and this”. SyncTwoFolders automatically detects which files have been updated and which are new and copies only them.

Of course, another solution would be cloud back-up which I didn’t go for as I have about 80GB worth of work. However, see below for the best cloud-based solutions.

What to take

In the end I decided to take my trusty MacBook Pro and a small external drive to back it up while out in Brazil. This has worked really well and I have been able to complete client requests as I would have done normally.

I did have, however, one complete disaster! TAP (Air Portugal) lost my luggage so my laptop’s adaptor was missing meaning I was without a laptop for days.

So, the first bit of expert advice when travelling abroad whilst running your own business: carry all your essential items with you as hand luggage. This includes the laptop and the adaptor cable as well as other essentials.

Back-up

As explained above, I used SyncTwoFolders to copy my files across. But you have to remember everything, remember to install all the software on your laptop as you have on your computer. If there’s one thing you forget you’re bound to need it!

For backing-up on the cloud, here are the best services. (Thanks to Suraj Sodha for these tips.)

• Google Drive – great free service for upto 5GB. Download the app and then you can just drag and drop files onto a folder on your desktop and they’re backed-up. Don’t expect Google not to snoop on the contents of what’s on there, though!
• Dropbox – great user experience! Free 2GB. 500MB free per referral.
• Carbonite – Automatic, secure & affordable online back-up service for small businesses starting at $59/year. They have two week or one month free trial periods.
• BackBlaze – has free options but it can back up everything for $5/month, which is pretty awesome!
• Amazon S3 – not for backup but great for storage.
• Dreamhost – another great storage option is one of the hosts I regularly use, Dreamhost, they have unlimited bandwidth and space so you can just chuck a load of stuff up there you may need at some point. And they’re a great host!

Disclaimer: some of the links above are affiliate links.

View from the top of my apartment building

Money

One of the most important things when you’re going away is money. I find the best way to get money abroad is by withdrawing the maximum amount of cash from ATMs. This way you pay less bank changes.

However it is also a good idea to let your bank and credit card company know where you’re going. These companies are very sensitive to fraud and if they suddenly see your card being used in a different location they can block it. This can leave you without access to your money when you most need it.

In the video above I show you around the apartment I’m in now in Recife.

Finding a place to stay

I found the lovely apartment you can see in the videos through HomeAway.com (affiliate link). The great thing about the HomeAway site is that “Internet Access” can be specified when you’re searching (plus a number of other features like pool, satellite TV, etc., depending on your requirements).

Booking airline tickets

Book early to get a cheaper and the most direct flight. Make sure you’re only flying with one airline at a time. If you fly with multiple airlines on the same trip there’s more likelihood of something going wrong and then they’ll blame each other when it does.

Complain on Facebook and Twitter

You think we spend time on social media to further our brand? Well, yes, but it pays to complain about an airline if something goes wrong on social sites. When thousands of people are aware of your complaint it’s amazing how much more receptive the company can be!

Don’t forget the sun block

Trust me on this one.

Reading material

Also in the podcast I mention the books that were recommended to me by my Facebook friends over at my Facebook page.

If you haven’t Liked my Facebook page yet, please do so!

Further information

If you are interested a location independent lifestyle or becoming a digital nomad (as I am), here are a couple of great blogs to help you:

• Thrilling Heroics – Lifestyle entrepreneur & location independent digital nomad Cody McKibben on adventure travel, lifestyle design, freedom, remarkable living.
• Tropical MBA – Dan Andrews explains how to start and grow a global business from your laptop. This is also the home of two great podcasts.

Brazil

Why Brazil? That has more to do with my personal connections here (I know people and I’ve been here to Recife before). Asia is a much better destination for digital vagabonding as it’s cheaper.

However, Brazil is an exceptional country with bags of potential. I sometimes feel that Brazil has a great future in the same way as England has had a great past. I haven’t gotten involved in any specifically Brazilian projects since I’ve been here but I’m always on the look out!

Finally, here’s my first YouTube video which isn’t about design or marketing (!) and shows the walk from my apartment to the beach.

You can do it

Traditionally when we go on holiday, we spend money and stop earning. Now, with a laptop, an internet connection and perfect planning, it is possible to run your business while on holiday.

This can lead to a better quality of life for you and your family as well as more adaptability, flexibility and an increased global nature for your business.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

But here’s our definition of a nightmare client: a client who either wastes time or money (which is, essentially, the same thing: time = money).

But let’s back up a little. Now that we’ve established that nightmare clients do sometimes exist. I need to tell you why you should hardly ever have to deal with them in the first place.

How to avoid nightmare clients

We shouldn’t have nightmare clients because they should be identified and ignored at a very early stage. Here are some things you must do when running your own design business.

Contracts

Contracts are more or less essential when it comes to new clients. Download a contract and put your client’s name, your name, a description of the job, the deliverable and the timeline.

These are important clauses you need in your contract:

• Always specify the amount of changes/revisions/options in the contract. This can be one of the main sticking points. Nightmare clients like to waste people’s time just like vampyres like to drink blood. Always maintain that there can only be 5 or so rounds of changes to a job. If you’re doing a logo, specify the number of options you’ll send (maybe 3 or 4, followed by 3 or 4 revisions, for example). You can be flexible on this with a good client.
• Have a clause which specifies that if either party wishes to terminate the contract you will be paid pro rata for the work you’ve already done. Nightmare clients will change their mind about a project. They may suddenly realise they didn’t want it after all!

But bear in mind a contract doesn’t magically turn a nightmare client into a normal person! The best way to protect yourself against nightmare clients is to spot a “red flag” and terminate your relationship with the potential nightmare client before they have a chance to waste your time.

Watch out for these “red flags”

Here are a few potential “red flags” (tell-tale signs of a nightmare client) to look out for. If you hear any of the following, run a mile:

• “This won’t take you very long”
• “I want the website/page to pop/whizz/sizzle/go bang/go in your face/be touchy-feely”
• “I’m on a really tight budget”
• “If you do a good job I’ll recommend you to lots of great new clients”
• “Can you write a proposal on how to improve these 4 websites?”

There are many, many more. But basically nightmare clients think you should be so grateful for the work that you should pay them to do it. I’ve personally heard all of the above, by the way!

More importantly, nightmare clients haven’t got a clue what they are doing and this will waste your time. So, if a client can’t provide you with any material on the following, run a couple of miles:

• “What is the purpose of the project?”
• “When do you need it completed by?”
• “What is your target market?”

Anyone who can’t answer these questions is not worth working with.

Another “red flag” I’ve noticed is that nightmare clients don’t like email. They are unable to write down their ideas as that requires a certain amount of discipline. Nightmare clients will always like to call you on the phone and repeatedly ask to meet you. You’ll then have no record of what was said which makes the next part of the process – getting rid of them – even harder.

How to get rid of a nightmare client

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been working in this business and how much you try with contracts and observing the “red flags”, you’ll still can have a nightmare scenario.

99 clients out of 100 are fantastic. They know what they want; they tell you what they want; you do what they want; they pay you. (Although, not necessarily in that order, most designers like to ask for 50% of the total price up front.)

And for this reason, if you think your client is a nightmare, you are probably wrong. Try to put yourself in your client’s shoes. See things from their point of view.

If you’re having a problem with a client never email them or phone them straightaway about it. Leave it and come back to it and, if you can, sleep on it. Try to go over the project again with a fresh pair of eyes or ask a friend. It’s just as likely to be your mistake as it is theirs.

However, for the 1 client out of every 100 that is a nightmare, here’s some more advice.

When clients try to design themselves

Problems can occur when the client says after they’ve seen a visual or an option: “it’s nearly perfect, can you just put some yellow in it”, or “I’d really like you to use Comic Sans”.

Warning: there is some bad language in the following video:

This is usually a difficult situation. The client has zero design experience and this will always end in tears. Try to stop the client doing this immediately or jump ship. Say this:

Designs should always be looked at holistically. If you change one element on the page it affects all the other elements. I have usually gone through multiple changes on all the elements of a design before showing it to you. For this reason it is best to tell me why you don’t like the design rather than to trying change it yourself bit by bit.

This will help remind the client to think about the overall effect rather than get bogged down in the details.

When clients ask for too many revisions

This is actually very rare. Most people realise that a lot of changes are bad not only for clarity but also for the timing of the project. Changes and amendments during a design project are unavoidable but, as mentioned earlier, it is always best to put a finite number on them.

As mentioned in the contract we can only have a certain number of changes to the project. This helps both with the direction of the project as well as with delivery. Therefore, if there are further changes, I will have to charge you an hourly rate on them.

This is better discussed on the phone rather than by email. This should only be considered as a matter of last resort when there have been multiple changes on a particular task.

When clients ask for too much

We always try to be flexible. I never tell my clients I run a 24/7 business but I’m never too far away from a computer either. So when a client has an urgent “out-of-hours” request, I’d always like to help.

However, just as low prices attracts nightmare clients, so, unfortunately, does excessive flexibility with requests. By all means, do them a favor. But make sure they know that it’s a favor. Otherwise they’ll come to expect a 24 hour Rolls Royce silver service without having to pay for it.

Although I’m happy to help you out in any way I can, I’m sure you’ll understand, I can’t let my other clients down by responding to all your requests immediately. I must ask you to think before your next request and ask (a) if it’s really necessary or (b) if the query could be better handled via email or at all.

Sometimes a gentle nudge is all a client needs to turn from nightmare to normal!

When clients ask for too little (money)

Believe it or not, I had a client question whether he should pay for rejected logo options! This is thankfully very rare.

Would you consider working for one hour and not get paid for it? No. As a graphic designer of good standing I expect to be paid the industry standard rate. Nothing more, nothing less. You were aware of the prices and procedures in the first place and I don’t expect you to renege on our agreement.

If this or none of the above works and you have tried everything then, congratulations, you have a nightmare client on your hands. You must get paid for the work that you’ve done.

How to get your money

This is where the contract and the emails come in handy. The more you have down on paper (digitally speaking) the better. These are admissible in a UK Court.

In the UK you can file a small claim online here. This is relatively cheap and can prompt the nightmare client to their senses. Most countries have a similar service. These claims are usually sorted out by mediation before the court stage is considered. Click here to see a real letter from a nightmare client who paid in full minutes after receiving a letter from MCOL.

Alternatively, you can contact a solicitor to write a letter to the nightmare client restating your claim.

What you can do

Remember, nightmare clients are extremely rare. Nightmare scenarios can be avoided by clear prior communication and awareness of “red flags” to sever relations with a potential nightmare client before the project even starts.

Have you dealt with a nightmare client? I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments below.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Tara, a highly experienced graphic designer, has a hit course on Udemy called How to Design a Logo – a Beginners Course. The course shows you how to design a logo from brief to completion. Tara actually takes a logo design brief from a client on Skype and then breaks down the whole process into simple steps.

Here is a screenshot from Tara’s logo course where she takes a live brief from a client

I have read many books on design and done many courses, but I haven’t seen “designing” broken down into a step-by-step process in this simple way before. If you follow these steps every time you design a logo you will come up with more ideas and are likely to have a better end product. The logo course may be for beginners but I think designers with many years experience will find value in her course.

Both in Tara’s logo course and the above interview there is information on the following. The process is gone into far more detail in Tara’s course than we do in our short interview.

How to generate initial ideas

Tara and I are both devotees of mind-mapping when trying to come up with logo ideas. Tara talks extensively about her mind-mapping technique, which she uses for word associations and visual connections. Tara also talks a lot about doing mood boards.

How to use sketching to get your ideas down quickly

A lot of great logos come about as a result of sketching various ideas. Lots of great ideas can come this way. Tara talks in her course about not only sketching out ideas with text but also finding and sketching different symbol ideas. She also really breaks this important process down to include many different ways of doing it to generate new ideas.

About different fonts

We didn’t talk too much about fonts in the interview but Tara explains how she goes about choosing them for the logos she designs and her favorite places to find good typefaces.

Putting it together

In her course Tara explains all the different ways to sketch a logo: combining two or groups of letters, type positioning with symbol based logos, the use of geometric shapes, working with a single letter to form an icon and other ways you can put the logo together.

Tara stresses that it’s always important to consider every type of logo during this stage as otherwise you could miss that “killer idea”.

About different color options

In the course, she talks about color theory as well. She explains how to experiment with and choose colors or combinations of colors.

How to work up the best ideas in Adobe Illustrator

This is the very important stage of turning your sketches and scribbles into perfect vectors in Illustrator. There are some alternatives to Illustrator but the important point is to work on logos digitally in vector not as bitmaps!

How to send the ideas to the client

Finally we talk about how to send the ideas to the client … and the dreaded client feedback. What to do if the clients says, “I don’t like any of them!” (This doesn’t often happen!)

Tara Roskell’s Logo Design Course

The course, entitled How to Design a Logo – a Beginners Course, already has over a thousand happy students. It has the maximum 5 stars after 29 reviews on Udemy!

This course also includes a bonus 60 page e-book guide of how to design a logo including warm up exercises and a sample logo project. There is a 30-day money back guarantee. And the one-off payment gives you a no limits lifetime access. You can ask a question at any stage of the course and Tara will answer it personally.

But wait, there’s more! If you want to get a 51% reduction on the course (and who wouldn’t?) get this coupon / redemption code: robcubbon22 and paste it in on this page here – and you’ll only pay $22 instead of $45!

That’s $22 for over 41 lectures and 2.5 hrs of content, all with Tara’s unique expertise!

If you purchase the course through any of the links on this page or with the redemption code, I may receive a commission. However, I’ve seen the course and I wouldn’t feature the course so prominently here unless I thought it was really good. I don’t care how long you’ve been designing logos, the course will give you tips that will ultimately make you design better logos!

And, as Tara has often said to me, there are a lot of design courses out there about software, but not so many that explain the design process. In this course Tara breaks down the design process and she’ll make you realise how many stages you’d been leaving out!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

As a business owner, you’ll have a more challenging life. And, you’ll contribute more to the wider economy, as you will buy other goods and services for your company and you may even start to employ people – thus increasing demand and employment.

You can do it

Don’t believe me? OK, I’ll reveal how ridiculously stupid I used to be: I was bought up in the UK in the 1980s where most people, including Margaret Thatcher, assumed that in order for businesspeople to make money; other people needed to suffer. Yes, when I was young I really believed that! There’s actually a feeling in England, especially amongst the educated elite, that businesspeople, salespeople and entrepreneurs are somehow brash, pushy and dishonest.

Other than to piss off the English upper classes (and what could be better than that?), there are some solid financial reasons why you should start your own business. I’m reading Rich Dad Poor Dad at the moment and (although that’s an affiliate link, sorry!) I’m not finding it hugely useful. But here are two of the main arguments Robert T. Kiyosaki puts forward:

• You should always be improving your “financial intelligence” of which accounting is “financial literacy”. You should also keep trying to improve you knowledge of investments, markets and the law (government regulations and the like).
• The other thing that Kiyosaki explains is the basic tax difference between people and companies. Employees earn money, get taxed and then spend, whereas companies make money, spend everything they can and then pay tax on anything that’s left. So, working for yourself: good; working for someone else: bad. (Tell us something we don’t know, Robert!)

If you haven’t set up your own company yet I can hopefully further persuade you by saying that you can do this anytime – even if you are in full-time employment.

Naysayer interjects: It’s difficult to set up a company and even harder to organise! You end up with receipts everywhere and have a nightmare every year working on accounts!

I live in the UK and follow the local tax laws. Things may be different for you but I’ve got some really general accounting advice following that should be useful no matter where in the world you reside.

Setting up a company in the UK is fairly quick, fairly harmless and fairly cheap. After that all you have to do is to supply accounts every year.

Accounting

I have an accountant. He may charge me over $1000 a year (that’s an expense, see below) but, as they say, he’s worth it.

I spend about 3-4 hours doing the accounts for my business every year. Here’s how I collate all the information I give to the accountant and keep everything super simple:

• Have internet banking – I guess that’s a given these days?
• Make sure you make all the business expenses go out of this business account.
• Set up a business PayPal account that withdraws from this business account.
• If you can, get a credit card for the company.

You can simply copy and paste from online banking into an Excel file and give it to your accountant. Bank accounts online are better itemised to it is easy to note to your accountant whether a withdrawal was for marketing, hosting, outsourcing, etc., and whether a deposit was for client work or passive income.

Outgoings

If you buy something for $100 then that’s $100 less profit that you’ll have to pay tax on. So I try to claim as much as I can. Here are the expenses I claim for.

• Tools of the trade: computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc.
• Website expenses: hosting, domain name registration, stock images, email management, etc.
• General expenses: travel (to see clients), a proportion of telephone charges, use of house as office, broadband and anything that I use for my company (stationery, courses, books, etc.)

Incomings

My incomings can be roughly divided into two categories: invoiced client work and passive income.

I keep account of the invoiced client work with the use of a spreadsheet on Google Drive throughout the year. It has the following columns:

• Invoice number. There’s a cool little Excel/spreadsheet trick of creating consecutive numbers without having to type them out.
• Date invoiced.
• Client.
• Amount.
• Date paid? Don’t get me started on late payers!
• Extra column for notes. This is useful for a description of the job and other issues like foreign currency conversions, etc.

Other financial considerations

Of course, it’s not so simple and it does involve hard work. Here are some other things to keep in mind while starting or running your own business:

• You could consider purchasing some insurance to cover you against injury or something like that.
• You should also start a personal pension
• If you’re from the US, you’ll need private medical insurance.

More importantly, when you’re running your own business, you should keep large surpluses both in your personal bank account and your business bank account to tide you over during the lean months. Indeed, before you start a business you should also have a few thousand in reserve.

This depends entirely on your own financial position and your ability to find work. I was really lucky as parttime freelance work was coming my way really easily when I started my business and I had that to fall back on during the lean times. If you’re giving up a well-paid permanent job you’ll obviously need more cushioning!

What you can do

Do you dread the time of year when you do the company’s accounts? See if you can automate the process by using your online bank statements as a record of your expenses. Ask your accountant who’s happy dealing with this sort of information on a spreadsheet.

Maybe you have other tips for accounting you can give us in the comments?

Looking forward to your sexy accounting input!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

If you haven’t checked out Andy’s blog you really need to – it’s going to be one of the top web design blogs out there.

The great thing about Andy’s story is that he was working in Subway after having left college only a few years ago. Fast forward only three or four years and he’s a sought after web designer with a blog getting thousands of visitors a day.

Not that there’s anything wrong with working at Subway, of course, and definitely not for Andy because that was where he met his wife. And this brings me on to another amazing part of the Andy Sowards story – that fact that he’s the father of four very young children!

In the interview we talk about:

• How he got started
• How he learned the basics of web design both by himself and in his first design job
• How he set up his own business and started working from home
• How he finds time to work and blog with 4 kids!
• Thoughts about the future and passive income

It was really great to talk to Andy who, although busy, is a very relaxed and easy-going guy.

Before the interview started I couldn’t get Skype to work. I spent about 15-20 minutes messing around and finally, after restarting my mac, I was able to do the interview and Andy was super cool about that!

Hard work and engagement

Probably the two things that have the biggest contribution to Andy’s success are: hard graft and his ability to engage with people. Andy says in the interview that if there’s one thing he’s learned while blogging is to keep at it!

You can see his gift of engagement, too, through his Twitter stream. One of the ways Andy first started getting his name about as a web designer was through Twitter. I have found Twitter great for information but not great for getting work. Andy, however, really helps people out on Twitter. He answers queries and gets involved in conversations.

He also engages a lot through his Facebook fan page. This is obviously the way forward with social media.

Of course, you have to remember that the blog is the most important thing of all when getting your name and business out there. But you can learn a lot about doing social media correctly by following Andy’s Twitter or Facebook.

How am I doing?

The podcast with Tara Roskell was downloaded 232 times and the video was viewed 122 times!

Tell me what you think of my interview with Andy. Or tell me if you’d like me to interview anyone in particular.

Here is the subscription link on iTunes.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Anyone can create a website…

It’s never been easier to create a website. Anyone can go to WordPress.com and set one up in seconds. There are also services like Wix and 1and1 where you can buy “off the peg” websites that you can tailor to suit your needs. Here you can read why I would never use “easy build” website services like these.

Content Management Systems (many of them Open Source) have sprung up over the last ten years that give the website owner the ability to add content to the site without having to contact a professional coder (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla etc.)

Added to this there are many sites (for example, oDesk and Elance) where you can work with website designers and developers from Asia and Eastern Europe at competitive rates.

But not everyone can create a properly branded online business

Given all these systems and tools making website creation and management as easy as pie, where does this leave me, the humble freelance graphic designer trying to make a living? The answer is in a very good place.

The demand for a designer to create a website that works is still great. I have discovered that in order to compete against Asian outsourcing, etc., you need to offer a full service.

Try to diversify the range of services you can offer a client. Don’t just design and develop websites. Offer the client SEO services, content creation services, copy checking, social media, photography, video, etc.

Don’t water down your core website skills but continually be looking to add to the services you already provide. If one client asks for a particular service that you don’t currently offer, you can bet other clients will be interested in the same service as well.

So, with that said, I’m going to write down a synopsis of services you can offer a client. I’m always getting emails from potential clients about web services and it’s great to be able to paste something I’ve already written to answer them. Feel free to use any of the following boxed text with your potential clients.

Purpose

For every website to succeed it needs a purpose. It is critical to know the audience and the means to reach them. Most clients will have this already decided before they contact you but you’ll be surprised how many don’t.

For those that don’t here’s something you can write in an email to try to understand more about their business.

In order to create a proper look for your website I would like to know about your customers. Are they male or female, what part of the world are they from, what age, what socio-economic group, etc.? The more you can tell me about your potential visitors the better. And what would you like them to ideally do whilst they are on the website. What is the most desirable outcome? Subscriptions, contacts, sales?

These questions can help to fix a client more clearly onto a USP of a website.

Domain name

A client may already be decided on a domain name before they come to you. But if they haven’t that is no reason to turn them away!

A dot com is best, although if that isn’t available and dot net is an acceptable second choice. Putting keywords in a domain is even less important than it used to be. So the most important aspects of your new domain should be brevity, clarity and relevance. I can help you secure a domain name for your website, if you require this service.

Try to get the client to choose a domain name that communicates the website’s purpose. It should be short, catchy and is easily communicated verbally without having to be spelled out.

There are a number of tools at your disposal to track down the perfect domain name:

• The Google Adwords Keyword Tool – as I’ve already said, having a keyword in a domain is of lessening importance, however, it pays to have an idea for the exact words that people are searching for. This tool will tell you how many people search on Google for a particular term and makes synonym suggestions.
• If your client is looking for a specific domain that will become available soon you can make sure of its purchase with SnapNames.
• RegisterCompass.com is a great service that can search expired domains that have already have links and authority. This can be a good way of finding excellent domains.

Once you have secured the domain name for your client do you register it for them? I’ll leave this one up to you. I don’t mind hosting a client’s website (see next point) but I think domain registration is integral to the website’s identity so I prefer to get clients to register their own domain.

Hosting

I have always offered to host a client’s website for them as I think reselling web hosting is a great way for web designers to earn passive income.

However, you should proceed with caution when offering hosting services. Remember you are responsible if the website goes down at 4am on a Sunday! Only host clients’ websites on reputable hosts that you have had a relationship with for some time.

I can arrange for your site to be hosted by one of my approved hosting providers where it will be alongside many of my other sites. The hosts I use will be physically situated near your target market and deliver the website worldwide with the upmost speed and negligible downtime. I will work together with the host to ensure your site remains updated, cached, maintained and monitored so it performs with consistently high page load speeds.

Speed is everything on the internet a good host is only one of the most important factors influencing this. See my list of recommended shared hosts and VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosts for the ones I use.

We should add a note about email here. If a client is just setting up a domain it’s likely that they’re going to want email. If this is the case I always route the email through Google Apps for Business. I have found this to be the most reliable method of email delivery.

You should make your client aware of all the costs involved in hosting, maintenance and email and set up a regular payment structure.

Design

Even though I call myself a web designer, the design bit is actually an extremely small – although quintessential – part of the job!

The design of a new website can often start with the design of a new logo. Designing logos is one of the most challenging but most rewarding tasks of a graphic designer. Sometimes, if the logo design goes well, there is a successful website design process.

I offer my clients to “see” the home page and maybe one other page as a visual mock-up in Photoshop first. (See above for an example of this.) We can then finalise the basic layout of the site before moving to the coding stage.

I can design your website first in a graphics program so that you’re happy with the way it looks before we move onto the development stage. Of course, you can still make changes after this stage.

As we have already had a discussion about the website’s purpose, the design mock-ups rarely go through more than 3 or 4 stages of amendments. It’s important that the client realises that changes after this point will be more time-consuming.

Development

There are many things we can do in the development process that benefit the client – especially the SEO essential actions – so it’s important that we make a note of what we are doing in the background.

Here are some of the 15 tasks I do to every client site after I install WordPress:

• Create a favicon. This may also be a square icon that is useful for Facebook and Twitter profiles.
• Make sure the URLs look good. Set Permalinks to %postname%.
• Create an XML sitemap.
• Burn feed at feedburner.
• Register with Google Webmaster Tools and submit the sitemap.
• Register with Google Places for Business.
• Make a contact page with a contact form.
• Ensure there is a mechanism in place to backup both the files and the database.
• Install Google Analytics.
• Ensure good page titles with an SEO plugin. This may involve installing and setting up Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin. Or, as I like to do, use the Genesis SEO settings properly.
• Add links to the client’s social sites
• Add social sharing buttons
• Ensuring proper caching and server side stability and speed.

This is what I tell the client that they are getting as standard:

• The ability to add, edit and delete content You will be able to create pages, insert images and edit content through an intuitive administration area.
• Your site’s code will be perfectly optimized for search engines. Google will be informed of any changes you make to your site and new content will usually be indexed within 24 hours.
• Your site will be marked up with standards compliant code wherever possible.
• The website will be created with the smallest, fewest number of files possible and it will be properly cached ensuring maximum speed.
• You will have complete access to your site’s visitor statistics, to see how they reached the site, their geographical location, how many pages they viewed, etc.
• I will enable visitors to “vote” for your pages on various social bookmarking and networking sites, eg. Twitter, Facebook, etc., which helps to spread your content.
• Your contact page will include a form which will send a message to your email once submitted.
• The website will be responsive so that it adapts to the device the visitor is using (mobile, tablet, laptop, etc.) and will display the website in the most legible and usable way possible.

On the last point, I create all my websites as responsive sites now as I think this is the best way to accommodate the mobile revolution going forward. I do this using Streamline child theme on the Genesis theme framework.

Extras

The creation of a website is not something that has an end. I don’t usually hand over a completed website to a client, get the money and forget about it.

I hope to supply my clients with a solid foundation on which it is easy for them to build a brand. At this stage I give them a free copy of my e-book How To Get Clients which explains the quickest and easiest ways you can get noticed online.

And there are several further ways I can also help them.

Content

I always try to explain to my clients that the site would benefit from quality content to be added at a regular basis. Although I may not be an expert on the subject matter of most of my clients’ sites. I can certainly help by suggesting titles of blog posts they could write or by commissioning article writers to do this for them.

I can perform a content curation service on your site by publishing high quality relevant content which will attract targeted long-tail traffic over time.

SEO

SEO is a difficult one to explain to the client and I never take on any “pure” SEO work. SEO work is all dependent on preparation, research and testing. You have to be extremely careful with SEO because what works one day can count against you the next.

I always advise and practice “white hat” SEO with my client’s sites. Taken that you’ve got the on-page SEO correct (see above) you only need two things: quality content (see above) and quality relevant links pointing to that content.

Unfortunately, we can’t promise any particular positions within the search engines for certain search terms (and I would be extremely cautious of any SEO company who makes such promises). However, we will provide you with a monthly report of the linking activity and the resulting ranking for the targeted terms in Google.

We always like to do it on a month by month basis so that you can see the results of the research (correct targetting of keywords), the work (number and quality of links to be built), and the results (higher ranking in the search engine results) in a monthly report. 

Social media profiles

Facebook and Twitter are so ubiquitous that clients often require pages and profiles setting up and help with these platforms.

• Create a branded Facebook Page and Likebox on the website.
• Create and customize a Twitter profile.
• Create and customize a YouTube channel.
• Setting up a Google authorship profile so your face appears in the Google results pages.

This is what I say to the client:

We can set up and design as many social media profiles as you require. We will make sure that your brand has a consistent feel to it across all the various platforms.

Extra pages

I go through the site with the client and try to decide upon a site structure with pages and subpages, etc. I always explain the benefits of having a blog.

However, I try to encourage the client to create the pages themselves.

Optional pages that clients often request are a privacy policy, FTC disclaimer and HTML sitemap (by HTML sitemap I mean a page with links to all the site’s pages as distinct from the XML sitemap).

Ongoing support

At the end of the day I want the client to have a successful site and a successful business as then they will ask for more services as their business grows or recommend other people to me.

I don’t just design sites. I also ensure that SEO, social and server-side best practices are kept.

You can do it!

You can offer a comprehensive web design service and provide tremendous value to your clients. You can successfully compete against the outsourcing companies offering a “no frills” service and the agencies asking for ridiculous prices.

Feel free to copy any of the box text in this article and paste it into an email replying to a potential client’s query. If you have any questions, drop me a line!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon

Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.