It used to be that hosting ads on your content-driven site was a no brainer – there was lots of money for ads out there because there wasn’t much evidence as to its effectiveness. Everyone was throwing money at the internet just to see what would stick. These days it’s unclear whether the time/money/thought you put into online advertising is actually worth it in the end. This doesn’t mean that online advertising is a bad idea, it just means you need to go about it thoughtfully & creatively.

Read more about ways to advertise effectively and creatively…

One of the challenges faced by freelance designers working remotely is choosing the best way to communicate your ideas without being in the room to draw them. It can also be challenging for those working with remote freelance designers to present feedback in a way that it won’t be misconstrued. It’s not always necessary to visualize your thoughts, but sometimes you need to take the extra step to map your ideas out to be sure everyone is on the same page before moving forward into design execution.  Here are some great, free, easy-to-use tools to help bring your visual ideas to life:

1. http://www.bubbl.us/ (example) – Here’s what they say about their service: “Bubbl.us is a simple and free web application that lets you brainstorm online.”  I think it’s a great way to visually establish the architecture of a website or web application, or even to organize content into logical groupings.
2. http://www.balsamiq.com/ – When you want to draw a simple mockup of what a web page might look like you could turn to Photoshop or Illustrator, but for much less hassle, you could also use Balsamiq Mockups. Even during a discussion where you’re sharing your screen, you can create live images to illustrate your ideas.
3. http://www.skitch.com/ - If you’re taking a screenshot, marking it up, and then sending an email asking for feedback over and over again, Skitch may be for you.   It makes the process of sharing images with markup super easy.  Watch their intro video to see how it works.

I noticed recently that many of my clients had a hard time wrapping their brains around the idea of social media services and how they could leverage them for their benefit.  So, to help them (and myself by not having to create redundant content) I wrote this document, Leveraging Online Social Media for Marketing Purposes.

There are lots of boutique options that I didn’t cover, but perhaps will in future posts!

In the course of creating the document, I did a quick search for other similar resources, and other than the ever-wonderful Wikipedia, I didn’t find much easily digestible information that wasn’t associated with someone trying to sell a seminar, a book, or their services.  Many times, this meant they either explained what something meant, but not how to use it successfully, or, they explained how to use something, but not what it meant.  I felt the interwebs needed a resource that tried to do both.

Feedback is encouraged – feel free to leave comments.

As with every major life decision that you share with other people, there will be the welcome opinions about how you should go about it, and whether it’s a good decision to begin with. I think it’s always a good idea to bring up your plans to other people because you never know what you’ll learn about yourself, or about them. And either way it’s usually interesting. But one of the effects of this is the inevitable naysayer. Those who believe, for whatever reason, that whatever you’re about to embark upon will fail for innumerable reasons. And no matter how confident you are, their opinions make you question your decision.

In my case – going from a decade of solid full-time work for large corporations to the life of a freelance designe – there are many things to consider. And it’s not a decision one arrives at overnight, if at all. In fact, there are so many people who would never consider working for themselves that there is a long-held belief that there is more security in working for someone else, than working for yourself. I am here to tell you that it is potentially more risky to work for someone else than it is to work for yourself. Beyond any notion of having more control of your schedule and project destiny, if your income comes from diverse sources, you are more secure working for yourself than if you work for someone else. If you have a single job working for a large company, and that company restructures, or gets bought out, or a recession causes them to cut back, you can lose your job. And there you are with no source of income. If you have multiple smaller jobs for multiple people and one doesn’t work out, you have all of the others.

I’m not saying it’s easy – there’s no falling back on others or blaming someone/something when things go wrong. It’s just you and the quality of your work, and your ability to communicate effectively that keep you afloat. But to me, that’s the *reason* to work for myself. I *like* being invested in what I’m working on. I *like* knowing where it’s going and how it will affect things. I *like* that the buck stops with me. And, I like that I can live wherever I want because my work is location independent….

And out of kindness many people still tell me how risky it is – how if I live somewhere with higher unemployment because it’s more affordable I better have a back-up plan, and how freelancing without face time is a pipe dream. And yes, it’s risky, but not any more risky than staying where I am and not feeling satisfied with my work. And, yes, living somewhere that doesn’t have tremendous job opportunities will make it more difficult to find a job there if that is important, but if I had to find a job working for someone else, why couldn’t I relocate? And, yes, “face time” can be important, but as we move forward, there are better and better ways of creating that connection with people from afar, and it becomes less and less important for us to be in the same room together. Most of the people I’ve done work for I’ve never met.

And while it’s not that important to me to help those who don’t understand, it is important to me to not let their thinking make me doubt myself or my goals. Just because not everyone sees the path to get there, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

There are times when I totally disagree with a client. As in, they give me a direction that I question, then I come up with a solution that I think interprets that direction in a way that will help them achieve their website goal, and they decide that they simply must have ______. And ______ is usually terrible. It’s a fine line to walk with clients where you want to give them what they really want & hopefully get a great referral or repeat business, but also don’t want to put your name on something you dislike. You can always pick and choose what goes in your portfolio to reflect your work — there is a whole collection of work I did for a prominent vampire romance novelist that I think served its purpose, but isn’t something I want to reflect my skill set and therefore stays safely on my hard drive.

I think it’s a designer’s responsibility to try their best to really get at the goals of a project and then to work from there. So, rather than finding a way to include a large illustration of a magnifying glass to designate something as “mysterious” (for example) because that’s the image the client has in their mind’s eye – to interpret “mysterious” in a way that serves the purpose of the project, making sure not to threaten the usability or content clarity of the site, and to create something you’re really proud of.

To get to the point that you really understand the goals of the project, and to help the client understand that what you’re there for is to come up with a design solution that responds to those goals, and not to draw a digital picture of what they have in their head, you have to establish trust. Trust in your skill set, but also trust in your working relationship. There are too many “designers” out there who charge little money for either templates that include text and images provided to them, or a direct mapping of a client’s direction into a website – either of these without any thought as to who the audience is, what *their* goals are, or really helping the client think through what they’re trying to achieve. Either that or their goal is to create something where the primary goal is gorgeousness, because it’ll look great in their portfolio and allows them to feel that they’re keeping up with the Joneses. Don’t get me wrong – there’s a time and a place for projects whose sole purpose is to be beautiful, but most call for a great design that is also beautiful.

So, when pitching for a project, make sure the potential client understands your value add – spend time to get to know them, understand the goals of their project(s), and then create a design that is not only beautiful but useful and usable. For you, the designer, your investment in creating trust with the client will allow you to better influence the projects you work on, and have a higher ratio of projects you *want* to put in your portfolio, and hopefully get repeat business and plenty of referrals.

Ah, designing for yourself. Even if you follow the same process that you use with clients (ie: setting goals, mapping pages, gathering inspiration, etc..) it is infinitely more difficult than creating something for someone else.

My portfolio site is constantly evolving. Not only as I add new projects to it, but also as I strive to find the balance between enough design to create my own brand, but not so much that others can’t see their own projects executed by me. In some way, just having a good portfolio design in and of itself is enough — if people like what they see, they’ll have more confidence that they’ll like what you create for them. But in another way, you don’t want to pigeonhole yourself into a particular aesthetic.

I know that people hire me because they’re looking for an uncomplicated design, and that thread runs across all of my projects. So, I start with that. I choose colors and fonts that express a friendliness and informality that’s important to me and my process. I try to make the site as easy to navigate as possible, and provide enough examples of recent work that someone can get an idea of my range, but not so many that someone gets lost in them. I give people a way to get in touch with me, and some idea as to what I’m like as a person.

People find me for their projects in a number of ways… sometimes they search the internet for a web designer, other times they see my link on the bottom of one of my project pages, and then there are people who hear about me from someone they know. In certain cases I’ve approached someone I want to work with, generally via email, pointing them to my portfolio and letting them know that if they have a future project they think might suit me, to keep me in mind. In one particular case, they have turned out to be one of my best clients.

One of the things I’ve never done is any sort of targeted advertising, and I don’t know whether it’ll be something I’ll need to do future. Instead, I focus my “advertising” energy on expanding my online presence via social networking.

Interestingly, especially when people find me themselves, they are all over the map with their understanding of the internet & many times my projects begin with me explaining how to purchase a domain, and “what is a web host anyway.” A great way to build trust with a new client is to spend the time to answer *all* of their questions up front… and to anticipate what they may ask you next. It’s a great opportunity to establish a rapport with someone new, and to help them feel like they made the right choice hiring you. Usually, the time you spend here isn’t billable, so think of it as an investment in your business.

Once the domain and host are organized, I usually begin by building a simple outline of the site based on conversations with the client. This helps to make sure nothing is overlooked, and that the site is organized so that the client is happy, and it’s easy to navigate. I do this ahead of sending a contract and a 40% deposit invoice. I treat it like an addendum to the contract — it defines the scope of the project.

I generally send over the contract, the deposit invoice, and the outline together. I also ask the client to send me links to designs that they really like, or really hate. I point them to design aggregators to help them out with this, as many times it’s very hard to describe in words what you’re after. Once I receive the signed contract and the deposit in the mail, I start the actual design work.

Usually, I create a visual design mockup in Photoshop. I make sure to keep in mind what will work well in a CSS layout, but not to let that get in the way of the desired effect. I start with a 1024×760 document, put up guides for a 780 pixel wide, centered column, and go from there. Usually, I design fixed-width layouts, and I find these dimensions work really well. Sometimes I’ll create a single mockup, other times, usually when I have less to go on from the client, I’ll create more than one and let them choose. Some clients are happy with it straight away, and others want to get really involved in this part of the process and do a great deal of art direction. I really let the client dictate this part of the process. But to keep things efficient, I make sure to stipulate in my contract that I include up to 3 revisions in the project cost, and beyond that I charge my hourly fee. Speaking of which, usually I charge a per-project fee, and only bill hourly beyond what is defined in the contract & site outline.

After the client signs off on the visual design, I get to work on the HTML/CSS. If the client’s web server is available, I FTP the files over there. If not, I host them on my own server for the client to review. I usually ask that as much of the content as possible is available before I start in on each page. And if the exact text isn’t ready, to give me an idea of how much I should anticipate and I use Lorem Ipsum as a placeholder. This helps make sure we’re both using our time efficiently.

Once the pages exist and all content is included, the project is “finished.” This is when I send over the final invoice, update my portfolio (if it’s something I want to include) & ask for a testimonial, and make sure my invoicing spreadsheet is up to date. Many projects then move into a maintenance mode where I help the client keep the content fresh and up to date.

And that’s the standard process. Of course each client is different, and each project is unique… and I’m constantly evolving this process as I learn.