Published July 15th, 2009 in Marketing
Being a freelance designer brings great opportunities for creating a working environment that matches your particular lifestyle, but without enough clients to support the business it will be an unsuccessful venture. Many freelancers go into business because of their technical skills and a desire to bring great end results to clients, but marketing is usually not given much consideration until it becomes a necessity.
Because there are so many designers out there competing for work, knowing how you plan to market yourself is critical. Some freelancers who have had a few years to establish their businesses are fortunate enough to generate most of their work through word-of-mouth marketing, but this is the exception, not the rule.
Published July 2nd, 2008 in Marketing
For most designers pricing services is not something that is the highlight of the job. Still, it is something that you’ll have to deal with if you’re freelancing or working for a small firm. Here’s my take on pricing web design services.
1. There’s no exact formula.
Unfortunately, there’s no right or wrong way to price your services. Every designer needs to develop his or her own method for pricing, and even then, you probably won’t be able to follow the same formula on every project. Because each job will be different, it’s difficult to develop a method that will work well every time.
Published June 4th, 2008 in Marketing
A few months ago I published a post of tips for attracting more local clients for your web design business, and today I’d like to take a more in-depth look at one of those tips. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising can be an extremely productive and cost-effective method of generating leads for local design work. Of course, many businesses, including design firms and freelance designers, use PPC ads to promote their business worldwide, but targeting only you local area is a slightly different approach. The major PPC programs such as Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Microsoft Advertising all provide some simple ways for you to concentrate your advertising budget on a specific location.
Published April 20th, 2008 in Marketing
Most web designers work with clients from all over the country or even all around the world. While it certainly allows the designer to expand his or her marketplace, there are sometimes competitive advantages that exist when targeting work from local clients. Because local marketing is sometimes overlooked, I wanted to put together this list of suggestions for doing more work in your own backyard.
Published February 10th, 2008 in Marketing
If you are planning or building a new website, you are obviously hoping for some type of success. Of course, success can mean any number of things, and each website’s success should be determined by the needs and desires of its owners and creators. Some websites exist strictly to provide information to visitors. Others aim to sell products. Some exist solely to provide information about the services of a business. As you can see, there is no one equation for success online, but there are a number of common causes for failure with a website. Here is a look at ten possible things that can keep you from achieving anything significant with a website.
Published January 9th, 2008 in Marketing
One of the great advantages of internet marketing and blogging is that what you learn through one project or website can be applied to others. The lessons that you are learning through your experience today can not only help you to build a successful website or blog, but they can help you to save time and increase productivity and success on future projects.
On top of the lessons that you learn, other things are transferable as well. The network of friends and contacts that you have developed and the social media profiles that you have built can also be extremely beneficial when you launch a new site. Additionally, if your websites cover similar subject matter you may even be able to refer visitors to your other sites to create larger audiences.
Published December 11th, 2007 in Marketing
When looking to start a new website or blog, choosing a niche is one of the most important decisions you will make, and it may require some time and research. Fortunately, there are a number of tools and websites available that can help with the research. Throughout this article we’ll look at several of the most helpful resources to help you on your way, and we’ll also go over some items that can influence your decision to proceed in a particular niche or to keep searching for a better one.
Some niches are ultra-competitive and others have little to no real competition. Of course, those that are competitive tend to have the largest audiences, which means higher traffic (and most likely income) potential. Niches with less competition may not have the same potential, but they tend to be more realistic, and in many cases the traffic and subscribers will be more valuable.
Published December 4th, 2007 in Marketing
One of the most important aspects of marketing and promoting a website or blog is attracting inbound links. A great deal of effort goes into creating link bait and sometimes into directory submissions and requesting links from others. But before these link building attempts can truly be successful, your site or blog will need to be ready. Here are some tips to making your website more linkable:
CONTENT
Of course, the most important aspect of drawing links is the content. Typically when others link to you they are doing so because there is something on their site that they consider to be useful, interesting, funny, or entertaining. Link baiting focuses primarily on the content, and rightfully so. Without good content it will be hard to draw links regardless of the other factors involved.
Published October 28th, 2007 in Marketing
StumbleUpon is known by most website owners and bloggers as one of the best sources of free traffic available. However, SU also offers paid traffic and it’s advertising program is a lot different than other alternatives.
With StumbleUpon you can pay $0.05 per visitor and you can choose to target visitors that [...]
Published August 2nd, 2007 in Marketing, SEO
Part of having a successful website or blog is targeting the right keywords and phrases. This sounds like it would be an easy task, but with endless possible combinations of words and phrases it can be quite difficult to find keywords that will generate traffic from search engines without putting you in competition with too [...]
