1. Know What You Want to Accomplish

One of the most common mistakes that is made in social media marketing is not having a purpose or a goal. Many businesses and entrepreneurs recognize the power and potential of social media and social networking, so they feel that they need to be involved. However, simply having a Facebook fan page or a Twitter profile is not going to make a real difference.

Developing a social media marketing plan requires having a specific purpose or goal (if you’re using social networking only for fun or personal reasons then, of course, this does not apply). Web designers may want to use social media to find more clients, network with other professionals, or maybe to build links to their blog or portfolio site. The first step to using social media effectively is to have a clear understanding of what you want to accomplish. This will shape the approach that you take and the way you use the social media sites. Without having a goal or something that you want to accomplish, there is really no way to know if it is working for you and your business.

2. Market Passively

Users who are new to social media and motivated to use it to market their business will often make the mistake of marketing too aggressively. By nature, social media is all about people interacting with people, and when there is an obvious marketing initiative, many users can be turned off. Aggressive marketing is rarely successful for this reason.

In the case of a designer, an example of passive marketing would be the use of Twitter to communicate with other designers, and possibly with potential clients. Maybe the designer provides help or feedback to other users from time-to-time. Others may see this designer as being helpful and qualified, and when they are in need of services they may reach out to this designer.

3. Choose the Right Sites

There are hundreds, probably thousands, of social media and social networking sites out there. Of course, you cannot possibly use them all or even be active at a large number of them. It’s much more effective to have an active presence at just a few social media sites than to have a not-very-active profile at hundreds of social media sites.

The best approach is to decide on a small number of social media sites (maybe 2-4) that would be ideal for what you want to accomplish. For designers, Twitter is a great place to be active because almost every designer is on Twitter. If you’re hoping to use social media to promote posts on your design blog, niche sites like Design Bump and Design Float can provide a much more targeted audience (although significantly less traffic potential) than major social news sites.

Chose a few sites that work well for what you are trying to accomplish, and don’t worry about not being active at all of the other social media sites. Focus your social media efforts on the specific sites you are targeting so that you can have enough time there to make an impact.

4. Be a Consistent Part of the Community

Once you have chosen the specific sites that you want to target, make an effort to use them on a consistent basis. Social networking is one of those things that can easily get pushed to the back burner when you are busy, so if it is a priority in your marketing strategy, make sure that you have some time allocated for social networking on a regular basis (preferably every day, but at least several times per week).

Social media users are pretty good at picking out who is using the site to truly be a part of the community and who is using it strictly to market themselves or their business. If you become a consistent user that really becomes a part of the community, occasionally marketing your products or services will generally go over a lot better than if you are not a consistent user, and only participating when you want to market yourself.

5. Be Helpful and Approachable

The designers who are most effective at using social media to promote themselves have developed a reputation for being helpful and approachable. People often choose to do business with people that they like. Developing a good reputation and making some friends can go a long way towards improving your business through social media. Rather than using Twitter to always announce your availability for work you could take a few minutes to answer questions asked by other users.

6. Have a Blog

Social media and blogging often go hand in hand. A high percentage of social media users also have a blog, and a high percentage of bloggers also have some social media profiles. Having a blog allows you to use social media for drawing traffic to your site and to build links as well. Blogs are also great for interacting and communicating with others.

Just like you need to have a purpose for your activity on social media sites, you also need to have a purpose for your blog. Are you using the blog to attract visitors who may be potential clients? Are you using it to connect with other designers and developers? Do you want to use the blog to increase your profile in the industry? Do you want to use the blog to supplement your income (such as ad revenue or template/theme sales)? The purpose of your blog will determine the types of content that you publish.

7. Share Your Work

If you are hoping to pick up new clients or to increase the awareness of your work through social networking, you may want to share your work. If you’ve just finished a client project that you’re really proud of, consider sharing a link on Twitter, Facebook, or whatever sites you are using. Showing your work (assuming it is quality) can help to put yourself in the minds of those who may be looking for a designer.

Although it can be helpful and productive to share your work, it also goes back to the issue of being an active, consistent user. If you’re only using social media to showcase your work and not interacting with users in other ways, it is unlikely to be very effective. However, if you’re an active user who has developed a strong reputation and you’re occasionally sharing your work and looking for feedback from other users, it can be much more effective.

8. Link to Your Portfolio and Blog from Your Social Profiles

Almost every social media site will provide you with a profile page that allows you to link to your own URL. Doing so will not send floods of traffic to your site, but it will make it easier for other users of the social media site to track you down or just to learn more about what you do. People who do not know you may come across your social profile and click through to your blog or your portfolio site, and this may even lead to new clients.

9. Integrate Social Media into Your Blog

Having a blog also provides a lot of opportunities to cross-promote your social media profiles and to improve interaction with blog readers. There are plenty of ways to display recent tweets on your blog, to integrate your Facebook profile, or to encourage social media votes with voting buttons or widgets. Among design blogs, buttons for niche sites like Design Bump are common, and re-tweet buttons are also very common now on just about any type of blog.

By integrating social media into your blog you can increase the number of people who are following you or interacting with you via social media, which of course can increase the impact that you are having with social media. Ideally, you’ll want to use social media sites that a high percentage of your blog readers are also using so that there is maximum opportunity for people to connect with you.

10. Focus on Depth of Relationships Rather than Numbers of Friends or Followers

When using social media it’s easy to get caught up in numbers of followers, fans, or friends. In reality, those numbers will not have nearly as much to do in determining your success with social media marketing as compared to the depth and quality of the relationships that you make. Having a high follower count on Twitter doesn’t necessarily mean that you are able to convert those followers into anything meaningful for your business. On the opposite end of the spectrum you could have a much smaller number of followers and still have a greater impact if you are developing real relationships with them and landing new clients as a result.

While numbers can be indicative of impact, that is not always the case. Rather than going after high numbers, make an effort to actually develop something meaningful by getting to know other users. A few solid contacts that come out of social media and networking will make it very much worth your time.

11. Take Advantage of Available Resources

There are plenty of resources available that have been created for the purpose of improving your experience with social networking. Twitter in particular has a huge number of of resources and apps that work with the API. Free options like TweetDeck and Hootsuite can easily save time in your use of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. There are also apps and software that you can buy for specific purposes, but in most cases the free options are pretty good.

By finding an app that will help you to make more efficient use of your time you can easily have a bigger impact and grow your network without the need to spend more time on social media sites. Since several great free resources are available there is really no reason to not take advantage of them.

12. Have a Long-Term Focus

If your goal with social media is to pick up a new client quickly because you’re in need of work, it’s probably not the most effective way to meet those needs. The best way to use social media for the purposes of marketing yourself and your services is to take a long-term approach. Building a strong profile and network on sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn can take a considerable amount of time, which lends itself to being more valuable in the long-term view.

With a proper long-term perspective, social media can tremendously help to improve your exposure in the industry and provide opportunities for getting to know others. At this point when you have established yourself and your social media profile, it is likely that more work will find you and you may not even need to use social media to actively market yourself.

13. Don’t Allow it to Consume Your Time

Although social media can be a great thing for designers (or other professionals for that matter), it can also be a serious waste of time if it’s not kept under control. It’s easy to lose track of how much time you are spending on social media sites, so be sure that your social media efforts are not hampering your ability to perform services for clients or to run your business.

What’s Your Experience?

Are you a social media user? If so, do you have any advice for using social media to promote yourself?

For more freelancing-related content please see:

• 15 Steps to a More Productive Workday
• Freelance Designers: 9 Ways to End a Productive Workday
• Having a Long-Term Purpose as a Freelance Designer
• 9 Tips for Establishing Your Own Marketing Method as a Freelancer

In this article we’ll look at a series of tips and suggestions that are aimed at designers who want to network more successfully, but without committing large amounts of time each day or each week. The idea is to get as much benefit as possible from a reasonable time commitment that can be accommodated by just about any schedule.

1. Organize Your Contacts

Whenever efficiency and minimizing time commitment are the goals, evaluating and improving organization is a great place to start. If you are wasting time trying to find an email address, a phone number, or a name from someone that you met a few months ago, that is a lack of productivity that could be avoided with better organization.

There are any number of ways you can organize your contacts. You can use a program like Outlook or Thunderbird, or you could choose a full-feature CRM like Highrise. How you organize your contacts is less important than the fact that you actually have a method for doing so. Each person is different, and you should consider your own needs work habits in deciding on a solution.

For more, see 12 CRM Options for Freelancers.

2. Take Advantage of Useful Tools and Resources

Aside from organizing, another part of achieving efficiency involves making use of resources that are available to make networking less time consuming and more effective. Particularly when dealing with online networking, there are a number of resources available, some free and some for pay. Two examples that are highly useful for designers are Skype and TweetDeck. With Skype you can talk to people all over the world to get in touch whenever necessary. TweetDeck makes it possible to use Twitter effectively without spending all day reading and sending tweets. Personally, my usage of Twitter multiplied exponentially after I started using TweetDeck while still not losing productivity.

Skype and TweetDeck are certainly not the only options, they are simply two examples. Make an effort to find resources like this that can help you to get more out of your networking efforts while keeping the time requirements low.

3. Set Aside Time in Your Schedule for Networking

Because networking activities tend to get pushed to the back burner in favor of other more urgent tasks, it may be necessary to build blocks in to your schedule in order to find time to network. Simple networking activities won’t require that you give up large amounts of time away from your income-generating work. For example, you could block off an hour to update your LinkedIn profile and look for some new connections, set up a day to meet a contact for lunch, or even to simply read some blog posts and respond in the comments.

Of course, some types of networking activities will require more time (such as traveling to a conference or an event), but just building in small amounts of time in your weekly schedule can make a noticeable difference.

4. Think About Your Career Path

One of the reasons that networking is so important is that it can play a crucial role in career advancement and development. Knowing the right person and being in the right place is just as important as having the right skills. However, in order for your networking efforts to truly be effective in helping you to get the career that you want, you’ll need to think about which direction you want to go with your career.

Networking without a plan may lead to some great opportunities, but networking with a plan will give you a much better chance of getting the results you are looking for. Take some time to think about your future. For example, if you goal is to be a freelance designer, making connections with people who can help you to land more work would be very significant. On the other hand, if you are freelancing with the goal of being hired by an agency, you would be more likely to meet your goals by working towards making some contacts with designers and/or managers from various agencies.

5. Identify Key People

After you have given consideration to the path that you would like to take with your career, you should take some time to identify key people who would be able to have an influence. Once you know who you would like to get to know, make an effort to connect with them in one way or another. If they have a blog, you could start by getting involved in the comments on their posts, linking to their posts and writing your own responses, or you could even contact them about writing for their blog. If you know what groups or professional associations they are involved with, you could make an effort to get involved there as well.

Knowing specifically who you want to connect with will help you spend your time in the right way. Your efforts will lead to better results, as opposed to networking with whoever you happen to come across.

There are a few things that should be pointed out here. First, while identifying your key contacts is a good habit, always keep in mind that networking is a two-way street and simply using them for your own gain is neither ethical nor effective. The most effective way to network is to find ways for mutual benefit, so first you should be looking at how you can help them or what it is you can bring to the table.

Second, keep in mind that if you have identified these people as being key, chances are many other designers like you have done the same. Getting connected to an influential person is not easy because they most likely have a lot of people contacting them on a regular basis, which is all the more reason why you need to know what you have to offer them.

Third, have realistic expectations. Depending on your level of experience, you may want to work on your designing and networking skills for a while before reaching out to those key people that you have identified. It may be more effective to dedicate the time to improving yourself as a designer and building up your network of people who are at comparable places in their careers and work your way towards your key people.

6. Integrate Networking into Your Work

One of the most effective ways to build your network without losing valuable working time is to combine the two activities. The are a number of ways that you could do this. Personally, I stumbled across one method a few years ago without even realizing that it could pay huge dividends. In my situation it was freelance blogging that allowed me to go about my business and build my network at the same time. I started to write for other blogs as a paid contributor because it gave me a way to make some money in addition to designing, but what I found out is that it was an extremely effective way to get to know influential people in the industry. As a paid writer for a number of successful design blogs and publications, I’ve had the privilege of getting to work with some very talented and well-connected people.

Many freelance designers do some work that agencies choose to outsource. Just like the freelance blogging example, this can be a very effective way to build your network without neglecting the income-generating work that you need to do. If you already maintain a blog of your own, one effective method would be to interview other designers and post the interviews to your blog. Most designers are open to accepting interview requests, and it will give you a good opportunity to learn and to build some ties to the other designer while simply producing content for your blog. Regardless of what your approach may be, if you can find ways to strengthen your network while still focusing on your work, you will be well on your way to building the network that you need without much time commitment.

7. Pursue Collaborations

Building on the previous point, collaborative efforts are great for strengthening your network while still staying focused on your primary business objectives. Your collaboration could be the sharing of referrals with someone who offers complimentary services, developing an app with someone you know, starting a multi-author blog, working with someone else to design and develop templates for sale, and the possibilities are endless.

Collaborations are great because they allow people to focus on what they do best and to complement each other’s skills. Additionally, it allows you to build very strong relationships with other professionals that can often lead to bigger and better opportunities. Like point number 6, it also allows you to earn some money and make very productive use of your time while strengthening your network.

8. Maintain Quality Relationships

A strong network is based more on quality of relationships than quantity. Rather than trying to get some contact with every designer out there, make an effort to build a few very strong relationships. Making the most of the connections you have may be more important than dedicating time and effort to making additional connections (of course, this depends on your situation and your existing network).

In order to maximize the connections that you already have, make an effort to stay in touch with the people who seem like they would be the best fit for your network. Find new ways to work together or just get to know more about them. Stronger relationships and connections will be much more likely to lead to something significant than several casual connections.

9. Up the Level

There are a lot of different ways to communicate with others and different levels of networking. This would include things like leaving comments on blogs, responding to forum postings, using IM, tweeting back and forth, email, phone, face-to-face, etc. If you’re looking to get more impact with your networking efforts, take it to the next level. If all of your contact with someone has been done via email, make an effort to get on the phone with that person. If you’ve always spoken on the phone, try to set up a face-to-face meeting. Different levels of communication and networking will produce varying results. Getting to interact with someone on a deeper level can lead to a stronger connection.

Of course, it may not always be feasible to take it to the next level, such as a face-to-face meeting, but try to consider the situation thoroughly. If you are trying to build a strong network while still maintaining an active business that involves plenty of design work you will typically be spending only small amounts of time networking and slowly developing some connections. On the other hand, if there is a convention or conference in your area that you could attend for a day or two, you would miss some time for client work, but you could have a better impact with the time that you allocate for networking.

10. Minimize Meaningless Activities

Since you want to achieve greater efficiency with your networking activities, pay attention to the results that you are getting and dedicate your time to those activities that are producing results. If you are spending an hour every day on social media sites hoping that your Diggs and Stumbles will send enough traffic to someone that they will notice you, most likely you could be more successful with other methods.

What’s meaningless and unproductive for one person may be very effective for someone else, so give it some time and evaluate your own results to make the best decision for yourself. After you have been consistently networking for a while, adjust your strategy and your schedule accordingly so that you are getting the most out of your time.

What is Your Experience?

How do you go about building your network while still maintaining focus on your primary services to clients?

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.

In this article we’ll look at the subject of marketing yourself as a freelancer, but the information will also be applicable to small design studios. Regardless of whether you are just getting started as a freelancer or whether you have a good bit of experience, giving consideration to your marketing efforts is a worthwhile activity.

1. Consider Your Ultimate Plans and Goals

For some, freelancing is a temporary gig that will be used to build a portfolio and ultimately to find full-time employment. For others, the goals may include branching out and turning the business into something more than just an individual freelancer (see this interview with Matthew Jurmann of CHROMATIC for some good insight). And still for others, freelancing may be a long-term plan, something that you see yourself doing 10 years down the road.

Whatever situation you are in, these goals and plans should be kept in mind as you attempt to market yourself. Different purposes should result in different approaches. For example, if your primary goal is to build a portfolio to help you land a full-time job, setting up an attractive and effective portfolio site is a must. Many students who set up a portfolio site for this purpose will even list their graduation date and availability for hire. Taking low-priced work or starting personal projects in order to add something of quality to your portfolio may be necessary, whereas if you have other long-term goals this may not be something that fits into your plan.

2. Have a Branding Approach

Branding is usually associated with companies more than it is with individuals, such as freelancers, but it can be equally effective when used properly. How do you want potential clients to remember you? Adii Pienaar successfully marketed himself as a WordPress rockstar and became recognized as one of the leading WordPress designers. After the reputation had been established, he teamed up with some other talented designers and started WooThemes, which quickly become one of the leaders in selling premium WordPress themes. I’m sure that Adii’s branding helped WooThemes, especially in the early days of it’s existence.

Take some time to consider how you want to be viewed as a designer, and think about what it will take to get you to that point. Your marketing approach should be steering things in this direction.

3. Consider Name Recognition

The importance of name recognition for freelancers can be debated. In my opinion, it’s not necessary for success, but those who do have well-established names in the industry will certainly benefit in a number of different ways. In terms of marketing, this is an area where you should again consider your ultimate goals. If you’re planning to freelance only in the short-term, there are other things that are much more important than building strong name reputation, which can take a considerable amount of time. However, if you are planning to be an independent designer for the foreseeable future, or if you hope to use your freelancing career as a springboard to other opportunities (such as writing a book or speaking at conferences), name recognition is important.

4. Consider Your Ideal Client or Target Market

One of the first things any new business owner should consider during the planning stages is the target market of their product or service. However, many designers haven’t given sufficient amounts of thought to what types of clients they would like to work with. Having a clearly defined target market can make all of your other marketing and promotional efforts much easier. Once you have a better idea of who you would like to work with, you can do a better job of optimizing your site for particular searches, branding yourself in a particular way, advertising in certain places, and more.

Some things to consider when working on narrowing down your target market include, geographic location (do you want to target local clients?), type of business, specific type of work that you want to do for them, CMS or platform, budget, and anything else that can be used to describe the clients or the work that you want to land. Keep in mind that this is just your target market, it doesn’t mean that you won’t be able and willing to take other work as well.

5. Consider Specialization

As a freelance designer or developer you may be able to offer a vast amount of options to your potential clients, or you may choose to focus or specialize in certain types of work. There is no right or wrong answer to the issue of specialization for freelancers, but it is something you should think about in terms of how it could impact your ability to market yourself, land clients, the rates you can charge, your ability to stay up-to-date in the field, and your own satisfaction in your work.

Perhaps specializing in something like e-commerce design or development for a particular CMS would bring significant benefits to your business. While there are plenty of reasons to specialize, there are also some drawbacks: you may not like doing the same type of work all the time; you may be limiting the number of potential clients; and if the type of work you specialize in loses its demand for clients, you could struggle to find work.

6. Develop a Small Advertising Budget

Most freelancers and small design firms invest nothing in advertising, and if you can run a successful business without it you may be ok. However, there may be times when your workload slows down and it would be nice to have a little bit of money set aside for advertising. It doesn’t require a lot of money to advertise a freelance business. You may be able to get some excellent results with a targeted PPC campaign that shows ads to well-qualified potential clients. These ads are great for freelancers because they can quickly and easily be turned on and off so that they are only running when you are in need of work.

Of course, PPC is not the only advertising option. You could purchase banner ads on targeted sites for relatively small amounts of money, or you could move offline and try other methods (although most people looking for a web designer will focus their search online). Think of your marketing budget as an investment in your business, and don’t forget that business expense can be tax-deductible.

7. Work on Finding Partners

Although freelancers are independent workers, they do not have to be disconnected from other professionals in the field. In fact, most successful freelancers have built a strong network. You may find that developing connections with others in similar fields may be great sources of new clients and mutually beneficial relationships. When I say “work on finding partners” I’m not referring to finding others that will become your official business partners with whom you share ownership (alhough that is a possibility). Rather, I am referring to finding others that you can work together with in some capacity.

As an independent designer, I sometimes receive inquiries for work that would not be a great fit for my schedule and my skills. In these cases I may refer them to another designer that I think will be a better fit. However, I don’t search for specific designers for these jobs, I’ve just had the opportunity to network with many talented people over the past few years and the relationships have developed naturally. Work on building your network and keeping an eye open for those who you could partner with in some way.

8. What’s in Your Portfolio?

Most potential clients who will be considering your services will be evaluating your online portfolio, and the work that they find will be a huge influence on whether they contact you or move on to another designer. Is the work in your portfolio beneficial to your marketing? Is it relevant to your ideal client? Does it represent your best work?

If your portfolio is out of date or lacking in these areas, your marketing efforts could be greatly impacted. It’s a good idea to get your portfolio to a level that you are satisfied with before investing considerable time and/or money marketing yourself.

9. Consider Blogging

There are any number of ways that you can get people to see your portfolio, but blogging has proven to be very effective for some designers. Blogging can be an excellent way to build name recognition, to brand yourself, and to network with other designers and developers. Personally, blogging has been more influential on my career as a designer than just about anything else.

If you’re in need of exposure to potential clients, consider blogging as a means for gaining that exposure. Maintaining a successful blog does take time and effort, but using it to market a freelance business does not require so much time that it is not possible. In addition to starting and maintaining a blog on your portfolio site, you could also consider writing posts for various blogs that accept posts from freelancers.

For more on business and productivity, please see:

• 15 Steps to a More Productive Workday
• 12 Realities of Pricing Design Services
• Freelance Designers: 9 Ways to End a Productive Workday

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.

2. Both hourly pricing and project-based pricing have pros and cons.

Everyone has different ways of doing things and this is very evident by the information that you will see about how you should base your pricing. Some, like Matt Griffin, feel that you shouldn’t charge by the hour. In general, project-based billing is more common than hourly rates, but that is somewhat of a gray area. Following Matt’s article, Intervals posted 7 Reasons You Should Charge by the Hour .

Here are some resources for choosing a pricing strategy:

• What You Should Charge and Why You Should Stick to Your Price – Positive Space
• Trading the Hourly Rate for Task-Based Pay: Should You Do It – Freelance Switch
• Deciding When to Use Project Pricing – Wake Up Later

3. Pricing is a necessary part of freelancing.

I think most designers would like to focus on the work and forget about things like pricing. Unfortunately, if you’re freelancing it’s a necessary evil. Whether you like it or not you will have to deal with the issue. For many of us it’s something that we’ll never really enjoy, but we need to at least become comfortable with it. Freelancers wear a lot of hats, and pricing is just one of them.

4. Mistakes are a part of the process.

I think everyone has at some point gotten themselves into a position where they wish they could go back and set a different price. In some cases you may be justified to increase the price do to changed circumstances or additions by the client, but this may not always be the case. If you’ve made a mistake in pricing, realize that it’s normal and learn from it. The more you learn from your experience the less of a guessing game it will be.

5. Your prices will affect your own outlook on your services and it will also impact your client’s opinion of your services.

When you see a low-priced designer what’s the first thing you think? He or she must not be very skilled or experienced, right? It’s pretty obvious that your prices will impact the mentality of your potential clients. Some will only be looking for bargain-basement pricing, but others will be measuring you by what you charge, whether they realize it or not.

However, your prices have a bigger reach than just the opinions of your clients – they also impact your view of your own services and abilities. By pricing your services very low you’ll eventually convince yourself that you’re not worth more. On the other hand, pricing your services high (and being able to land clients) will give you the confidence that you can be an elite designer. Of course, your mental approach can only take you so far, but it’s my opinion that this plays a role in your success based on your perception.

For more on this subject see my post at Freelance Switch, The Subtle Effects of Pricing on the Mentality of Clients.

6. Uncertainty is Common.

Freelancers who have been designing and pricing services for years may have the whole thing down, but if you’re feeling uncertain about pricing, don’t feel like you’re alone. Most freelancers struggle with pricing, so being uncertain doesn’t mean that you’re inferior. Take the time to educate yourself (some of the links in this post should help) and keep working on developing a better system or model.

7. The variety of prices is as wide as the variety of talent levels.

Just because you see another freelancer pricing services ridiculously high or low, don’t feel like you have to do the same. Anyone can sell web design services. Some are not very talented or experienced, and some have unbelievable abilities and incredible experience. Most are somewhere in the middle.

While clients may argue by comparing your prices to another freelancer, be ready to backup your pricing strategy be explaining why you are worth what you are charging. You can find someone willing to do the job for just about any price if you look hard enough, but in general, you will get what you pay for.

8. Losing a job isn’t always a bad thing.

Newer freelancers are often tempted to price their services at whatever level will get them the job. If the experience and building your portfolio is what’s most important to you at the moment, this might not be a bad idea. Otherwise, if you need to earn enough money to support yourself and your family, losing out on a job because of price may not be a bad thing at all.

We all have a limited amount of time available, and taking a job that doesn’t pay what you need to make isn’t going to be ideal. Hopefully if you pass up on a job because of the price, something else will come along that meets your needs. Taking that low-paying job can hog your time so that you can’t take other opportunities that come along. This is just something that you’ll have to weigh as you go.

9. Pricing can be a good way to weed out the tire kickers.

I think most freelancers get plenty of emails from potential clients who are pretty unlikely to follow through with the project. Typically, these tire kickers are looking for quotes, but they’ll usually have some reason that they don’t want to move forward or they’ll have some hang up on the price.

While it’s understandable that everyone has a price that they can afford and something that they can’t afford, but I’d prefer to identify the tire kickers as soon as possible so I don’t waste too much time answering questions and making no money. One of the downfalls of pricing your services low is that you’ll get more of these types of clients, and they’ll hang around for a while longer. Price your services higher and you’ll find that a higher percentage of your potential clients are serious about working with you.

10. Some potential clients will think your prices are high no matter what you charge.

Some clients will understand what’s involved with designing and developing a website and others will not. Because there are people out there willing to design a website for next to nothing, some clients will think that you should be willing to do the same, even if your service is completely different. Try not to worry about turning clients off, and focus more on proving a service that’s worth the price (and being able to explain why it’s worth the price).

11. Charging more than you quoted may be necessary.

I think we’ve all had those clients that keep adding new things to be done or changing their minds about what they want. When using project-based pricing this can cost you time and money. However, some situations will justify an increase in the price. Of course this needs to be communicated with the client, but it is an option.

Picture this scenario – You take your care to a mechanic and get a quote for repairs. Once they get inside they find that something else is wrong and needs to be fixed for your car to run properly. Are they going to charge more for the additional labor and parts? Yes. Many times the situations you will find yourself in will be similar.

12. Starting out you’ll probably have to charge less than you’d like.

Most freelancers will find that they need to prove themselves before they’re able to land jobs that pay what they would like to make. Building your portfolio and your experience is a natural part of freelancing. Of course, if you’re coming from a design firm where you’ve already established yourself, this may not be the case.

What would you add?

What have you learned from pricing services? Is there anything here that you see differently?

Additional resources for pricing design services:

Factors to Consider When Pricing Design Services – Most Inspired

The Costs of Underpricing Your Design Services – Most Inspired

Is Charging More the Right Thing to Do? – Men with Pens

How Much Should a Web Design Cost? – Pearsonified

Nine Factors to Consider When Determining Your Price – Freelance Switch

The Economics of Web Design Pricing – Ben Bleikamp

Why Your Rates are Painfully Lower Than They Should Be – Freelance Folder

Freelancer Pricing: Finding Your Buoyancy Point – Rubiqube

4 Steps to Effective Web Design Pricing – Tutorialaday.com

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.

Why Use PPC Ads to Attract Local Traffic?

With all the other forms of promotion and advertising available, why would you want to spend your advertising money on localized PPC ads?

1 – Low-Cost Leads

There are other ways to generate leads online, such as buying them directly from other sites that sell leads, however, and effective PPC campaign can be one of the most cost-effective ways to generate leads. Of course, you’re not guaranteed that when someone clicks on your ad they’ll suddenly fill out your contact form or give you a call, but an optimized campaign with proper tracking can give you a pretty accurate idea of how much money you will need to spend in order to get 1 lead (for example, if your stats show that you need to get 20 clicks from PPC ads to generate 1 request for information or a quote, and you’re spending $0.50 per click, your cost per lead is $10).

2 – Less Competition

PPC ads for search phrases like “web design” or “website designer” are likely to require a significant cost per click in order to get your ad near the top of the search results. However, targeting localized search phrases like “web designer in New York City” should give you much less competition, and therefore a lower cost per click and higher ad placement.

3 – Being Local Can Be An Advantage

When a potential client is deciding on which designer to hire, or even which designers to pursue for a quote, being local may be an advantage for you. Most designers are now able to work with clients just about anywhere in the world, however, there are plenty of clients who prefer some face-to-face interaction at some point throughout the process. If this is the case, being local you’ll have a major advantage over another designer who lives on another continent, or maybe even just in another state. On the other hand, if you’re not targeting local clients, other designers may have that same advantage over you.

4 – Low Expense

In the first point I mentioned that the cost per lead can be pretty low with PPC advertising, but in addition the advertising budget as a whole can be very low and still produce real results. With localized PPC it’s possible to generate several leads per month by only spending $50. Not many other types of effective advertisements will allow you this luxury. For this reason localized PPC ads are great for freelancers and small design firms that want to do some advertising, but only on a very small scale.

5 – Flexibility

PPC advertising is extremely flexible. You can easily raise or lower your budget at any time, and you can pause your ads when you don’t want them to run for a while. This can be very valuable for designers because there are probably times when you’re very busy and not in need of new clients, and there are other times where you would love to have more work. With PPC ads you can make them work with your schedule and you can create leads quickly when you need them most. Very few other types of advertising can make this claim.

Tips for Creating an Effective Local PPC Campaign:

Set Geographic Limits

There are a few things you can do to change a general PPC ad to one that targets local clients. The first thing is to specify a local region where you would like the ad to appear. The major PPC programs will allow you to set up your ad to only be shown to visitors in a certain country, state, metropolitan area, or zip code. This is very important because it will drastically cut your costs by only showing your ad in the local area that you are targeting, meaning you will not be paying for clicks that are way outside of your region.

Use Localities in Your Targeted Search Phrases

Another effective way to target local clients is to use names of states, cities or counties in the search phrases that you are targeting. I touched on this earlier when I compared the possible search terms “web design” and “website designer in New York City”. You don’t have to use names of localities in all of your targeted search phrases, in fact you probably shouldn’t, but these types of searchers are already looking for a local designer, so they can be extremely effective.

Do Some Keyword Research

With any type of PPC advertising, local or not, you’ll need to do some research to find all of the right words and phrases to target. Take some time and come up with a large list of search phrases to bid on. With a small list and just a local area being targeted, you’re likely to get very few clicks on your ads. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools to help you come up with a huge list of keywords. Last year I published a post that may help, 30 Keyword Tools to Use for Your Website.

Create a Landing Page

When setting up your ad you’ll be able to determine which page on your site you want people to land on when they click. Generally, sending these people to your homepage is not the most productive approach. It will be worth your time to create a page specifically for the purpose of converting these clicks into leads. On the page you’ll want to give them a few reasons to choose your services, and you’ll also want to make it easy for them to contact you. Providing a link to your portfolio is another good idea, or you can provide some samples of your work right on the landing page itself so they don’t even need to leave the page.

When creating your landing page, remember that you are targeting local clients. Make that clear through the copy of the page, and use localities in places like the page title, headers, alt tags, etc. Some PPC programs evaluate the landing page to determine the minimum bid required. If your page is very well optimized for web design in London, and the search phrases you are targeting are very relevant to the page, your minimum cost per click is likely to be lower than it would be otherwise.

Use Keywords in the Title of the PPC Ad

Titles of ads are obviously important for drawing attention and ultimately for generating clicks, so take the time to find the most productive titles. You can set up your campaign to show all different variations of your ads and you can test to determine which headlines work the best.

Most PPC ads also show words in bold that are a part of the search phrase, so if those words are in your title they can really stand out. See the image below. I did a Google search for New York Web Design and look at how the first and third ads stand out when compared to the second one.

Monitor

One of the keys to an effective PPC campaign is monitor the results and tweaking the ad, title, or keywords to produce the best results possible. If you have a small budget you don’t need to look at your stats every single day, but make it a habit to login frequently to see how the ad is working and look for ways to improve the click-through rate (CTR) and the conversion. Most PPC programs give you so many different options for testing that you could always be changing things in one way or another. Ad testing is a much more detailed topic than I can cover in-depth here, but for more information there are a number of good articles around, such as PPC Copyrighting: The Evolution of a PPC Split Test. Google Analytics also has the ability to provide detailed tracking by setting up your campaigns and your conversion goals.

Try a Few Different Programs

When it comes to PPC, there are the leaders, like Google, Yahoo, and MSN, and then there are a bunch of 2nd tier programs as well (and some even smaller). Personally, I’ve never had good results with any other programs besides the 3 major ones, but that may not be the case for everyone. Even if you are just sticking to the big boys, you’ll probably want to try more than just one program. You may find a lower cost-per-click or a higher CTR somewhere else. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to have ads running at a few different places to reach a more diverse audience.

Set a Budget

One of the things you’ll want to be sure to do is to set a budget. With most programs it can be daily, monthly, or both. Without a budget you can rack up a huge bill in no time. With a budget, your ads will not be displayed after the budget has been reached.

Get Started!

If you’re looking for ways to generate more work from local clients, take some time today to set up your PPC campaign. It’s quite simple to get started and it’s very possible to start seeing results immediately.

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.

1 – Use the city you are targeting in your page titles

Some potential clients that prefer to work with a local designer will turn to a search engine, and they’ll use a locality in their search phrase, such as “Philadelphia web designer.” While general search phrases like “web design” or “website designer” are extremely competitive and difficult to attain high rankings, local searches are far less competitive. If you are going after these local clients, why not optimize your site for local searches? Page titles are one of the most significant factors, but general SEO using local terms will affect other areas of your site as well.

2 – Use effective meta descriptions

While meta descriptions have very limited impact on search engine rankings, they can have a much more significant impact on click-through rates. Most search engines use the meta description tag, if there is one, on the SERPs to show searchers what they page is about. Think about the mentality of a potential client that is looking for a local designer. If he or she does a search for a designer in a specific location, most likely a meta description that mentions that location will be clicked over one that doesn’t mention the location.

3 – Pay-Per-Click advertising

One of the great advantages of PPC advertising is that you can accurately and easily target certain geographic areas. Different PPC programs offer different ways of doing things, but most of the major competitors will give you a way to show your ads only to searchers within a specified region. By doing this you can make your ads much more effective. You won’t be wasting money on clicks from other parts of the world, and you can include localized keywords and phrases in your ads to draw more attention and more clicks. Aside from just narrowing down the geographic region that sees your ads, you can also target local keywords just like you’re doing with organic SEO in the first point that was covered.

4 – Join a chamber of commerce

A local chamber of commerce can be a great resource for meeting other local business owners and making valuable contacts. Almost every city, town or county has a chamber of commerce, and membership dues are usually pretty reasonable. Additionally, many chambers now will also link to the websites of their members through an online membership directory. With a chamber of commerce, you will get out of it what you put into it. If you’re actively attending events and making an effort to get to know other members, you will make some valuable business contacts. If you join the chamber and don’t really put anything into it, you won’t get much out of it.

5 – Get links from local websites

Most cities have localized websites that get a decent bit of traffic and rank well for local searches. If you can get links from these sites you could in turn get more local traffic of your own. Additionally, you can get links from other local business that could result in more local traffic.

6 – Work with a well-connected local client

Sometimes doing a website for one well-known or well-connected local client can lead to several other local jobs. Make an effort to identify some businesses or organizations that would provide a good opportunity to get some exposure from designing their website. Don’t always judge a potential project based simply on the amount of money that you’ll make on that work. If there is strong potential to lead to even more work you may want to consider taking the project for less money than you would otherwise.

7 – Be proactive

Attracting local clients isn’t all about waiting for them to come to you. As a local designer you have an advantage over designers in other parts of the country or the world. Be proactive and pursue some potential jobs on your own. How you go about this is up to you, but if local searches aren’t providing the results you want, take some action. Chances are you already know some other local business owners that could be in need of your services. Why not talk to them and see if there is an opportunity to work together?

8 – Attend local networking events

Chambers of commerces, community groups, community colleges, and other local businesses may provide you with opportunities to mix with other business owners. When I first attended networking events I was pretty uncomfortable approaching others, but I quickly realized that everyone was there to meet other people. No one goes to a networking event to stand in the corner by themselves. They’re a great place to meet others because everyone is so open to making new connections.

9 – Distribute business cards

A lot of local service providers use business cards as one of their means for finding new business. You probably see business cards of real estate agents just about everywhere you go. Having an attractive business card that you can leave may be the difference between getting work and not getting work. While it will never be your most productive form of marketing it can be a nice supplement.

10 – Local advertisements

Local clients that are looking for a designer may turn to publications such as the Yellow Pages or the newspaper. Many times designers get so focused on online promotion and marketing that they tend to forget more traditional methods.

What’s Your Experience?

What have you found to help with attracting local clients?

1. Lack of a Purpose

Whether your website represents your business, or whether your business is a website, it needs a purpose. Websites that represent brick and mortar business will typically exist to support and aid the business in meeting its objectives, and hopefully that business already has a clearly defined purpose.

Whatever the situation may be, a website must have a clear purpose for which it exists. A website with no direction will go nowhere. If you hope to build a successful internet presence, be sure to dedicate adequate time to plan and define what you want from your website.

2. Lack of Focus on the User

In order to achieve success, however it may be measured, a website and its creators must maintain focus on the users of the website. Without satisfied users, no website will be successful. Sometimes it is easy to lose focus on those who will be visiting a website. It may be easier or more fun to build the site how you like it or how you want it to be, but the users’ opinions are much more important.

Any website that does a great job of meeting the needs of users will be well on its way to success. At every stage of the website development process, user needs and wants should be of primary concern.

3. Little or No Significant Content

The internet is a vast source of information, and the typical website now needs to have some type of valuable content for visitors. Of course blogs are an example of this as they provide extensive amounts of written content, but there are other options as well. Video, audio, news, tutorials, pictures, online tools, etc. All of these things attract visitors and make a website more valuable. Very few websites today will continually draw crowds of visitors without significant content.

4. Poor Marketing Strategy

Regardless of how great your website is, people need to find it in order for it to be successful. A marketing strategy may involve spending thousands or even millions of dollars in advertising, or it could include spending only a few dollars on targeted pay-per-click ads. A marketing strategy could also include optimization for social media and/or search engines.

There is really no limit to what you can do to market a website, but you do need to have a strategy that will help you to get the right people to visit the site. A great website with no marketing strategy is taking a huge chance that people will somehow find the site.

5. Bad Choice of Niche or Industry

Before launching a new website, choosing the right niche or industry is a crucial decision. Of course, some niches are overly crowded, and others have too small a number of potential visitors. Somewhere in the middle will usually be the best choice.

What caused you to choose the niche for your website? Is it a topic that you enjoy, is it one that you think has income potential, or did you base your decision on research? For more information on this subject, see Researching a Niche: Tools and Techniques.

6. Infrequent Updates

One of the keys to successful websites is repeat visitors, and one of the keys to attracting repeat visitors is to continually add new content. If a website stays the same for long periods of time, what makes visitors want to keep coming back?

This is a huge advantage that blogs have, assuming new posts are added at least somewhat frequently. With new articles being published, visitors will always have a reason to come back again. Each time visitors return to the website, their connection to the site becomes a little bit stronger.

7. Lack of Commitment

Many website owners get excited for the launch of a new website with the potential that exists. But over time that interest and commitment often fades. Without committment to success, no website will go very far.

This doesn’t only apply to an individual website owner trying to make money online. This can also apply to large businesses that simply don’t give a website the attention or priority that it deserves. A website can be an invaluable asset to a business, or it can produce next to nothing if there is no commitment by the business to make it something special.

8. No Call to Action

Whether the goal of a website is to sell products, gain subscribers, draw clicks to PPC ads, or to provide information about the services of a business, a call to action for visitors is needed. Many websites are not successful because they simply do not encourage or instruct visitors to do what they want them to do. In order to have an effective call to action, you must first know precisely what it is that you want visitors to do after arriving at your website. Knowing what you want from them, you can now build the website to lead them to that action.

9. Ineffective Monetization Choices

Every website should create some type of value for its owner(s). However, each website should be evaluating on an individual basis to see how it can most effectively create value. Should you use the site to sell products, to promote your services, to sell ad space? The wrong choice can have serious negative impacts on the success of the site.

10. Poor Design

The design and attractiveness of a website is also important to success. Most visitors will base their first impression of the site at least partially on looks and appearance. Although design is important, different websites can be successful with different design strategies. Not every successful website needs to have a fancy design that is full of exciting features. A clean, attractive minimal design can be effective for many websites.

The design should never take priority over usability. If a particular design interferes with visitors being able to access and use the site, it is not an effective design. Designing for user expectations is more important than trying to create the most impressive looking website.

What Would You Add?

I know there are other things out there that would it on this list, so please share your thoughts. What else can hold a website back from success? Are there items on this list that you do not think are important?

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.

Why would someone who runs one successful website or blog want to launch another one? Just some of the reasons include increased potential income, a bigger overall audience, the opportunity to cover other topics, and greater stability of income.

What Can Be Duplicated?

Design – Not only does having an existing theme make it easier when launching a new website, but it can also help with branding. Readers recognize the design and they’ll associate a new site with a proven, established, and successful site in part because of the design similarities.

Advertisers – If you sell ad space on your website, some of your advertisers will probably be interested in advertising on your other sites as well. It can save you time as you won’t have to go searching for advertisers to fill up each website, and it can make it a bit easier to maintain.

Marketing – If you know how to effectively market one website, chances are you can do it again with another one. This is where the learning curve really becomes valuable. Most first-time internet marketers struggle for a while to learn what works and what doesn’t. Once you’ve got things figured out a little better you won’t have to waste as much time with unprofitable marketing methods on future projects.

Search Engine Optimization – The rules of SEO are pretty consistent from one website to the next. If you can optimize one site, you can most likely optimize another (of course some niches are more competitive than others). SEO is another area that newbies struggle with, and those who are experienced can save a lot of time and headaches.

How Can A Network Be Helpful?

If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly made some contacts and friends. That network that you’ve built can potentially make your next blog project a quick success and help you to become recognized as a respected leader in the niche. Here are a few ways that those in your network can help.

They may be your first visitors and subscribers – When launching a new blog, one of the first things you should do is contact everyone in your network that you think may be interested in what you are doing. As your friends, they’ll probably at least visit and likely they’ll subscribe. Building initial traffic and subscribers is one of the hardest aspects of blogging, so this is a huge advantage.

They may leave comments – Comments are important to any blog. They add conversation and improve the value of posts, and they make the blog look more active for new visitors. Those in your network will be more willing than the average reader to leave their feedback. Sometimes it only takes a few comments to really get things started.

Links – Some individuals in your network may even like what you are doing enough to post a link from their own website or blog. This type of promotion can be invaluable, especially if you have influential people in your network.

Social media votes – One quick way to grow a new blog is with social media. By leveraging your network you may be able to get some of your first posts to become popular with social media.

The Learning Curve

As with anything else in life, blogging and internet marketing becomes a bit easier as you learn from your experiences. There is a definite learning curve that makes it difficult for newbies to have big success quickly. That same learning curve, however, means that once you have gotten more experience under your belt, you’ll be able to operate much more efficiently and profitably.

Time Constraints

Throughout this article I’ve listed many reasons why running multiple websites or blogs is realistic and beneficial. But the truth is that it also takes more time, something that many of us struggle with already. Running multiple sites means more email, upkeep and general maintenance, writing, etc. Fortunately, many of these activities can be outsourced if the site is bringing in enough revenue. Time constraints are a real issue, but better time management is probably possible for most of us.

What is Your Situation?

How many websites or blogs do you run? How do you cope with managing your time?

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.

First of all, if you are planning to start a blog or any type of website that will require consistent time and effort, you will be in the best position to succeed if you choose something in which you have a strong interest. Without that interest and passion the work becomes harder and your chances of making money keep falling.

What Should You Look for In a Potential Niche?

Realistic Competition

Almost any niche you choose will have some level of competition. If your blog or website is going to be a one-person operation, some competitors will obviously be out of your league because of the resources and money that they have at their disposal. For instance, starting a new search engine to compete with Google, Yahoo, and MSN would give you about a 0% chance for success.

You don’t really want to look for no competition, but you do want to look for a niche in which you have potential to compete favorably. In most niches you won’t have to be the #1 website or blog in order to be successful and profitable. Can you compete well enough to take a share of the market?

Competition isn’t really a negative. Having other successful websites means that the niche has real profit potential. If no one is making any money, that may be a sign that the niche is not profitable.

A Passionate Audience

The audience is really what determines the success of the niche. A strong group of potential visitors/readers/customers should be seen as a huge plus. In fact, the level of involvement and action of the audience is just as important, if not more, than its size. Passionate visitors are much more likely to buy or to recommend something to friends and family. If your research leads you to several websites in a particular niche that seem to have a very poor following, it should be a warning that the audience may not be there.

Monetization Opportunities

How you plan to make money from your website should be considered when deciding on a niche. If you plan to sell your own products or services, how much competition is there and what prices are being charged? Will you be able to find customers who are willing to pay your prices, and will you be able to make enough money at those prices?

Many website owners make money with affiliate programs. If this is your goal, of course you need to choose a niche that has strong affiliate products available for you to market. It would be a shame to choose a niche and start developing a site only to find that there are no good affiliate programs.

Another monetization opportunity is to sell direct ads. In this case, you can get an idea of how much interest there might be from potential advertisers by paying attention to who is advertising on other sites in the niche. Some of those advertisers may also be interested in buying space on your site. Remember that not every banner ad you see is a direct ad, it may be an affiliate ad.

Room for Growth

Unless you plan to only maintain the site for a short period of time, you should choose a niche that is not merely a trend or fad that is likely to be short-lived. For example, if you are interested in starting a targeted blog on music, consider choosing a topic such as a particular style of music rather than just a single band or artist. That way your success will not be so dependent on the status of that band or artist. If they loose popularity, you will too.

You’ll want to find a niche that is current and popular, but look for something that will still be around and equally, if not more, popular in a few years. Jumping in to a grow niche can help you to grow along with the niche. If you can start to build your site before the competition heats up you’ll be ahead of the game when everyone else is following behind you.

Available Domain Names

You may also want to include some domain name research in your initial legwork. If you’ve attempted to buy a domain name before, you know how difficult it can be to find one that you like and that your visitors will be able to remember. To see some free tools to help you in the process, see 8 Tools to Help You Find the Right Domain Name.

Community Websites

Once you’ve created and launched your new website you’ll obviously have to do some marketing and probably some networking with others in the niche. This can potentially be much easier if there are strong community sites within the niche. This would include forums, social media sites, groups, etc. One of the strengths of the web design community is the many valuable community sites that exist. I have personally benefited greatly from sites like Design Float, DZone and CSS Globe. If you find a niche that has this type of community, you will probably have some important opportunities to market to targeted visitors. If the niche you are considering is too unique to have other sites, you will have a harder time with marketing since you won’t know where to find potential visitors.

Tools to Help with Your Research

Researching a niche doesn’t have to take days or weeks of researching and studying. The tools that are available online can help you to gather some essential information pretty quickly. Of course you won’t want or need to use all of the resources listed here, but using a combination of a few of them can provide you with enough information to make an intelligent, informed decision.

Google Search – One of the most basic ways to do some research is to simply run searches for words and phrases related to the topic of interest. This will give you a good idea of what sites are highly ranked for some of the more important search phrases. Earlier I mentioned that you want to find a niche that will allow you to compete. After doing several searches you may get an idea of how competitive a niche will be. If you’re finding small blogs and websites doing well in the SERPs, chances are you’ll be able to compete.

Google also offers some useful options in the advanced search features. On the advanced search page you’ll see “Page Specific Search.” Here you can enter the URL of a page and Google will find others that are similar. This can be helpful if you know one of the leading websites in a niche and you quickly want to see who Google recognizes as being similar. There is also an option to enter a page URL and see what other pages link to it. Google excludes many links in its results, so this option can be useful, but it certainly won’t show you every inbound link to a page (image below).

Google Trends – If you’re looking to see how much interest a topic currently has online, Google Trends is a great tool. It will not only show you what’s hot now, but it will help you to track trends (which is not surprising given its name). The front page of Google Trends will show you the top 10 hottest trends from today. Additionally, if you click on the link for “more hot trends” you’ll see a list of the top 100 trends. You can even change the date to go back and see hot trends from past days, and you can subscribe to an RSS feed for the hottest trends.

Let’s take a look at two examples to illustrate what you’ll find from Google Trends. The graph below is what you’ll find when you search for “internet marketing“. Search trends for the phrase are shown from 2004 to present, as well as news reference volume on a separate chart right below. As you can see, search volume hasn’t gone up, if anything it’s gone down. On the other hand, the news reference has increased.

Now, compare that graph to the one you see below which shows the results for “social media.” Of course, social media is far more popular now than it was in 2004, so it’s not surprising that search volume has consistently increased, and so has news reference volume. This shows that the specific topic of social media is growing while the topic of internet marketing is staying relatively the same.

Yahoo Buzz Index – The Yahoo Buzz Index will show you what’s hot now, and provide you with some basic information. The front page, of course, provides you with some information on the topics getting the most buzz, and there are also categories for actors, movies, music, sports, tv, and video games. The image below shows one of the stories on the front page regarding the death of Washington Redskins (American football) safety Sean Taylor. The story includes links to a number of searches as it details the increases these phrases have experienced in the past 2 weeks.

Google Alerts – Another tool from Google, Alerts allows you to set up an email notification regarding a particular search phrase. The image below shows how simple it is to set up. You simply enter any search phrase that you want to track, the type (news, blogs, web, comprehensive, video, or groups), how often you want to be emailed, and your address. Say you set it to send daily emails. Each day you’ll get a message with new pages (or videos) that have been indexed by Google for the search phrase you’ve chosen. It doesn’t guarantee that the pages themselves are new, but they are new to Google.

Google News – Depending on the topic you are researching, a news site like Google News can very helpful. Google News tracks leading stories on what they consider to be news websites and blogs (over 4,500 sources). You’ll see the top stories on the front page, but you can also visit category pages and run searches specifically news. The Google News search only returns items that come from the news sources, as opposed to a general Google search.

One of the most useful features of Google News is that once you’ve done a search, you can subscribe to an RSS feed that will give you news for that search term. To subscribe to a feed, scroll down a little bit and at the bottom of the left sidebar you’ll see links for RSS and Atom feeds. Google News UK is also available.

Google Blog Search – In addition to the standard search, a blog search can help to show more current results. With the blog search you’ll see how recent each blog post displayed was published. This will give you a good idea of how much is currently being written and published on a subject. You can also subscribe to an RSS feed for any search phrase.

Technorati – Technorati will give you similar information to what you’ll find with a Google blog search. If you’re just looking to see how much is being written on a topic, you can search and subscribe to a feed for the search.

Additionally, you can learn a little bit more about the popularity of particular blogs. Technorati has a ranking system based on authority, which is a measure of how many other blogs link to a particular blog. A lower number is good for the ranking, while a higher number is good for the authority. To see this, simply do a search for the URL of a blog. The image below shows the information provided by Technorati for ProBlogger. You can see that ProBlogger is the 15th ranked blog by Technorati (out of several million). The search results will show all of the inbound links to the blog as recognized by Technorati.

Techmeme – If the niche you’re researching is related to technology, Techmeme is another resource. Techmeme tracks the top tech-related news stories at any given moment. And of course you can subscribe to their RSS feed which will send you the top stories. Techmeme can be used to find the stories and topics that are getting the most attention currently. At the time of this writing, Facebook is mentioned in a number of the top stories, so obviously it is a very hot topic.

Tailrank – Tailrank is somewhat similar to Techmeme in that it tracks hot stories, but it’s not only focused on technology. Tailrank also shows how many blogs are linking to a particular story, which can also be a gauge of how much interest exists for a topic. With Tailrank you can do a search and have the option to subscribe to a feed for the search.

PRWeb – PRWeb is the leading source for press release distribution. On their site you can see recent press releases. Another similar site is PRBuzz.

With the tools listed here, you’ll be able to get a good idea of the potential of a particular niche. If there are other tools you use or other things that you specifically look for in a niche, please participate by leaving a comment below.

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.

LINK TO OTHERS

Especially with blogs, linking out can be a very effective way to also draw inbound links. Some of those people that you link out to will probably return the favor. If your blog is new or not very well known you will have the best results if you link out to other small blogs. A link will mean a lot to these bloggers, but A-listers get so many links that they are unlikely to really notice and link back to you.

By linking out from your website or blog you show others that you are willing to share some of your traffic with them and that you find value in what they have to offer. Some people may not think much of this, but this type of approach will be appreciated by many, and they’ll be more willing to also link to you.

GET TO KNOW OTHER WEBSITE OWNERS AND BLOGGERS

Don’t underestimate the importance of networking for. There are probably hundreds of other bloggers that cover topics related to yours, and most are looking for mutually beneficial relationships. There are plenty of ways to get to know others. You can comment on other blogs, send an email, visit forums, or use social media just to name a few.

BE FRIENDLY

Bloggers link to those who they like. Sure, content is very important, but relationships are important too. I know this is true because I’m an example. Each weekend I publish a post of links, and every week there are links to a handful of other bloggers that I consider to be friends. Part of the mentality of linking out is wanting to help someone else, and of course we all want to help people that we like more than people that we don’t know of don’t like. Be friendly and willing to help others and you’ll find that more people will want to help you too.

BE THE FIRST TO PUBLISH NEWS

This is easier said than done, but it can be very effective. Look at some of the websites and blogs that focus on current events and news. TechCrunch draws loads of inbound links, thanks in part to consistently breaking new stories.

COMMENT ON BLOGS

Some bloggers, including me, try to give links to those readers who comment regularly. If you regularly read some of these blogs be sure to comment whenever possible as it will help you to easily get some new inbound links.

THANK PEOPLE WHEN THEY LINK TO YOU

Everyone appreciates a thank you. If a lot of blogs are linking to you it may not be possible to thank them all, but most of us don’t have this problem. Every week my links post gets several comments for others thanking me for linking to them, and I do notice. If people know that you appreciate the link and that you’re likely to stop by and leave a comment, they’ll be more interested in linking to you again in the future.

BE ACTIVE WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

One of the best ways to draw new links is to maximize the potential of social media sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us. Pages that are popular on these sites frequently draw a lot of links as a result. Get to know social media and learn how you can use it to promote your content.

GIVE SOMETHING OF VALUE

If your website or blog offers something of value for free to visitors, others will be interested in linking to you. E-books and other downloadable products are good options since they are easy and cheap to distribute.

BE UNIQUE

In order to draw inbound links something about your website has to grab their attention and make them want to tell others about you. It’s very difficult to do this if your website or blog is just like everyone else’s. Stand out and you’ll have a much better chance of getting other people to be interested.