Vandelay Design Blog » Marketing

12 Essential Tools to Build Your Online Portfolio

Erik Rasmussen — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:06:43 +0000

As a creative professional, you need a repository of your work that you can show other people. This is called a portfolio. Since we now live in the internet age where anyone can access anything anytime, it is imperative that you have an online portfolio. The only real problem is figuring out where to put your work – there are so many online portfolio tools and communities, it can be challenging to determine which one will work best for you. I’ve written this article to help you decide how to get your portfolio up and running ASAP.

Dribbble

Dribble is a portfolio networking platform where designers share “shots,” small screenshots of the designs and applications they are working on. All types of creatives are welcome here – Dribbble is designed for show and tell – to promote, discover, and explore design.

The Dribble interface is pleasant and simple. The Shots boxes show many many people have viewed, commented, and liked a shot. On mouseover, a short description and timestamp fade into place. Clicking on a shot takes you to its page, where you get more details. Dribble allows users to create “buckets,” or curated lists of shots. Dribble also allows users to sort shorts by popularity, submission time, color, & project (multiple shots for one project.)

Dribble also features a “Find Designers” section, where prospective employers can search for designers by skill and location. Members of Dribbble who can post are called “Players,” and new members are called “Rookies.” New members sign up as “Prospects,” who have to be recruited by Players to become Rookies. Dribbble offers a jobs board for designers to find work.

Dribbble is a growing platform with a lot of promise – the gamification of just getting your shots posted (having to be recruited by an existing member) is intriguing and also useful to maintain the quality of the Dribbble community. Dribbble is a great place for designers to interact and discover each other, not to mention gain recognition and potentially find jobs.

Coroflot

Coroflot says they are the largest, most established, most diverse pool of professional creative portfolios in the world. Coroflot is an open system – there are no membership requirements, application processes, or invites. Coroflot gives you all the basics – a place to host your images and videos, sharing tools, a job board, & a featured member gallery. The presentation that you would expect for an online portfolio tool just isn’t here though – there isn’t any customization that you can do to the design of your portfolio – it looks disconnected; it doesn’t feel cohesive.

Coroflot’s job board works very well functionally – designers can contact employers, and employers can contact designers. Coroflot’s featured groups and member gallery do a good job of showcasing the most active and popular members to the Coroflot network. Overall, Coroflot has good tools that perform their function with simplicity and ease. The signup process is almost nonexistent, and the site does have a large pool of designers and employers all communicating with each other. Unfortunately, as a designer, I want my portfolio to be hosted where I can either A) control the design (at least to some extent) or B) have something that already looks pretty nice.

In the end, Coroflot just doesn’t cut the mustard for me, mainly because it doesn’t look as good as other tools that serve the same purpose. As a designer, looks do matter.

Behance

Behance is a portfolio networking platform for introducing talent to opportunity. Behance is growing quickly, and attracts millions of page views a month. Behance also powers creative networks for top schools and organizations like Adweek, LinkedIn, AIGA, RISD, and more.

Behance allows users to explore all different disciplines of art and design in the “explore” section. You can filter the categories that you would like to see easily, which then takes you to beautifully presented project pages. From here you can comment, share, and view the artist’s portfolio (which are also beautiful.) On the back end, Behance features robust community tools like an activity feed, groups, performance statistics, curated collections (like Dribbble’s buckets), and even curated, branded sites (such as “Illustration, Served” – these sites showcase the best of the Behance network towards a wider audience on the web.

Behance takes pride in connecting talent to opportunity by way of these sites, as many recruiters view them to find top talent in a particular niche. The site also has with a dynamic job board. Behance holds regular competitions from recruiters, like AOL and Nike. Behance is beautiful. The menus are beautiful, even the way and the time they take to animate. The site feels cohesive all the way though, which really lends to a fluid workflow for users to be able to use the site the right way – as an effective tool.

In addition to providing a free online portfolio networking portal, Behance offers a paid, hosted portfolio building solution called ProSite for $11 / mo. Prosite is a branded, white label portfolio (no Behance logos) that pulls from your exising Behance portfolio and allows you to customize your portfolio in depth, without any HTML programming. Prosite is really the meat of Behance’s portfolio offering, whereas Behance.net is the bread and butter for portfolio networking and talent recruiting.

Overall, Behance has (in my personal opinion) set the bar extremely high for everyone in the online portfolio / portfolio networking business. With beautiful presentation, robust functionality, top talent recruiters, and rich tools like Prosite, Behance leads the way in bridging the gap between talent and opportunity.

Carbonmade

Carbonmade is a personalized online portfolio building tool. It focuses on simplicity and beautiful design to make the process of getting your portfolio online both easy, efficient, and beautiful. Carbonmade has ingenious, quirky graphics and copy throughout their entire site which really makes you feel at home as a creative.

Carbonmade doesn’t feature any job boards or networking features – it’s strictly a tool to build a portfolio online, which is great because it’s simple and straightforward. Carbonmade’s portfolio presentation shares this sentiment with extremely straightforward and minimalistic design, which makes it stand out from the competition. Carbonmade banks on their simplicity to sell their product, and it works – having foolproof tools is really a great selling point, especially for newcomers looking to make their first online portfolios.

Carbonmade offers both a free and a paid ($12 / mo) offering; the free option is great for getting a feel for the site, but the paid option has all the features that you need to make a robust portfolio, like the ability to add up to 50 projects, 500 images, 10 videos, custom domain binding, and access to Carbonmade’s staff for technical support.

However, there is something to be said about the price to feature ratio that Carbonmade offers – cheaper alternatives like Behance’s Prosite provide much more robust tools and storage space for the price. However, there is something so personable, so artistic, so deceivingly simple about Carbonmade that it makes all logical rationalizations about features (almost) irrelevant.

Carbonmade is working on a “talent pool” for their network that hasn’t launched yet – I’m sure that when it does it will be every bit as simple and beautiful as the rest of Carbonmade, complete with ridiculously adorable graphics and illustrations.

All said and done, Carbonmade offers a ridiculously simple, unique, beautiful portfolio building tool that is sure to satisfy newcomers and artistic types who don’t need all the “feature bloat” that other portfolio tools offer.

ViewBook

ViewBook is an online portfolio building tool that focuses on clean design and image management. It offers paid options to showcase your images, and has a well reviewed iPad app for showcasing your work in person (when you hand someone your iPad. iPad required.)

ViewBook is only meant for static images, which sets it apart from the competition by defining their niche. On the front end, ViewBook portfolios are very simple and elegant, but still allow you to achieve a high level of customization when it comes to layout and theme. Viewbook’s back end is extremely quick and minimalistic, feeling much more like an app than a website, which is nice.

Viewbook offers support for Adobe Lightroom, Apple Aperture, Fotomoto, Tumblr, Twitter, Flickr, Google Analytics, Facebook, and Wufoo forms (which are a great and free service to create user friendly forms – superb for freelancers!). ViewBook sets very reasonable prices compared to other tools, starting at $4 / mo for unlimited galleries, albums, the iPad portfolio app, and 1000 images worth of hosting. Another $5 a month lands you single page portfolios and advanced customization options, along with the ability to remove the Viewbook logo and add another 1,500 images. ViewBook’s $19 / mo professional option allows you to create unlimited portfolio websites with album, text, and video dedicated pages, along with full customization, a 5000 image cap, and the ability to use your own domain name.

ViewBook really sets themselves apart from the competition by offering a much cleaner, simpler looking product than anyone else and appealing to freelance image professionals with massive storage space, options, and a great looking and responsive iPad App for showing your portfolio off in person.

Additional Resources

For Photographers

PhotoShelter

PhotoShelter is a portfolio building tool specifically for photographers. It features many customization options including white label branding, custom domain name, CSS / HTML editing, WordPress integration, and more. PhotoShelter shines for selling images with a built in shopping cart that pays you instantly and allows you to self fulfill orders however you like – you can sell rights-managed or royalty-free photos in 16 different currencies with a built in pricing calculator!

Photoshelter features advanced marketing features to help you get found on the web, like SEO and analytics tools in addition the ability create virtual agencies with other photographers on PhotoShelter. Photoshelter also features a robust image management system, including advanced FTP distribution & access, password protection, private invitations, batch downloads, and more to help you organize and deliver work on time. This feature of Photoshelter makes it absolutely stellar for photographers as an all in one solution.

For Logo Designers

LogoPond

LogoPond is a free tool specifically for logo designers that allows them to showcase their logo designs and receive feedback from the community. It allows users to request critiques, comment, and use their forum to communicate. Logopond looks nice, but doesn’t offer many features and is full of advertisements – which is ok, since LogoPond is a growing platform.

For Illustrators

IllyPads

Illypads is a free tool specific for illustrators from the creators of LogoPond that allows you to showcase your illustrations with a portfolio / profile page. Illypads is very basic and not yet refined – which is good, because it’s a growing platform. If you are looking for a quick, free way to simply showcase your illustrations online and aren’t looking for any other advanced features, IllyPads offers you a chance to grow with them.

For DIYers

Indexhibit

Indexhibit is a DIY, self service downloadable web application that you have to install yourself (technical knowledge required.) Indexhibit acts as a framework for you to upload exhibitions, and list them in an index. It’s basically as simple as it sounds (if it doesn’t sound simple, Indexhibit offers in depth tutorials, help, and a forum), and due to this simplicity has a number of applications beyond just making portfolios – Indexhibit gives a few examples on their website, such as showcasing your collections of stamps, records, toys, coke cans, receipts, snapshots of your clothes, the list goes on and on! Overally, Indexhibit is a powerful free tool to manage your own framework for your portfolio or any other exhibit project online.

Subfolio

Subfolio is another DIY framework that allows you to manage and configure your own portfolio and beyond on your own server – Subfolio features support for themes, users, and even groups. Subfolio is based adding all of your folders of images, documents, video, etc into one place – literally – you just upload everything that you want to showcase on your website into one folder, and Subfolio automatically creates page hierarchies based on what you’ve added. Like Indexhibit, sub folio is completely customizable and manageable by you alone (though there is support and a forum on their site.) If you know how to manage your own framework on your own server, Subfolio is a unique tool to help you build your online portfolio (or community) just the way you want to.

For Job Seekers

Krop

Krop is first and foremost a robust job agency for creatives. Many top recruiters looking for talent post job listings to Krop. In addition to their job board, Krop offers professional online portfolio solutions for $9.99 / mo. The portfolios are highly customizable, dynamic, and responsive, with advanced customization options. All of the portfolios are accessible from Krop’s Creative Database, the back end tool for recruiters that allows them to target creatives with astounding accuracy. Krop also features a section called Pluck’t, which showcases daily staff selection of Krop portfolios. If you’re hard up for a job, Krop is definitely a great tool to use to ensure exposure to recruiters.

SortFolio

Sortfolio is a tool for recruiters to find top web design talent. You can sign up for a free listing, or go big and pay $99 / mo to get larger interactive display ads, up to 6 large images on your portfolio, placement above other free ads, and branding (you can add your logo.) Is $99 / mo worth it to get listed? If you’re a web designer, it just might be. If you’re interested in checking out portfolio, you can always sign up for free to get a feel for the listings and upgrade later to promote yourself more fully.

Conclusion

This concludes my list of the 12 most essential tools to build your online portfolio. Whatever creative discipline you practice, you can rest assured that there is an online portfolio tool specific to your niche waiting for you to create your very own portfolio and help you market and sell your talent. There are plenty of portfolio tools that we didn’t cover here; however, this resource provides more than enough free tools to get your portfolio online today. What are you waiting for? Build an online portfolio to connect the world to your talent today!

About the Author:

Erik Hans Rasmussen is a writer & designer for Fibers.com. Erik also writes for T-Shirt Talk, a t-shirt industry blog, and tweets @lookrad.

Best Options for Real Time Analytics

Steven Snell — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 12:04:34 +0000

Every business, large or small, has a need to know what is going on with its website and how users are interacting with it. There are a number of different options when it comes to website analytics, and this post will feature the leading options that provide visitor data in real time.

Real time analytics can prove to be invaluable when working with social media or viral campaigns that tend to send traffic quickly and in short bursts. In these situations you’ll need to be able to react quickly, and real-time website analytics allow you to do so. Here is a look at some of the best options.

Google Analytics
In recent weeks Google Analytics rolled out a new feature for real-time reporting. You can see how many visitors are on your site at the moment, what specific pages they are viewing, what sites referred them, where they are located geographically, and more. You’ll need to be using the new version of Analytics in order to view the real time data (read more about that in this post on the Analytics blog).

Clicky
Clicky’s focus is on provide real-time analytics. When you login by default you will see your current data from today. Historical data is also available. Detailed Twitter analytics is also included to help you gauge the impact of social media to your website. The ClickyTouch app is available for the iPhone and iPad.

Woopra
Woopra lets you watch visitors live to see how the are interacting with your site, and you can even chat with those visitors through the Woopra Chat Widget. Woopra also includes an advanced notification feature that allows you to set up several different types of notifications (email, audible, popup) based on different actions and situations.

Chartbeat
Chartbeat provides real-time analytics for news publishers and other types of websites (specialized analytics for e-commerce sites is on the way). Chartbeat’s unique engagement metrics help you to see how visitors are interacting with your site and identify areas for improvement.

GoSquared
GoSquared provides all the standard types of metrics, plus it allows you to view data specific to individual visitors. GoSquared integrates with Olark so you can even chat with those visitors. You can set up an alert to notify you of traffic spikes or sudden decreases of traffic.

Mixpanel
Mixpanel allows you to watch your visitors engage with the site, observe trends, and compare metrics from previous points in time. Extensive segmentation and funnel analysis features are also included.

Reinvigorate
Reinvigorate provides real-time analytics as well as heatmaps that help to visualize where visitors are clicking and to identify dead spots. You can even view nametags for your registered users to track their usage of the site.

Piwik
Piwik is an open-source option for real-time analytics. Piwik can be downloaded and installed on your own server in a five-minute process.

ShinyStat
ShinyStat offers four different products including a very limited free analytics product for personal and non-profit websites. The business account includes search engine ranking detection to help track and improve your rankings.

SeeVolution
SeeVolution is currently in beta. It features heatmaps and real-time analytics overlaid on your website. Live heatmaps are even available. SeeVolution’s visual tool sets provide a unique way to view analytics data without leaving your site.

FoxMetrics
FoxMetrics provides real-time analytics based around the core concepts of events and attributes. You can set up your custom events to be just about anything you want. Based on the data gathered from the events and attributes, FoxMetrics provides actionable reports that will help you to improve your site.

StatCounter
StatCounter is a free real-time analytics program that can be installed with just a few lines of code. It includes all the typical analytics data, plus you can set up automated email reports to be sent daily, weekly, or monthly.

Performancing Metrics
Performancing Metrics provides real-time blog statistics as well as other features like Twitter analytics.

Whos.Amung.Us
Whos.Amung.Us is different from most of the other solutions listed here. To use Whos.Amung.Us you can embed a widget on your site or blog to provide real-time stats. Bothe free and paid accounts are available.

W3Counter

W3Counter provides real-time data and over 30 different reports. You can track Twitter mentions, view details of your most recent visitors, view a click overlay, and more. A limited free account is available as well as a paid account.

TraceWatch
TraceWatch is a free real-time analytics program that can be installed on your own server. You’ll all the typical stats and reports, plus you can view details of your most recent visitors and track their exact path through your pages.

For more resources please see:

39 Beautiful Email Newsletter Templates

Steven Snell — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 11:11:38 +0000

Email newsletters are an important marketing and communications tool for many businesses. The appearance of your newsletter can be enhanced with an attractive design, but having a custom design isn’t the only option. Templates are available for newsletters, and many of them are provided by companies that manage mailing lists like MailChimp and Campaign Monitor. Those two providers market towards designers more than competitors like AWeber, so as a result they tend to have better quality and quantity of templates available.

Here is a look at some of the templates available.

MailChimp Templates:

These templates are free for use on paid accounts. Free accounts are limited to more basic templates.

Campaign Monitor Templates:

Modern Template

Cool Template

Typographic Template

Airmail

Clouds Template

Fabric Template

Cotton Rag Template

Color Direct Template

Eco Template

Helvetica Template

Worn Template

Classic Template

Misty Meadow Template

Retro Green

Retro Stripes

Gridworks Template

AWeber:

Premium Templates:

FocusMail ($22)

eMail ($22)

JumpMail ($22)

Market ($14)

BlauMail ($14)

Vesatile Newsletter ($15)

Modern Business 3 Light ($15)

Corporate Newsletter ($12)

Elegance ($10)

Other Sources of Free HTML Email Templates:

Useful Analytics Tips and Resources for Designers and Marketers

Steven Snell — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 11:57:23 +0000

The success of a website is far more dependent upon performance than it is on looks and appearance, although design certainly has an impact on performance. Being able to use analytics programs proficiently will make a designer more effective and more valuable to clients. In this post we’ll feature tutorials and articles from across the web that will show you how to improve in this area.

The resources in this post focus on Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer, two of the most popular tools of the trade. However, there are many other tools and programs that can be used for these purposes, and while the specific steps of some of these tutorials may not apply outside of Google’s products, the principles will.

Educating Web Designers on Google Analytics

Pro Blog Design has a post that serves as a good intro to analytics. It covers the basics of what you should be paying attention to and how you can act on the information that you obtain.

The Complete Google Analytics Power User Guide

VKI Studios has a 12-part series that goes through the basics of Analytics, as well as instruction on some more advanced uses.

Google Analytics In Depth: Goals and Funnels

Dave Sparks takes us step-by-step through the process of setting up goals in Analytics to help measure the most important details of your website’s performance.

A Guide to Google Analytics and Useful Tools

This detailed article from Smashing Magazine provides plenty of information on setting up Google Analytics for powerful results, and it links to a number of other useful articles from Google and from other sites.

Configuring Google Analytics: A 12-Step Guide for Marketers, Designers, and Site Owners

Dave Chaffey breaks down the important steps that will help you to get more out of Analytics.

Huge Collection of Google Analytics Tips

Search Engine Journal has compiled a helpful post of tips with links to some other resources.

Google Analytics E-Commerce Tracking:

Part One – How it Works
Part Two – Installation and Setup
Part Three – Why Everyone Should Use It
Part Four – Tracking Lead Gen Forms

This is a four-part series that covers the process of using Analytics with an e-commerce site.

AdSense Reporting in Google Analytics

If your site is monetized through AdSense, Analytics can provide a wealth of information that will help you to maximize your AdSense income. This video shows the type of data you can get from integrating AdSense and Analytics.

Fundamentals of A/B and Multivariate Testing

This post from Pro Blog Design explains A/B testing and explains the process for using Google Website Optimizer.

Google Website Optimizer 101: A Quick-Start Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion Rate Experts have a great guide for using Google Website Optimizer that includes 108 ways to improve your conversion rate.

55 Google Website Optimizer Tips and Tricks

ConversionRate.net provides this post that covers a lot of information related to improving performance with Google Website Optimizer.

Google Website Optimizer Case Study: Daily Burn, 20%+ Improvement

Tim Ferriss presents a case study that shows the real world value of Website Optimizer.

How to Segment Google Website Optimizer Tests

This article from Search Engine Land shows an example of how to segment your tests to see how they perform for different kinds of users of your site.

14 Free Tools that Reveal Why People Abandon Your Website

Knowing why visitors are leaving your site can help to make improvements that will improve conversion rates. This blog post from Conversion Rate Experts features 14 tools that can help.

Developing a Freelance Marketing Plan

Steven Snell — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:47:06 +0000

Freelancing can be a great opportunity for designers at any stage in their career. For some it may be a short stint that will help them get to where the ultimately want to be, and for others it can be a long-term destination. Regardless of which approach you’ll be taking, the competition will be fierce. The ease of entry into the industry is appealing for many people, but that also means that there are thousands of other designers you will have to compete with in order to land clients.

In this article we’ll take a look at how freelancers can approach marketing in order to increase the likelihood of success. There’s more to being a successful freelancer than just being a talented designer, and by starting with a solid marketing plan you can ensure that your skills are maximized.

What Are Your Goals With Freelancing?

The first key to address is that your goals will direct your marketing approach. As was already mentioned, different freelancers can have drastically different purposes. The way you position and market yourself should help to put you in a better position to achieve your goals, so it is important to focus in on those goals when you are developing a marketing plan. Here is a look at a few possible goals and how they can influence your marketing plan.

Use Freelance Work as a Springboard to Employment

Just as finding clients as a freelancer will involve a lot of competition from other designers, landing a job with a design agency or as an in-house designer will also require you to stand out from significant competition. Many designers and students have found that freelancing can serve as a bridge to go from where you are now to where you want to be.

Freelance experience can be a great help when trying to land a job with that agency that you have been dying to work for. A successful stint in freelancing will give you some work samples to showcase to potential employers, plus you’ll pick up some valuable experience working with clients, developing quotes, managing projects, and running a business. All of these things can help to give you a leg up on other candidates for a job.

If this is your goal, personal branding is important. Being hired as a designer/employee essentially requires you to sell your ability and qualifications to the employer. If you’re able to develop a reputation or to brand yourself as a highly-talented designer, more opportunities are likely to open up.

Your portfolio website will be crucial to your own personal branding and marketing, as it will certainly be evaluated by anyone who is considering hiring you. Make sure that you take as much time as needed to create a portfolio site that does an effective job of selling your skills to potential employers. View your portfolio site as an audition for potential employers. Only show your best work samples, as any that are not up to par with your current skills and abilities may work against you when potential employers are evaluating your work.

Use Freelancing to Gain Experience and Improve Your Skills

In the first scenario where freelancing can be used as a springboard to employment, the likelihood of landing a job will be much greater if you’ve already developed the skills needed to succeed. If you’re not yet at the stage where you would be able to compete for the job that you ultimately want to have, freelancing can help you to gain critical experience over a period of time as you work on building your skills.

Freelancers can work with clients of all sizes and types, so not having extensive experience will not prevent you from being able to do work as a freelancer. Starting out you’ll probably need to focus on small businesses and organizations with limited budgets, but it will help you to improve your skills and move forward with your career as you work your way up to bigger and more challenging projects.

Career as a Self-Employed Designer

Not everyone who freelances sees it as a temporary stage that will help to move on towards full-time employment. Some designers prefer to pursue freelancing as a long-term career, or maybe they would like to expand their business in the future by hiring other designers or developers and starting an agency. In this case, the marketing focus should be on long-term stability and success rather than short-term.

Full-Time Freelance for Now

While some freelancers know exactly what they want to get, whether it is full-time employment or a career as a freelancer, others may not be sure until they get a little experience under their belt. In this case, freelancing can serve as full-time work to earn an income for the foreseeable future, but it can take one of several paths at a later time.

Maybe you have lost a job and freelancing is a way to earn a living while you determine what direction you would like to go in the future. Maybe you’re not sure yet if you would be better suited to working as an employee or if you would rather work independently. Getting some experience working with clients as a freelancer is a great way to find out which way you would like to go.

Keys to Freelance Marketing

Now that we have looked at some of the most common goals and purposes of freelancing we can look at some of the keys to marketing in more detail. As we go through these keys, keep your goal in mind and try to determine how each of these can help you work towards that goal.

Your Portfolio Site

We’ve touched a little bit already on the importance of your design portfolio, but it really is one of the most significant aspects of your marketing efforts as a freelancer and it deserves plenty of attention. The portfolio site is an important part of the marketing plan regardless of your goals and purposes for freelancing, although your approach to the portfolio site may change depending upon your goals.

If you are attempting to use freelancing as a means to landing full-time employment as a designer, your portfolio site should communicate your skills and qualifications. Some freelancers not only showcase work samples but also list their experience and specific skills, which helps the portfolio site to act essentially as an online resume. In this situation, personal branding is also important because you want the potential employer who is viewing the site to be left with a memorable impression that will keep you in the forefront of his/her mind when making a hiring decision.

On the other hand, if your primary purpose is to gain experience through freelancing, the most important purpose of the portfolio site is to encourage inquiries from potential clients. You’ll of course want to showcase your work samples and your abilities, but getting in touch with potential clients is the action that will determine the level of success of the portfolio site. Greater emphasis should be used to lead the visitor to contact you or to fill out a form.

Branding

We’ve talked about the importance of personal branding if you are attempting to use freelancing to land a job, but the approach to branding can vary depending upon your goals. For those freelancers who are looking to expand at some point in the future to move from freelancer to owner of a design agency, personal branding may not be as important. If you are extremely successful at marketing yourself as an individual it can sometimes be difficult to make a transition where you will be landing clients but not actually doing the design work yourself. In this case you may choose to work under a business name instead of as John Doe, freelance designer.

Referrals

Having a steady stream of referrals is the ideal way to stay busy for most freelancers. Unfortunately, it’s not usually that easy. In the past we’ve covered this topic in more detail with 5 Keys to Building Referral Business.

As far as it’s impact on your marketing plan, if your approach to freelancing is a long-term focus, developing referral business should be a priority. For those who intend to freelance for the short-term and move on to full-time employment, pursuing referrals from friends, family, and your existing network is a good idea and can lead to new projects, but dedicating a significant amount of time to building new relationships for the purpose of referrals may not be your best use of time.

Specialization vs. Generalization

Standing out from the crowd of other designers can be made more achievable if you choose to specialize in a particular area. Some freelancers and agencies market themselves as being experts in a certain field or as being specialists, and this can certainly help you to stand out from the competition from those who are in your target market.

For example, if a real estate agent is looking for a website do you think they would prefer to work with the average freelance designer or with someone who specializes in design real estate websites? In most cases they’ll choose the specialist because they are likely to have better knowledge of the industry and a better understanding of what it takes to build a successful website for a real estate agent.

Some common specializations include custom WordPress themes, Drupal development, e-commerce websites, blog design, non-profit websites, church websites, and more.

However, specialization does have some drawbacks as well. First of all, potential clients who do not fit into your area of specialization may feel that you are not the best fit for their project because they don’t fall into your area of specialization. Second, you’re also tied to the demand for whatever you specialize in, and that may be out of your control. For example, if you specialize in working with a particular CMS or shopping cart and that system loses popularity and falls out of demand, you could be out of luck too. Generalization also allows you to work on a wider variety of projects, which may be more interesting to you and it can lead to better all-around experience.

Deciding on generalization vs. specialization is an important key in the development of your marketing plan. If you’re going to be looking for employment specialization can either help or hurt depending upon whether the job fits into your area of specialization. If you’re not sure exactly what type of job you’ll be looking for, a general approach is usually a better option.

Pricing Strategy: Package-Based vs. Custom Quotes

Pricing may not be the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of marketing, but your prices will have a big impact on what clients you are able to land, and your pricing strategy will impact how you go about marketing yourself.

Most designers prefer to provide custom quotes for each project because every situation is unique. Last year we took a look at the pros and cons of package-based pricing (see that article for more details). Offering various packages to your clients can help to save some time in developing proposals/quotes for potential clients and it also helps to avoid wasting time with potential clients that would never be willing or able to pay what you charge. But for most designers the need to treat each project as unique will outweigh the pros of using packages.

One situation where packages do tend to work nicely is for those designers who are using specialization. For example, you may choose to charge a base price for custom WordPress theme development and offer various add-ons or upgrades at set prices. In this situation your projects are likely to have more in common than a designer who takes a generalized approach, so projects may be more likely to fit into various packages.

Finding Clients

Finding enough paying clients is probably the number one challenge for most freelancers, especially those who are just getting established. This is a major topic that could not only justify an article on its own, but actually books have been written on the topic. With that in mind we’ll cover some of the basics here and how it pertains to your marketing plan.

Friends and Family

Many designers (myself included) get their first clients either by doing work for friends and family or by landing clients that have been referred by friends and family. Regardless of where you are in your career and what your goal is for freelancing, getting work this way is a possibility. However, it tends to be most effective for those who are just getting started and have the goal of using freelance work to build experience. Most connections from friends and family tend to be small businesses and individuals that will be working with limited budgets, so if you are an experienced designer with average rates or higher, many of these people will be unlikely to convert to paying clients.

Job Boards and Bidding Sites

There are a number of industry specific job boards (see 40 Sites for Finding Web Design Jobs) that can be great placing to find freelance work as well as full-time employment. Also, bidding sites like Elance and Guru offer freelancers the opportunity to bid on projects that have been posted.

These sites can be a great opportunity to land new work, but they can also prove to be a waste of time if you’re not able to secure the work. The bidding sites tend to require you to work for lower than average rates in order to get work, and you’ll also need to spend time finding the right projects before you even make a bid. You’ll be in competition with a lot of designers on the popular bidding sites, so being able to deliver quality results at affordable prices is key. Part of determining how much you need to charge will be impacted by where you live. If you’re in an area with a high cost of living you will probably be competing with designers who live in areas with a much lower cost of living, and they’ll be likely to price their services below yours.

If you’re goal is to use freelancing as a means to get to full-time employment, design job boards should be sites that you monitor on a regular basis (most have RSS feeds that you can subscribe to). Bidding sites can be helpful if you’re looking to gain experience. Otherwise, you’re probably better off devoting your time to other ways of marketing yourself.

Ongoing Clients/Maintenance

For designers who are always looking for more work, one of the best scenarios is to find a few clients that need regular or ongoing work. This will not be the case with every client, but even just having a couple clients that need a little bit of work done each week can have a noticeable impact on your income. Ongoing clients are great because you will not need to dedicate time to finding as much new work, all you will be doing is providing services and all of your time will be billable.

CSS-Tricks has a brief post that I have linked to a few times in the past, The Heating Company Analogy. This post gives insight into how and why ongoing relationships can be established with clients. For those with long-term focuses and goals ongoing clients take on a greater significance. If your goal with freelancing is to find a full-time job or to gain experience, you may be better off to work with a greater number of clients and get more experience to build your portfolio as opposed to working for the same clients repeatedly.

Blogging

For many designers blogging is not only a way to communicate and share their ideas, but it is also a way to market themselves and their services. Designers like David Airey and Chris Spooner have made blogging a priority and their careers have been greatly impacted. While both are certainly very talented designers, it’s unlikely that either would be as well-known if it wasn’t for blogging.

Having a blog will allow you to establish your reputation within the industry, plus it will help you to reach out to others that may be potential clients. Perhaps someone who is looking for a designer will come across one of your articles through a Google search and they’ll end up contacting you because of the way you communicated through the blog.

Blogging has been instrumental in the growth of Vandelay Design, and it is a good idea for any freelancers who have a long-term approach. The reason for that is that it takes time to build and audience and to develop search engine traffic that will lead to clients. If you’re goals for freelancing are short-term in nature, blogging may be able to help, but it’s unlikely to bring floods of traffic to your site in a short period of time.

For a more detailed look at the subject, please see our e-book How to Use a Blog to Market Your Design Business.

Search Engine Traffic

All businesses and marketers covet search engine traffic. Not only is it free, but you’re also getting exposure to people who are looking for exactly what you have to offer. Building search engine traffic is difficult in competitive industries like web design, but it is possible. Blogging is hands down the best way (in my opinion) to draw search engine traffic to your site if you are willing to put in the time consistently. Blogging will give you more pages on your site to attract visitors to, and it will allow you to target a wide variety of long tail search phrases rather than relying on getting top 10 rankings for extremely competitive phrases.

Building search engine traffic should really only be a priority if your approach to freelancing is long-term. If you have a short-term approach will you be unlikely to build enough search engine traffic in time to help with your goals. Search engines tend to rank sites higher if they have established trust and reputation, which is something that takes time.

PPC

Pay-Per-Click marketing can be an effective way to market your services because it will help to put you in front of people who are looking for what you have to offer, and it can be very affordable. You don’t need to have a large budget to use PPC ads, and you can pause them any time you are busy and do not need new clients. Additionally, you can target local areas or specific regions is you are looking to pick up clients in your local area or in a specific country. That way you don’t waste advertising money on people who are outside of your targeted area.

PPC can be helpful for freelancers who are looking for quick results. So if you have a short-term focus for freelancing and it’s not worth your time to work on developing organic search engine traffic, using PPC ads may be able to help with landing clients quickly.

Unique Selling Proposition

With so many designers and agencies out there competing for clients, you’ll be more likely to have success if there is something that sets you apart from the rest. Your unique selling proposition could be a particular style that you have mastered. It could be your reputation and experience in a particular industry or specialization. It could even be your approach to design or how you work with clients.

If you’re just getting started you may not have something that makes you unique, but it’s important to think about what you would like that to be in the future and what you need to do to get there. What skills and experience do you need? How do you need to market yourself so that potential clients will see what you have to offer as being unique?

Social Networking

Many designers not only use social networking as a way to communicate with others in the industry, but also to find work. This can be an effective approach for for freelancers of all kinds regardless of your goals, although, of course, your goals will impact your approach. Twitter and Facebook are the two most popular social media sites at the moment, and both are also popular among designers. However, for freelancers who are looking to find full-time employment, taking the time to develop a network at LinkedIn is highly recommended as many potential employers will have a presence there.

Social networking at sites like Twitter and Facebook can help to find new clients and to develop relationships with other professionals that may lead to referrals. For more information on this subject see How to Find Your Ideal Client Using Social Media from Social Media Today.

Jacob Cass of Just Creative Design had an interesting experience with the social site Dribbble. You can read his post How I Got a Job Using Dribbble.

Conclusion

There is a lot to consider when it comes to marketing your freelance business, but it all comes down to your goals. Always keep your purpose for freelancing in mind and make sure that the approach you are taking is well-suited for that purpose and that it will help you get to where you want to be. Remember, what may be an effective marketing approach for one freelance may not be the right fit for you.

If you haven’t already taken time to think about what you specifically want out or freelancing or to develop a basic marketing plan, I recommend that you do so. Having a game plan will help you to get more out of your efforts and to use your time more efficiently.

For more on business and freelancing please see:

7 Ad Networks for Design Bloggers

Steven Snell — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 12:03:02 +0000

In recent years as the number of blogs and websites in the design/development industry has drastically increased, several ad networks have been established specifically with the purpose of serving this industry. Just like the number of blogs and websites in the industry increasing, new products and services are constantly coming out to target this audience, and the networks showcased in this post exist to bring advertisers and publishers together.

If you’re a blogger or a website owner in this niche you may be looking for a way to sell ads on your site. Here you’ll find 7 networks to consider. Many are invitation-only networks, but generally they do accept suggestions for new sites to be included in their network.

BuySellAds

BuySellAds is currently the most popular option for design blogs and other sites in the design/development niche. According to their website, over 2,900 sites are using BuySellAds. In order to place BSA ads on your site you will need to be approved for the program, but it is not invitation only. BSA provides publishers with a lot of flexibility in terms of ad sizes and even how the prices are determined (flat monthly rate vs. CPM).

BSA is unlike the other options on this list in that you are not limited to the number of ads that can be shown on your website. Of course, the number of ads will have an influence on how much you are able to charge advertisers, but you’ll be able to decide how many ads you want to use, what sizes, and where you want to place them. BSA’s commission is 25% of the ad revenue, so you will get 75% of whatever the advertisers are charged. BSA is also unlike other ad networks listed here in that advertisers will be buying and ad specifically for your site, rather than buying an ad that will be shown across the entire network.

The Vandelay Design Blog has been using BSA for over two years now and we have had nothing but positive experiences.

The Deck

The Deck has been around since 2006 and is a selective, invitation-only network. Only one ad impression is shown per page view, and The Deck is selective with the advertisers that are accepted. The ads that are served through The Deck are small 120 x 90 banners with room for 80 characters of text.

The reputation of The Deck makes it an appealing network for publishers who are able to get accepted to the program. Their website does not include a form to submit your site for approval, but they do recommend using a contact link/email to make a request.

Carbon

Carbon is a relatively new ad network that was started by Fuel Brand Inc. Carbon works by classifying publishers into “circles” that allow advertisers to target specific segments of the industry. Carbon’s circles include design, dev/code, photography, and art & culture.

Publishers who are using Carbon show only one ad per page, and ads are rotated throughout all sites within a a circle. Carbon is an invitation-only network, but from their site you can suggest your site for inclusion.

AdPacks.com

AdPacks.com is a division of BuySellAds. Unlike the standard ads through BSA, AdPacks.com is invitation-only and publishers show only one ad per page. Advertisers can purchase ads target sites that focus on design, usability/UX, or web development. If you think your blog or site would be a good fit for one of their AdPacks you can fill out their contact form to request inclusion.

Fusion Ads

Fusion Ads is an invitation-only network where publishers show only one ad per page. Advertisers can purchase ads for one month, a one week burst, or for one day. Ads are 130 x 100 and 80 characters of text.

InfluAds

InfluAds publishers also serve just one ad per page. The ads are either 120 x 90 or 154 x 70, both with 60 characters of text. Publishers decide which ad size they would prefer to show. InfluAds keeps a fee of 19.2%. InfluAds classifies publishers into the following communities: startups and entrepreneurs, work and productivity, design and UX, and web development.

You can request to join InfluAds through their site.

Yoggrt

Yoggrt is an ad network that is currently in beta. Publishers will receive 100% of profits during beta. The ads shown through Yoggrt are 160 x 90 with 80 characters of text. Yoggrt recently updated their site to say that they have temporarily closed the network to new publishers, but they plan to re-open in a few months.

What Ad Networks Have You Used?

If you have any experience with these ad networks (or others that are applicable to design blogs) please feel free to share in the comments section.

31 Creative Business Cards

Steven Snell — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 12:15:02 +0000

When it comes to business cards many designers like to show off their creativity by using a non-traditional type of card. A creative business card can help to leave a lasting impression with people that you meet, and ultimately to more business. In this post we’ll showcase 31 different business cards for your own creative inspiration.

Reactor

Impact Salon

Ricky Richards

NationBuilder

Karen Cornish

Kenspecklegifts

1scale1

Jellibat

Kelli Anderson

Sergii Bogulavkyi

State Systems Radio

Nathan Jones

Cuts from Above

Matt Hollies

Bludot

Diesel Design

The Royal Chains

Port City Studio

Tag Communication Services

Ninja BTL

Senor Munoz

Elephant in the Room

SheetSeat

Egil Paulsen

Steven Whiteley

Lush

The World’s Greenest Business Card

Mark Dijkstra

Alex Backhouse

Casabella Furniture

Stephanie Scharf

For more business card inspiration please see:

25 Embossed Business Cards for Your Inspiration

Steven Snell — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:11:28 +0000

Designers are often looking for examples of creative business cards for inspiration, whether it be for designing their own cards or for client work. In the past we have showcased letterpress business cards, die cut business cards, and double sided business cards. Today we’ll look at 25 examples of embossed business cards.

Jaclyn Studor

Douglas Coots

J. Smith Associates

Three.Four.Three

Elkha

Never Without

All Wellness

Pao & Lee

Jacob Loose Mansion

Forget Computers

Distillery Studio

Windsor Assurance

Moments Day Spa

Christine Cerniglia

Josef Boutique

Stadium

Igor Saraiva

Taste of Ink Studios

Makken’s

Lori Sangiovani

Alex Doty

Santiago Anglada I Pigrau

Grosz Co Lab

Gouthier Design

B. Clark

For more business cards please see:

15 Proven Ways to Gain Exposure for Your Design Portfolio

Steven Snell — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:46:32 +0000

With so many web and graphic designers out there, getting the attention of potential clients and landing work can be a major challenge. The portfolio site is one of the most important assets for a designer, and an effective portfolio site will be an invaluable resource for keeping the business moving forward.

For many designers creating an attractive portfolio site is not the problem, getting people to see it is often much more of an issue. In order for the portfolio site to truly do it’s job it must be well-designed and it must attract the right types of visitors. In this post we’ll look at 15 things that you can do to increase the effectiveness of your portfolio site by getting more exposure for it.

1. Have a High-Quality Design for Your Portfolio Site

Not only is the quality of design of the items in your portfolio important, but the design of your portfolio site itself will also have a big impact on potential clients. Clients will expect a designer to have an attractive and usable site, otherwise they will question the work that the designer will be able to do for them.

When designing and coding your portfolio site be sure that it is getting all of the attention that it deserves. After all, it will be one of the most important aspects of your business, so it should not be rushed.

Impressive portfolio sites are great for encouraging visitors to contact you about their project, and they are also more likely to attract links and attention from other designers and bloggers.

2. Get Published in Web Design/CSS Galleries

There are hundreds, possibly even thousands, of gallery sites out there that exist for the purpose of showcasing beautiful websites. Having your site featured in a few of the more popular galleries will help it to attract attention from other galleries and design blogs, which can result in a flood of new visitors and a significant number of inbound links.

Getting your site featured in design galleries isn’t easy, but if you’ve done your best work with your portfolio site you’ll probably want to submit it to some galleries. Submitting to galleries can be rather time consuming, so you may want to consider a service like Gallery Rush that submits your site to a bunch of galleries for a relatively small fee of $17.

In addition to general design and CSS galleries, there are several that focus on showcasing the best portfolio sites, including:

3. Start a Blog

Possibly the best way to attract visitors to your portfolio site is to start a blog on the same domain. As you maintain the blog and publish new content your site will benefit from blog subscribers and repeat visitors, more content that can attract search engine traffic, increased ability to attract links, and a platform for showcasing your skills and expertise.

There are a number of different approaches that you can take with your blog. You may simply want to publish blog posts and content that will appeal to designers in attempt to increase your profile, build links, and establish the quality of your domain. You may want to publish case studies about your client work that will appeal to other designers who want to learn, as well as to potential clients who may be interested in knowing more about how you work. In this way you are able to use the blog to put a spotlight on your work, and hopefully the quality will lead to new clients. Or you could write posts that might answer questions that potential clients would have, or that would be optimized to be found in search results for queries of potential clients.

One of the most important benefits of blogging was mentioned briefly, and that is link building. If your portfolio site includes only a few pages of content (for example, a home page, portfolio page, about page, contact info page), it will be pretty difficult to attract any kind of significant search engine traffic. However, with a blog you will be drastically increasing the amount of content on the site, and that content will be much more likely to draw links from other blogs and from social media sites. Having a blog that attracts links will give your site/blog a chance to rank well for long tail search phrases, and in time your site should receive exponentially more search traffic than it would without the blog.

4. Pursue Freelance Blogging

In addition to publishing posts on your own blog, writing for other blogs also presents some great opportunities. Whether you are writing free guest posts or freelancing with larger design blogs that pay for contributions, you’ll usually receive an author bio at the end of the post that can include a link to your own site, and you’ll also be building up your name recognition.

Major design blogs like Smashing Magazine, Webdesigner Depot, and Six Revisions accept articles from designers and developers, and they pay for published articles. Aside from the larger blogs that pay contributors, writing free guest posts for smaller blogs can also be an excellent way to build links and gain exposure.

5. Build it to Be Search Engine Friendly

If you’re just starting your portfolio site it is unlikely that you’ll get more than a handful of search engine visitors for a while. But if you build the site to be friendly to search engines and if you work on publishing quality content on your blog and attracting links from other sites, you will be in a good position to see that search engine traffic rise over a period of time.

Having a search engine friendly website simply means that it is built to make it easy for search engine spiders to crawl the site and to determine what it is about, and to have a chance to rank well. It involves proper coding, use of page titles and headers, proper site structure, etc. (For a more detailed look at the subject see How to Create Search Engine Friendly Websites.)

6. Participate in Social Networking

Social media and social networking sites present opportunities to attract visitors to your portfolio site or blog, as well as to connect with other designers and build your professional network.

For getting visitors to your blog there are a number of niche-specific sites that are excellent alternatives to major social news sites like Digg. If you’re looking to reach a targeted audience of designers and developers try sites like:

Aside from news/voting sites, there are excellent opportunities available to showcase work from your portfolio at networking sites like:

7. Be Active on Twitter

Twitter is extremely popular with designers, so if you are looking for a place to connect with others you really should be active on Twitter (find us at @VandelayDesign). In terms of getting visitors from Twitter, you can share tweets with links to your blog posts, or tweet links to recently completed projects, or even projects that are in process when you are looking for feedback. Like any other type of social networking, you must genuinely become a part of the community of users in order to have much impact for yourself. If it seems that you are only there for self promotion and not to interact, users will notice and the positive impacts will be minimal.

8. Distribute Freebies

Everyone love freebies. As a designer you can give away free templates, Photoshop brushes, PSD files, vectors, textures, icons, or just about any other type of resource that can be used for design. Giving items away can help to draw new visitors to your site, and maybe they’ll check out your portfolio while they are there. Freebies are also good for building links from other blogs and social media sites, and just as importantly, it gives you an opportunity to show your quality of work to the world. Just because you are giving it away for free doesn’t me that it can’t help to make you land clients or make money, so be sure that whatever you are giving away is up to your level of quality.

In addition to giving away freebies from your own site, you can also produce items to be given away at other sites and blogs, which may help to give some added exposure to your work. Many design blogs work with various designers to produce freebies to give to their readers. If you’re hoping to get your work noticed by a large audience, this may be a great opportunity.

9. Do Interviews

Designers are frequently asked to do interviews for blogs or for students. Although it will take some of your time to do the interview, they are great for getting exposure to new people and for allowing others to get to know more about you. Most people like to work with others that they know and like, so it can even sometimes lead to new clients. Even if it doesn’t lead to a new client, the interview is likely to include a link to your portfolio site and it may even include some screenshots of your work.

10. Join Flickr Groups for Showcasing Your Work

Flickr groups present an opportunity to showcase your work to others, and to receive feedback on your design. There are plenty of Flickr groups that focus on web and/or graphic design (this post is old but much of it is still relevant – 99 Flickr Groups for Design Inspiration). While these groups are unlikely to send a rush of traffic to your site, it is a supplementary way to showcase your work and draw a smaller number of visitors.

11. Design for a High-Profile Client

Some designers have been able to get valuable exposure by designing a site for a high-profile client. In situations where the designer is not yet established, the project will often need to be done for a discounted rate or even for free, but the resulting exposure may more than make up for it.

It’s not rare for clients to ask for a free website in exchange for the “exposure” that you’ll get from it, and in 99% of cases it’s not worth it. However, there may be situations, such as designing a custom theme for a very popular blog, where real exposure could justify a discounted or free service. If you agree to this be sure that you know specifically what type of exposure you will be getting. Are they simply giving you a link in the footer or are they publishing a review of your design services on the blog?

12. Run a Pay-Per-Click Ad Campaign

PPC ads are a great option because they can work with just about any budget, they can be highly targeted, and they can be turned on and off at will. When you’re looking for some new projects you can set up a PPC campaign, and you can even target only local clients if you’d like. You set the maximum amount that you are willing to spend on a daily or monthly basis, and you’ll start reaching some potential clients that are looking for what you have to offer. When things pick up and you are not looking for work you can easily pause the campaign and then restart it when you need more work.

13. Have a Memorable Business Card

Although most of the methods that we have covered in this post involve online marketing or promotional efforts, it is still possible to draw visitors to your site from offline methods. Most designers have business cards that they give out to people that they meet here and there, and hopefully they lead to some business. Having a memorable and attractive business card will help you to stand out and give you a better chance of being the designer that is contacted by the potential client.

If you’re looking for some inspiration or business card resources please see:

14. Sell Templates/Themes

More and more designers are generating income by selling premium WordPress themes or HTML/CSS templates. Selling themes or templates doesn’t have to be your only source of income, they are also great for picking up work from customers who want to get some customizations done to the theme or template. Adding some quality themes or templates for sale from your portfolio site can help to generate interest in your services, in addition to making some money from the sales.

15. Leave Comments on Other Blogs

Another way to attract visitors to your site is by leaving comments on other blogs. Instead of leaving links to your site in the body of your comment, which can lead to your comment being marked as spam or deleted, leave a thoughtful, intelligent comment and provide your URL in the proper field when entering the comment (almost all blogs allow you to leave a URL). No one comment is likely to generate a huge amount of traffic to your site, but if you are leaving a lot of comments that provide useful information and are relevant to the posts/blogs where you are commenting, it can result in a decent number of targeted prospects entering your site.

What’s Your Experience?

If you have a portfolio site, what have you found to be especially effective for gaining exposure, visitors, and new clients?

23 Double Sided Business Cards

Steven Snell — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:38:02 +0000

Designers love creative business cards, and they can have a big impact on potential clients as well. One way to have an impressive card is to use both sides for a purpose. In this post we’ll showcase more than 20 examples of beautiful double-sided business cards for your design inspiration. There are a wide variety of ways that these cards use both sides, and it should provide you with some ideas for your own cards, or for those of your clients.