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To celebrate the holidays, we’re releasing a great set of icons developed by Jack Cai especially for WDD.
Ravenna is a set of 92 free raster based icons that you can use for your webpages and projects. The icons come available in 9 different sizes, from 16×16 up to 256×256 pixels and available as transparent PNG files. Icons are free for all your personal projects.
If you’d like to share these icons, please refer your friends to this page.
Here’s a full preview of all 92 icons for quick reference. Download yours below and enjoy!
Recently we looked at the characteristics of effective blog theme design, and I’d like to take a similar look at the portfolio sites of freelance designers.
A designer’s online portfolio is a critical part of the business, and in some cases the most valuable asset of the business.
A good portfolio site is a constant lead-generation tool, but what is it specifically that makes a great portfolio site?
A portfolio site should clearly and concisely communicate with visitors about the services that are provided and what the designer has to offer to potential clients. Because there are so many different types of design and various specializations, it’s not safe to assume that visitors will have a clear understanding of the services that are offered without them being communicated.
The purpose of a portfolio site is to show the work of the designer and to attract new clients. However, without a website that communicates effectively with visitors, it’s unlikely that visitors will make the extra effort to contact the designer about potential work.
Tony Geer not only has an attractive portfolio site, but he also uses prime screen real estate to quickly tell visitors what he offers and allows them to contact him or browse through his work.
Leigh Taylor has a little badge on her site that lets visitors know that she is currently available for work.
Some freelance designers choose to post prices on their portfolio site, whether it’s an hourly rate or project-based pricing, and others choose not to post prices. Whichever method you choose, it should be communicated clearly on the site. If you’re using set prices, the details of services provided and what fits into those packages should be listed and explained, if necessary.
If you’ve decided not to display prices, which is the choice of most freelancers, it should be clearly stated to visitors how they can get more information about services and pricing, or perhaps get a quote for their specific needs. Most freelancers accomplish this by simply asking the visitor to complete a contact form that may help to get some of the details of the project in order to get a quote.
The method you choose for pricing is a matter of personal preference, but whatever you choose, be sure that it is clearly and concisely communicated.
Adaptd offers web design, web development, and SEO services, which is very clear from their navigation menu that is on every page. Once you click on one of the options you’ll see a clear description of each of the services, and they have chosen to list prices on the site as well.
When potential clients are looking at freelancers for their project, there are a number of factors that will weigh in to their decision. Of course, they’ll expect to see that the designer has the abilities and experience to do a good job, and cost is also a common concern. Just as important as these factors is the desire of clients to work with someone that they like and someone that will give them a good overall experience.
Most business owners or decision makers who are responsible for handling and overseeing the design process of their company’s website are at least somewhat intimidated by the process. They typically want to work with someone that will help to make it a smooth, enjoyable, and successful experience. If a freelancer is able to show some personality through their portfolio site, potential clients are far more likely to feel a personal connection and to see them working together.
Winnie Lim uses a brief message as a greeting to visitors that gives a personal touch, and it encourages them to read more on her About page.
Portfolio sites often feature some of the most creative designs. Because design is an artistic and creative profession, the website of a freelance designer is seen as a true representation of their work and their skill levels. Portfolio sites sometimes take more creative liberties without the potential negative results as other types of sites. In fact, in many cases potential clients will expect to see some creativity and originality from the site of a freelance designer.
Creativity can come in any number of different forms. Maleika Attawel uses a soft textured look on her portfolio.
The first point we looked at was the need for clear communication. One of the biggest influences on the communication of a website is how much information is provided. While portfolio sites have some necessary items that need to be stated and explained, getting rid of any excess will help the existing information to stand out more and to be easily understood.
In addition to eliminating excess wording and content, excess design elements can also be avoided. Some of the most elegant and highly-respected portfolio sites are very minimal in their approach. The basics of a portfolio site are very simple: a listing of services, description of qualifications, showcase of past work, and a means of contact. Excess elements outside of the necessary can often do more harm than good. Many portfolios are now including a blog (which we’ll look at later), but most other content and excess elements in the design will do little to help attract new business.
Rob Morris has a great looking portfolio site that features a clean layout with only the relevant information.
Of course, a portfolio site would not be a portfolio site with examples of past work. This is what most potential clients will want to see, and in most cases they’ll be gauging your skill level based on these examples.
The quality of work in your portfolio is a major factor on the success of the portfolio site, but presentation can also make a big difference. In some cases designers display their work in a creative or impressive way that almost overshadows the work itself (which can be good or bad).
Matt Dempsey’s site showcases his work with nice, full-size images.
Not every design you’ve ever done needs to be included in your portfolio. In fact, it’s better to only showcase specific examples rather than everything. Most potential clients aren’t going to sit and look through everything anyway, so be sure that what you display has been chosen for maximum impact.
In some cases you may be offering different types of design (such as blog theme design, e-commerce sites, logo design, business cards, etc.), so it’s good to have a few high-quality examples to show for each category rather than having one big collection of all of your work. Smaller, more selective portfolios are also easier for visitors to look through in order to find something relevant to them.
Robbie Manson’s homepage showcases his featured projects prominently. Each one has more detail of his work explained if you click on the images.
Since the ultimate purpose of the online portfolio is to attract new customers, it only makes sense to ask visitors for their business. How you go about this is up to you, but most portfolio sites simply encourage visitors to contact them for a quote or to fill out a form for more information. It’s a simple act, but prompting potential clients to take that step can make a big difference in the number of inquiries received.
Luke Larson’s site has a link that says “hire me” that takes you right to the contact form. The link is a small change from just having a standard contact link, but it obviously encourages the visitor to take action.
Once you’ve made that call to action for visitors to contact you about your services, it’s critical that they have an easy way to contact you. Most portfolio sites use a contact form, although some will choose to just list an email address. Either way, the contact information should be easily found and accessed from any page (meaning, if you have a contact form, make sue that each page on your site links to that contact form).
Most designers want to get some basic information from potential clients about their needs at the time of initial contact. This can be easily accomplished through a form, but remember that if too much information is requested or required, some contacts may be lost. The easier you make it to contact you, the more likely people will be willing to do so. You’ll have to make a decision about what information is critical to you so that you get what’s necessary, but not enough to turn off potential clients.
Marius Roosendaal has a contact form on his homepage that requires minimal information from the visitor. Also, by having the form right on the homepage it’s even easier for people to see and to use.
A portfolio site can do everything right and have incredible work to display, but if no one sees it, it will do no good. There are so many freelancers and design studios out there that it’s not possible to set up a small portfolio site and expect it to draw search traffic that will convert into potential clients. In order for the site to be effective it needs to be visible.
There are a few different options when it comes to getting a portfolio in the view of potential clients. First, there are literally hundreds of design galleries that showcase exemplary work. Of course, smaller ones have relatively little traffic, but many of the larger and more established galleries have helped freelancers to land a number of new clients. Almost all galleries allow anyone to submit websites to be included, and those that are worthy will get featured.
Most of the visitors that will come to a site through a design gallery will be other designers, but many designers have benefited immensely from this exposure, and the links are great for SEO purposes as well. To find galleries to submit to, see The CSS Gallery List. New galleries are popping up all the time, but this list is comprehensive enough to keep you busy for a long time.
You can see that Dawghouse Design has received a ton of exposure from galleries.
A second method that’s used by some freelancers to gain exposure is the use of a blog on the same domain as the portfolio. Blogs are great for drawing traffic, building links, demonstrating expertise, and encouraging repeat visits. the blog posts may attract visitors that wind up becoming clients. Of course, maintaining a blog takes time, but it’s one of the best methods for getting eyes on your portfolio site.
In addition to just helping your portfolio site to be more visible, blogs also help to show your personality to visitors and to start to build there trust. Earlier we looked at the need for personality on a portfolio site, and a blog is a great way to show visitors more of you.
Chris Spooner uses his blog to gain exposure and find new clients. Although he doesn’t use his blog to directly promote his services, Chris has established his name and become a repsected leader in the industry primarily through the demonstration of his expertise on his blog.
A third way to get people to see your portfolio site is to use localized SEO techniques. Although competition for general web design-related terms is very stiff, you may be able to easily rank on the first page of search engines for a local term. You may even prefer working with local clients anyway. To target local visitors use city, state or province names in your page titles and throughout your site when appropriate. Additionally, work on building links to your site with localities in the anchor text of the links. (To read more, see Search Engine Optimization for Local Business Results.)
Another method for exposure is to use Pay-Per-Click advertising. With PPC you can choose which search phrases you’d like to target and how much you’re willing to spend. You can also set geographic restrictions so you’re only targeting people who are looking for your services in your local area. PPC is a great option for a small advertising budget.
Some people feel that valid XHTML and CSS are important on any website, and others feel that it doesn’t really make a difference. Even if you don’t see the need for valid code in most situations, portfolio sites are an exception. A portfolio site that has all kinds of validation errors sends the wrong message to visitors. Although most potential clients won’t care about valid code, and many probably won’t even know what it means, some will. And those that will care are unlikely to consider a designer that doesn’t have a valid website of their own.
Some designers will choose to display evidence of validation and others will not. Again, this is a matter of personal preference. The little logo or icon showing that you have valid coded isn’t really what’s important. It’s more important that if visitors decide to test your code that it will validate.
Andrew Bradshaw’s site includes a simple message in the footer to show that his code validates.
Social media sites and technologies like Twitter and Digg are something that the tech savvy take completely for granted. We just automatically assume that if you are on the Internet, you are using social media. This isn’t really the case. There are some very important people that are not yet aware of social media and what it can do – your clients.
Social media is definitely a source of new income for you as you have the opportunity to go back and update your old clients to current technologies. The foundation-laying for social media came in 1999 when Rick Levine and others wrote the Cluetrain Manifesto. This manifesto lays out simple rules for online markets and social media.
Cluetrain Manifesto – see Cluetrain.com for more.
Gone are the days where an e-mail newsletter and an occasional site update were enough to assuage the information junkie consumer. Now people want up to the minute interaction, with live help on websites and Twitter updates from the CEO whenever they can get them. While you know the power of interactive marketing, the guys in the boardroom may not yet “get it“. It is up to you to make them get it.
The best argument that you can make for social media is that it is replacing traditional SEO practices. Gone are the days when a link from a highly pageranked site got you some street cred with Google – although that still doesn’t hurt – now it is all about how many Diggs your content gets. The key argument is that traditional SEO work is now not enough – it needs to be supplemented with social media.
There is a bit of a fear surrounding social media for companies that like to “stay on message”, or in other words not give the public a forum to air complaints about its products or services. Your argument here is that by giving the customers that forum, your business is extending an open hand in friendship to its clients. This hand will rarely get slapped away unless you are dealing with a really irate client base, in which case you probably won’t have a business for much longer anyway.
There is more to be said for allowing your business to be interacted with online than there is to be said for the time lost. In the end, employees will be communicating with customers so it isn’t really time lost. We spend too much time in business on hunting new prospects and not enough farming our current customers. If we aren’t careful, another business will be happy to come along and pick up that slack.
If your past clients do not yet have a social media strategy, it is time to present them with one. If you don’t already have an e-mail newsletter set up to go out to all of your clients, go set that up. We’ll wait. Don’t forget to add a “join my newsletter” page or link to your site as well. Send out an e-mail newsletter talking about how you would like to update their sites with access to Twitter, Digg, Facebook and other social media technologies and sites. Determine what is within your scope and develop a social media package that you give past clients a discount on. Make sure it is a clear and decisive package that is priced reasonably enough to be accessible. We’ve developed one here below that you can price out at whatever you think is reasonable.
Once you have created it, include it on your website as a new product. Simply having it available will give you an “edge” over other web design companies. Web designers aren’t the only tech-savvy people on earth and those who already use Twitter and Digg are more likely to call your company than another if you have these technologies showcased on your site. Not only does it give you a new item to sell, it gives you a bit of variation – you’ll probably look forward to your social media projects quite a bit when you start getting them.
Core Package – Must-Haves
Add-Ons – Nice-to-Haves
The various features above can add up, so you want to package your Social Media kit like a Chinese Food menu – allow deletions and substitutions. Just make sure that you have adequately priced out each component so that you do not leave yourself holding the bag on hours worked. There are also a few key items you can’t leave out, which is why we have separated out the core package from the add-ons. All of the components in there are necessary unless your client is just adamantly against it – in which case all you can do is present them with this article and move on if they still don’t want it.
How to Not Set Up a Social Media Package.
You should also make it clear that your package is to initially implement a technology, not to maintain it. While this may create a good income stream for you, social media maintenance isn’t like site maintenance – it is very time consuming and best left up to the company that wants to use it. You have nothing to offer someone who is asking you for a quote on dog grooming – only the dog grooming company that hires you can answer that kind of question. Make sure that your client knows that you are there for them if implementation falls down, but that they have the responsibility of updating things like Twitter and their blog.
Your clients will ask what a social bookmarking site is. The best way to explain it to someone who doesn’t know is to ask them if they know how to Favorite or Bookmark a site in their browser. Most will say yes. Digg and other social bookmarking sites simply serve as a website that acts as a more organized Favorites list, allowing you to tag an article for reading later, or a useful resource to come back to later.
A good argument could be made for going back and making every single page of website content on your client’s site “Diggable”. However, this would be somewhat time consuming. Best to make a few key pages “Diggable”, such as a company’s environmental policies, key product pages and press releases. Basically anything that you consider “Diggable” material should be “Diggable” to the public.
Don’t forget to make the page accessible to more than just Digg. There is a fine balance to walk here – you don’t want to saturate the web visitor with choices of too many social media outlets. You can use a script called “Bookmarkify” that allows to choose which social media outlet icons show up below the content and which can be expanded on from a menu item.
It allows access to all social bookmarking sites but allows you to show just a few on your page. It is available for PHP and as most of you already know, you simply need to give the page that you are putting it on a “.php” extension in order to insert the script.
While it isn’t instant gratification for the consumer, a blog and weekly updates to that blog keep customers coming back to your site. That and they can be marketed on directories that are reserved exclusively for blogs, including Technorati and Blogarama. Having a Technorati authority is quickly becoming just as important as a Google pagerank and you simply cannot have it without a blog. After minimal staff training, company staff should be able to update the blog using WordPress or a similar blogging platform. Do yourself a giant favor and don’t use Joomla – it’s a huge headache and not user-friendly enough for your clients to use. Play around with both if you like but really, just save yourself the time and go with WordPress for client sites.
The blog shouldn’t be all about company specials and company products. It should cover related industry news and topics that you know are important to your demographic. A company selling investments for seniors may post activities for seniors, a daily crossword or sudoku puzzle, and profiles of healthy and active seniors. If you are offering good, hard information, you can plug your product about once a week. Try to keep it to news and updates about your products or your company rather than straight out promotions unless you are cross-promoting with a company wide campaign.
There’s a new press release in town. A social media press release gets your message out to traditional outlets and social media with the simple click of a button. It incorporates RSS feeds, social bookmarking sites, and many other features. I could go on about it for a while but it is best just to direct you to a template for it where it is fully explained.
If your client has television commercials or video of any kind, you’ll want to set up a YouTube page for them. For a basic page, this takes the form of a simple YouTube account in the name of the company. They can then customize their profile page with their own videos and gain subscribers.
Links to the YouTube profile should be included in their site and blog. Much like a Twitter page, you can customize the YouTube profile with background art and your own color scheme. Machinima did a particularly nice job with this.
If the company is willing, they can even bust out things like old training videos that you can have converted from VHS to digital. The quality won’t be awesome but the vintage value may be something that the customers enjoy. Anything that attracts customers to the company and doesn’t go too far off the wall is good. Be careful when you are quoting out that you include pricing for converting VHS tapes to digital. If you don’t have sufficient expertise in this area, find a freelancer to partner with on video.
Live Help should only really be implemented if the company makes a clear commitment of personnel to it. There are often monthly charges for Live Help services and these can add up if there is no instantly recognizable return on investment for the company.
Due to the charges, you may want to gear any suggestions of Live Help services towards the sales section of your client’s site rather than customer service. Despite this suggestion, customers looking for service will still use the Live Help portion of the site, so the company should be prepared for that.
Live Help is also only really good if your client is actively selling something online. Sometimes a little hand holding is all a customer needs to gain the confidence to purchase from a particular company. Live Help is particularly useful if your customer has customizable packages that they sell such as software packages or subscriptions with different components.
If this describes your client, hook them up with any one of the Live Help services out there. Simply do a search on Live Help and pick the one that you and your customer like best. You can also ask your customer to pick out the one that they prefer, which may make more sense since they will be buying the monthly subscription. Once they have selected their service, they can have you implement it on their site for them. Some Live Help services even include free site implementation, so your services may not even be required. Your client will appreciate the suggestion when their conversions increase.
Obviously the package put together above is meant as a start, not as a finish. If you have a company that sells youth-oriented items, such as sports gear, you may want a MySpace profile as well. You’ll notice the line about finding other directories and sites that your customer should be on. This may involve adding them to directories or commenting on blogs with a link to their site. It can be argued that this fits more into search engine marketing territory and should be charged out by the hour as ongoing work.
Overall, it is easy to see where social media can become a huge profit center for web designers. With it you will move your customers to the next level and prove that you can give them added value that nobody else can. Except other people who have read this article!
WordPress is a great tool for creating blogs. It works well most of the time, it offers automatic updates, and it offers the numerous benefits of open source software … including the fact that it’s free to use.
WordPress certainly isn’t perfect, though. (Then again, what software package is perfect?) Fortunately, most WordPress problems can be solved with a few tweaks.
Here are nine common WordPress problems and solutions.
This error message typically specifies a problem with stray characters, some of which are not visible, in front of the opening tag or after the closing tag of the file. Check the error message to find the particular file name that’s generating the warning. (The file name usually is at the end of the error message.)
To fix this problem, you have two choices. The easier choice, if you haven’t made any significant editing changes lately, would be to replace the file that’s causing the error message with your backup copy that was working correctly.
If a working backup copy isn’t available, you’ll need to download the file that’s causing the problem. Open the file in a text editing program that doesn’t create hidden characters; Windows Notepad is a great choice. Do not use a word processing program, such as Microsoft Word, because it sometimes will insert hidden formatting characters in the file. Make sure the first characters are <? and the last characters are ?> in the file. Check for any hidden characters at the end of the file, such as spaces, by moving your cursor to the end of the file and deleting any spaces.
Making regular backups of your database is an extremely important process, one that most people don’t perform often enough. For additional peace of mind, it’s probably best to keep three or four copies of your database backup file, just in case your primary backup file is corrupted. That can be difficult if your backup files occupy a lot of storage space, however.
Most of the time, a large database backup file is caused by certain plugins storing a significant amount of data. Plugins that block spam or that collect statistics on your blog can generate a large amount of data that really isn’t necessary to store in your database backup file.
If you’re using a common backup tool, you should be able to select the specific tables included in the database backup file. Just include the tables that are important to your blog’s data in your backup file; leave out tables that generate interesting data, but that don’t contain the core information for your blog.
Image files can add require a large amount of storage space, too. If you have some image files that you’re no longer using with your blog that are being backed up with your database, try deleting the old image files.
Sometimes, this problem carries an easy fix: Just force your Web browser to reload the page from the server. The Web browser stores copies of Web pages in cache, or a memory area, on your computer. Upon subsequent visits to that Web page, the Web browser loads the page from cache, which allows it to load faster.
If your Web browser is loading a stored copy of the page from cache, it might not be showing your latest changes because it’s an old copy. To force the Web browser to load the page from the server: In Firefox, hold down Ctrl and Shift, and then press the R key. In Internet Explorer, hold down the Shift key while clicking the Refresh button. Depending on your browser’s setup, though, these key shortcuts might not work.
You also can try visiting a proxy site, such as guardster.com, and load your page from there. Because it’s a proxy site, it won’t use cache and will always load the latest version.
Sorry to deliver bad news, but, most of the time, if your browser isn’t causing the problem, user mistakes are to blame. Rarely, you might experience this problem if you’ve downloaded a plugin for WordPress that changes the way your browser cache behaves. If you suspect a plugin problem, you’ll have to check the documentation for that particular plugin, looking in particular for how it clears the browser cache.
Otherwise, common problems that might cause WordPress to appear as though it isn’t loading or saving your changes include making sure that you’ve uploaded the latest version of WordPress and you haven’t make a mistake in the actual coding. You might have to go through your coding line by line to look for mistakes.
Users have reported this problem sporadically on message boards over the past several months. Although narrowing down the specific cause of the problem has been difficult — in part because of the sporadic nature of the problem — it appears that certain plugins interfere with the deletion option.
Until more information is discovered about which collection of plugins are causing the deletion problem, you can try a workaround solution: Just deactivate all of your plugins, make the necessary deletions, and then reactivate your plugins.
Permalink problems can be especially difficult to solve. Here are a few common potential issues related to permalinks, but, if these tips don’t fix your particular problem, you may need to check WordPress forums for information on your specific problem.
If you recently installed or upgraded WordPress, the software might not have correctly created the .htaccess file, which is key to creating permalinks. (You might even see an error message during WordPress installation related to the .htaccess file.) Such problems can occur because some hosts do not allow WordPress or you to access or edit the .htaccess file, which can cause permalink errors. Most of the time, you can check your Control Panel to see whether your host allows .htaccess file editing.
If you suspect this problem, contact your host to see what types of permissions you need to set on your server to allow WordPress to gain access to the .htaccess file.
WordPress has a few good automated tools for limiting the amount of spam that appears in comments. Blocking spam permanently, however, requires stringent moderation on your part.
To control the WordPress features related to managing comments, click Administration and Settings Panel. You can control all aspects of discussions here. To help in limiting spam, try these tips.
Click the A Comment Is Held For Moderation box if you want to receive an e-mail each time a comment is made, thereby giving you the option of accepting or denying the comment. Of course, if you receive dozens of comments each day, this option will generate an overwhelming number of e-mail messages.
Click the Comment Author Must Fill Out Name And E-mail box, which forces anyone making a comment to provide the necessary information. Some spammers might be deterred by this extra step.
Because spammers sometimes include multiple hyperlinks in their messages, you can tell WordPress to hold comments that have a certain number of links through the Content Moderation section. In the same section, you also can enter keywords that you think you’ll see in spam comments. WordPress will flag any comment that contains these words.
The first potential fix of a plugin problem is the easiest: Make sure that you’ve downloaded the latest version of the plugin. New releases of plugins add features, but they also often fix bugs, including the one you might be having. To check for new versions of your plugins, just click Administration and Plugin. WordPress should list all of your plugins, along with notifications of any that have upgrades available. Click Upgrade Automatically, and you’ll have the latest version. (In fact, checking for the latest versions of all of your plugins is something you probably should do on a regular basis, perhaps two to four times per year.)
If that doesn’t work, you have a few other options. You can try reinstalling the plugin from scratch; perhaps the plugin software became corrupted. Try to remember if you made any other software changes or installed other plugins between the time the problematic plugin was working correctly and the time that it failed. You could have an incompatibility issue between the malfunctioning plugin and the software changes you made. See if the author of the plugin has a blog where you can report your problem. It’s possible others are having the same issue, and the plugin author will create a fix or knows a workaround.
Occasionally, if you upgrade your version of WordPress, you could end up with multiple plugins that stop working correctly. You’ll just have to deactivate the malfunctioning plugins until the author comes up with a new release that will be compatible with the new version of WordPress.
Before uninstalling a plugin, it’s a good idea to visit the plugin author’s site, just to see whether the author has created any specific instructions for uninstalling the plugin. If you remove a plugin incorrectly, it could cause multiple errors.
You’ll also want to make sure you didn’t make any changes to your template files based on the plugin. Some plugins require such changes upon installation. If you can’t remember whether you made such changes, read through the installation instructions for the plugin and see whether the instructions called for such changes to your template.
Once you’ve checked for any problems related to deleting the plugin, take one final step before deleting it: Make sure you open the Plugin Administration screen and deactivate the plugin before deleting it. Trying to delete an active plugin could cause error messages.
Finally, we offer two important tips related to troubleshooting:
At some point, you may encounter a problem that cannot be fixed or that corrupts your data beyond repair. There’s only one solution: Reloading your data from your backup source. Backup your database on a regular basis. Better safe than sorry.
Second, make sure you always have downloaded the latest version of WordPress. Version updates will fix various bugs and security problems as users report them. Some new releases might seem minor, but that minor tweak might be the one that fixes your perplexing problem.
Sometimes, it seems absolutely impossible to keep up with all the design work you’ve got coming in. But, other times, it may seem like you just don’t have enough work to meet your income goals.
In these times, it makes sense to offer a few more services to your clients — to make sure that you can make a little more money.
The ten services below can make it easy to boost your income and take advantage of the design skills you’ve developed.
Everybody and their dog wants a blog these days — but a lot of these would-be bloggers aren’t up to much more than opening a free account on Blogger or WordPress. Setting up a hosted blog, installing plugins and customizing a theme are all beyond them. But if you can provide these services, you can pick up some easy cash.
While setting up a blog can require a little technical knowledge, it’s generally a fast process, especially when you get a little practice. In general, customers looking for blog set-up services don’t necessarily want a custom design: they usually have a theme in mind that they just want to slap their own images on. WordPress takes about five minutes to install, making blog set up surprisingly lucrative.
Many web design clients don’t really want to worry about hosting their own website. If you’re willing to take on that worry, you can make plenty of money and increase your chances of repeat business. After all, if you both designed a website and are hosting it, a customer is unlikely to go to someone else to update his or her site.
You don’t have to mess with servers of your own, either: using a virtual server from one of the many web hosts available can handle the needs of many small websites. There is a little worry that goes along with hosting — if a client’s website isn’t up, it’s on your shoulders — but it remains a relatively easy source of income.
For your clients who are buying ad space online, it’s worth their while to use ads that match their website’s design. Offering an online ad design service saves your clients from trying to turn their logo into a banner ad and puts some money in your pocket. Because there are certain common ad sizes, you can offer a single ad design or a package of several common sizes.
Many web design customers aren’t actually looking for a unique design for their website. Instead, they’re more than happy to accept a template — especially if they’ll pay less for it than for a custom-designed site. Some customers are just looking for files they can set up themselves, while others want to hire a web designer to fully implement the template.
Either option allows you to continue making money off a design long after you’ve finalized it. In addition to selling your templates on your own, there are many market places with significant traffic for specific types of templates (i.e. WordPress, Joomla, etc.).
There are certain icons you’ll spot all over the web — such as the RSS icon. While there’s one set symbol, though, there are thousands of design variations upon that theme. Not only can you sell such icons to individuals setting up their own websites, but you can also sell them to other web designers to help them speed up their work. Icons are commonly sold in sets related either by theme or design qualities: you can often earn more with scalable vector icons. There are thousands of potential icons you can work with, as well.
Design is not the only aspect of a website that a client might hire out. While you might be given all the text the client wants included in a website, you may not. Rather than trying to help your client find someone up to writing copy, you can agree to take it on as part of the website design. From there you have two options — write it yourself or sub-contract to a writer.
You effectively earn a finder’s fee from providing a writer with the work, and if you have a writer you can work with regularly, you can take on more projects than you might otherwise. You don’t have to limit yourself to writing, either: web applications, marketing and other projects associated with setting up a new website all offer sub-contracting opportunities.
Putting a website through its paces can require money, leading many web designers to simply skip it. But if you offer this service to your clientele you’ll be able to provide another layer of quality work. User testing can be as simple as sitting down with a couple of people and asking them to try to use the site. It can be as cheap of offering them lunch in exchange for their time. You may have to spend more time explaining to your customers just what user testing is than you might need to spend on your other services, but that bump in income is often worth it.
Especially when you’re setting up a website that a client expects to update on his own, you have to expect lots of questions on how to use the site. Those questions don’t have to be just another cost of doing business, though.
Instead, you can offer a client the service of walking him through every part of the completed website and explaining each step. If you and your client are in the same area, it might be worthwhile to go in and educate the client in person. However, with all the various online conferencing applications that allow you to share your desktop with an observer, physical proximity isn’t necessary.
The methods search engines use rank websites change quite often. Part of good website maintenance is updating a site as necessary to keep up with search engines’ needs. Offering search engine optimization offers you a chance to revisit past clients’ websites: they may not need visible changes, but a little tinkering under the hood may get a website better search results. You can also offer SEO services to potential clients who already have well-designed websites.
While web marketing can be a full-time job, you can provide your clients with a basic web marketing package: setting up accounts on social networking sites, emailing bloggers on your client’s behalf and other small tasks. Most designers don’t have any interest in doing a large amount of marketing, but a few simple services can help a client get started as well as generate a little income.
If you’re interested in adding any of these services to your web design offerings, consider starting with your existing clientele. Send out an email explaining what you’re adding to your offerings and see if you get any bites. From there, you can start thinking about new customers. It may not be practical to add all ten services in one go (and you may need to brush up on a few skills before marketing your work), but these options can give you a starting point.
Additionally, there are far more than ten services a web designer can offer. Think about how you might combine your non-design skills with your web work and see what you come up with — you might find an option that works better with your skill set than those listed above.
If you’ve still got a couple of hours left over after you finish helping your clients, consider passive income opportunities. Every service you offer results in active income: you’re trading your time directly for money.
With passive income, however, once you’ve established an income source, you get money with only minimal time and effort. Traditionally, passive income came from investments — you needed a large amount of money in order to earn income. However, these days there are plenty of opportunities for web designers to create passive income streams: most require an upfront investment of time (rather than money), but can continue to pay off indefinitely.
These are just a few examples of passive income streams. There are thousands more available to you, and they’re just a matter of figuring out how you can sell your skills without selling your time.
Calabria is a set of 20 free and exclusive vector icons that can be used on websites, logos and more.
These icons are absolutely free for both personal and commercial uses and you can go ahead and download yours now.
If you’d like to share these icons, please refer your friends to this page.
Here’s a full preview of all 20 icons for quick reference. Download yours below and enjoy!
Liked the icons? Have you used them in a project? Do you prefer vector or raster based icons?
Share your comments and links below and let us know what you’d like to see next!
Gary Vee, as he is affectionately called, is gifted with many things including wit, charm, and charisma. His name on the other hand was definitely a hurdle for this loud and sometimes obnoxious (meant with love) social media champion.
He started his early online career with Wine Library, a brilliant and easy to remember name. When launching his first video blog Wine Library TV I’m sure he was faced with the retching decision on how to handle his own name. Most hoping to make a career on screen and being faced with a difficult name would opt for a much easier to remember screen name.
But not for Gary… this little fireball decided to tackle online media with sucky name in tow.
Turn liability into assets
His tenacity has turned the liability of his name into a household word… at least for us geeks and social media freaks. For those of us who follow his wisdom, we couldn’t imagine him with any other name. The name Gary Johnson just wouldn’t fit.
He built a brand on his name right down to GaryVaynerchuk.com. How can you have success on a domain that can’t be spelled correctly by 99% of the world?
Easy, Gary’s favorite word ‘hustle‘.
Doing the hustle
The first thing your eyes go to on his website is his name. His last name is broken down by syllables vay-ner-chuck. When he introduces himself on video he pronounces his last name Vay… ner… chuk drawing out and dropping dead air in between each syllable.
Not afraid to laugh at himself, Gary is constantly making fun of his own name. Making it possible for the rest of us to laugh with him.
Gary worked tirelessly to make his name as easy to understand as the message he was preaching. The end result of this is a near impossible name that we can remember. He has successfully turned his liability around.
What can we learn from this?
Gary’s success wasn’t overnight. Too often we want to go through the motions for a while and when success isn’t beating down our door we give up. Of course, we blame the failure on our liabilities.
Embrace your liabilities and turn them around so you too can also claim success. Quit hiding them under your bed hoping the world won’t notice. Trust me they will.
What makes you different is what sets you apart. Frankly, I’m tired of all the sameness out there. The web is becoming as boring as the traditional world. Everyone is more concerned with a formula for success rather than being yourself and doing what you love (wisdom stolen from Gary Vee).
Be unapologetic and be yourself… liabilities and all.
Allan Jardine is up to his old tricks again (his tricks are: creating helpful small tools!). This time he has created KeyTable, a library that adds the ability to use the keyboard to navigate around an HTML table.
Events can be bound (and unbound) to cells as required by the developer, allowing increased accessibility to Javascript enhanced tables. This library is somewhat similar to QFocuser that was posted on Ajaxian back at the start of the month, but specialises in table navigation. KeyTable also integrates nicely with DataTables, such that paging and sorting is taken into account.
To get started you just need to var keys = new KeyTable(); and then you can add init params for fine grained work, and you can also add events:
JAVASCRIPT:
/* Example event listener */
keys.event.focus( 1, 3, function() {
/* processing on cell 1,3 … */
} );
/* this is exactly the same as */
keys.event.focus( $(‘#example tbody tr:eq(3) td:eq(1)’)[0], function() {
/* processing on cell 1,3 … */
} );
The front page has an example that uses jEditable allowing you to mouse around, hit enter, change a field, and go back:
Super Mario Brothers is making another amazing appearance in a beautiful Matryoshka Doll set (aka Russian Dolls) that bring the amazing characters to light in beautiful vintage looking art.
super mario matryoshka dolls 2 Super Mario Brothers Matryoshka Dolls
super mario matryoshka dolls 3 Super Mario Brothers Matryoshka Dolls
These Matryoshka Dolls combine beautiful colors and the Mario characters into one great gaming toy. We can see in the images Mario, which definitely fits as this kind of doll with his belly, Luigi, the Princess, Bowser, Toad, and a few more that get their own celebrity spotlight.
super mario matryoshka dolls 4 Super Mario Brothers Matryoshka Dolls
This set was created by Cmsturmhous, who also provided a lot of different views to show for this great creation. Mario doesn’t die off whatsoever, and with such art continuing to show itself…I don’t really hear anyone complaining.
