I was reading one of the mailing lists I am a member of the other day, and some questions came up about Freelancing. Some were interested in knowing the best way to get business as a freelancer, and since Zenful Creations came from years of freelancing, I thought I would share my experiences in freelancing. I posted a list of seven items to the message list, and received numerous comments and a few more questions, so I decided to add a bit more to the list, and post here.

1. First and foremost, have a GOOD website. Make sure it has at least six original designs, the service you provided (a before and after shot is always good), and a little detail on your process helps too. Make sure your site is easy to use, and preferably compliant with standards. Make sure there are no typos in your content.

2. Get signed up on sites such as Guru.com, RentACoder.com, GetAFreelancer.com, and many many more… Over the years I found great success at Guru.com, and also acquired several projects from DesignCrowd. I would also suggest checking 37signals Job Board, and CSS Beauty Job Board for new listings as often as possible.

3. Participate. Find listservs, message boards and blogs about freelancing, and participate in discussions. Affiliate with other freelancers - if they are too busy to take on a project they may pass it on to you, or they may partner with you on larger projects.

4. Post a free ad on Craigslist in your area. Craigslist allows you to post an ad for your services every 45 days. With the usership of this site, you will at least get a hit or two each 45 days. While you are on Craigslist, make sure you check out the ‘Barter’ section, and ‘Creative Jobs & Gigs’.

5. 3rd Party Endorsements. Always get testimonials from the clients you work for. Since the launch of this online reputation manager, I have had all clients that I worked with give me a review on iKarma.com - it is a place that you can send current clients (or have a link from your site) to find out more about working with you.

6. Network. Join professional organizations such as your local BNI, or attend other networking events in your area to build your synergistic relationships, and meet people that will refer you to people they know. You can find events local to you on Meetup.com, on Craigslist in the events or community section and also in your local newspaper.

7. Blog. This will increase traffic to your site - I suggest blogging about each design you do or whatever niche it is you have; blog the before, process and after. Blog about open spots in your schedule… Blog when you are full and can take no clients at that time (which shows you are busy) - clients tend to like busy designers as that usually indicates they are good at what they do, and in demand.

8. As funny as this one may sound, it works. Get yourself a myspace account - for your business - there is so much traffic on myspace and it is a great place to network. Customize your design if you can. I have been approached by many clients over the past year (mostly musicians and artistry) who desire to have a customized myspace page. Upload design proofs in the pics section. Keep clients or partners in your friends list, and keep your comments well moderated. Keep it professional.

9. Use a contract. Always. Everytime. A contract is important in any project you do. The contract not only protects a you and your client legally, but it also clearly details deadlines and payments. If you do not already have a contract, you are welcome to copy mine and edit it to suit your needs.

10. Keep up with your records. As a freelancer, you are an independent contractor, and therefore, are expected to keep up with and file your own taxes. You can either pay them throughout the year (file quarterly), or put the money aside to pay later. Get a good program such as QuickBooks, or Quicken, and keep it updated. Also, keep a record of the business expenses you can write off at the end of the year - books, travel, lunch meetings etc.

Tags: freelancer, freelancing

This post follows right in line with yesterdays…

I was thinking about going on a benefit ride with my husband this weekend, and thought that would be a great thing to start blogging about on our personal website at dennyandlori.com.

So today, I hopped onto my Dashboard to make a post, and saw that I had an additional incoming link - and all bloggers know how cool that is. So I went to take a peek. The title of the post is the “Good, Bad and the Ugly”, and that of course intrigued me to continue on reading. What I saw made me feel good about the way I do business, always giving credit to those who deserve it.

Our blog is a brand new site that I have not even had a second to think about for a theme. But I wanted to go ahead and start teaching my hubby how to blog, so I set out for a very specific layout that had ‘Harley-Davidson’ colored design theme I could toss up for a while until I got the free time to create my own.

I spent a pretty good amount of time looking around only to find that nothing that I saw was just perfect. However, I did find one that that had the layout that I was after. Futher with my expertise in CSS, it took less than 5 minutes to make the colors the orange I wanted, change the logo from graphic to text, and remove the sidebar icons. Here is the the original theme, created by BloggingTips.org

Now what made me feel so good about this new link into my blog is that the designer of the original template, though I changed it only slightly, thanked me for not removing the credit for his work.

That got me to thinking about how many blog themes probably have the credits ripped off either unchanged or customized. It just gets me that people want to take credit for other’s hard work - I know it is something that is never going to stop but it really does get my goat.

Tags: blog_themes, design_credits

I am sitting here wondering if I should be flattered or just irate.

I decided to settle down and get some final coding done on a HelpDesk integration for Timok es’s new site, and before I got to it, I checked email. Now, I get my statistics from the lovely Mint delivered right to my Thunderbird via RSS. So I decided to quickly check over to see if anything new was up, and became instantly surprised at seeing MY website design in my reader. Praise for RSS as I may not have ever known since the hit was two days ago.

Ok Lori. Stop. Breathe. Zenful thoughts…

Apparently she ripped the site, uploaded to her server, and while working on the form for the contact page (that she apparently forgot to remove the absolute url for my formmail program as she tested) and sent a hit to me. Now that was smart wasn’t it.

Seeing my design being ripped really bothers me, but I think it is worse seeing my actual hard thought out text still in place on this person’s domain. IdeatePlus Creations (ideateplus dot com) took no time to change the bulk of my wording, ripped my forms, resources and contracts.

In the source code, my name is still in the META tags of some pages. On the front page she has commented out some of my text - not physically removing it. Ugh. She did not even bother to remove the script for StatCounter OR my Google ads. Unreal.

See for yourself the RIP.

Front Page

Front Page Source Code

My Resources

My RFP

My Design Contract

Whois Information

I have sent Melissa at IdeatePlus a Cease and Desist letter with a action date of April 20th. I love my Mint!

Stay tuned…

Tags: design_rip, ideateplus, pirated_website, stolen_website, zenful_creations

I am making myself a list of the projects that I want to complete this month. These are my personal projects, and not related to any clients:

1. TylerNicole.com - Update Gallery. Change current gallery format to Flickr fed galleries.

2. NikolasKai.com - FULL REDESIGN. (This site is so old). Create new design, nix tables for standards, Change current gallery format to Flickr fed galleries, Wordpress + theming

3. DennyandLori.com - FULL NEW DESIGN - black/grey/pink theme; Wordpress + theming, Galleries from Flickr, two sided admin for storage of links/important for Lori/Denny.

4. LoriLeach.com - COMPLETE - tweak front page PHP/CSS to display longer posts (will need to change flower on right to flow down page for longer content). With this fix, completing interior page should be part done already; style comment boxes.

5. TyNikBai.com - Get with Mom & Lani for page content, and product descriptions, prices; Wordpress + theme; Flickr Gallery to run photos; PayPal or ZenCart for sales.

6. PlaybyPlayProductions.com - Get with Jen/Lani to see if this site should be continued or pulled

7. RonForster.org - Complete design/wordpress integration

8. ZenfulExpressions.com - Re-theme with zenful design

Tags: design, personal_projects