So with all the effort you’re putting into your site, why restrict yourself to just one language market?

If you decide to just stick with a single language for your web presence, you’re cutting out a huge number of potential customers from the 1.8bn people currently online around the world. If English is your language of choice, then your native-speaking web audience will account for less than a third of all web surfers (internetworldstats).

Going multilingual with your web presence is especially crucial for online businesses, since research shows that 85% of consumers – even multilingual consumers – will not buy from a website unless they can read about the product in their own native language (Common Sense Advisory).

So how exactly do you go from being a monolingual website with one target market, to being a world-conquering behemoth with virtual branches in countries around the world?

Localizing your approach

The one golden rule is that you have to ‘think local’. This means deciding which countries are going to have a gap in their e-commerce market for your product, and then developing individual local web sites for each market, written in their language, designed for their aesthetic preferences and marketed towards their culture.

For starters, it’s important to have individual top level domains (TLDs) or subdomains for each local site, with their location set to the target country in Google Webmaster Tools.

This is for two reasons – for increased credibility with your customers in each country, and more importantly for your SEO, as Google looks to return relevant local content for local searchers.

Aesthetic preferences

Different cultures have different expectations in terms of what they like in a website – just take a look at the differences between Coca Cola’s Japanese site and their Swedish site, or McDonald’s UK site and their Indian site.

Essentially, you need a design framework that is consistent in its branding but flexible enough to change between local sites. Also, think carefully about your color scheme – colors can mean very different things between cultures, as this graph shows.

Be sure to take into account different navigation requirements between left-to-right and right-to-left languages – using a horizontal navigation system and symmetrical design should solve this.

Lastly, using CSS as your design tool will keep your content separate from your design for easy language changes, and using Unicode UTF-8 as your character encoder will make it easy to switch scripts between 90 different languages.

Content designed for the audience

Naturally, you’ll need your localized sites to be translated into the language – or even languages – of their target countries; no good building a site for China and then having all your copy in English.

More important than just translating the text, though, is making sure that your copy is written with its intended audience in mind, by a native speaker of the language with some experience of writing marketing copy. For instance, while an irreverent tone in your copy will go down well in the UK, the exact opposite is true for Germany.

Also, getting a language professional to either write, or translate and check, your copy will protect you from any embarrassing linguistic gaffes, like the time Coca Cola launched in China and had its brand name translated as ‘Ke-Ke-Ken-La’, not realising until after they’d printed thousands of signs that, depending on the dialect, their new brand name meant either ‘bite the wax tadpole’ or ‘female horse stuffed with wax’.

It’s not only linguistic missteps that can get you into trouble, either – not having a local’s understanding of the culture can also cause problems, such as when Pepsi was sued in 2004 by the Indian city of Hyderabad over a TV advert which saw the Indian cricket team celebrating a win while being served Pepsi by a young Indian boy – the city (somewhat reasonably) claimed the advert glorified child labour.

Tailored marketing

When it comes to your SEO, the most important things to know are to target the most popular search engine for each market – for instance Yandex for Russia rather than Google – and to never translate your keywords.

Direct translations are often not the most popular search terms – keywords are not really ‘words’, as such, but rather the phrased expression of a desire – as such, each language market will have its own particular way to describe such a desire. This may be a slang phrase, a term in the local language or phrases adopted from English or another language.

The only way to be sure that you have the right keywords is to research which keywords are used the most in each market with a keyword tool like Google’s, or if possible get an in-country SEO expert to assist.

By putting yourself into the shoes of the web users in each of your target foreign markets, you stand a much better chance of beating the local competition and growing from a local phenomenon into a globally successful business.

About the author

Christian Arno is the founder and Managing Director of global translation agency and localization specialists Lingo24. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 now has over 120 employees spanning four continents and clients in over sixty countries. In the past twelve months, they have translated over thirty million words for businesses in every industry sector and their projected turnover for 2010 is €7.3m. Contact Lingo24 with a translation request mentioning DesignM.ag before 30 October 2010 and you’ll get a 10% discount on your first order.

Inkd has offered to give away a free one year subscription to its entire print design library. That includes 50 template downloads per month and access to new content added during your subscription period (a $399 value)! To enter, just follow @inkdtweet on twitter and tweet this post with the hashtag #Inkddmagcontest. We’ll announce the winners next Wednesday-so be sure to tweet away!

About Inkd

Inkd is a true buy and sell marketplace for design templates created for talented independent professional designers from across the web. Inkd offers easy to use brochure templates, business card templates, newsletter templates, logos, and even online printing. Whether you need a quick and affordable creative solution for your business, a jump start on a creative project, or anything in between – Inkd has you covered.

Inkd just released their all new PowerPoint templates and Keynote templates. These presentation designs come in styles suited to any type of presentation from general business to health and nutrition or environmental causes. Just like every Inkd template, they are easily customizable, so the style you like can fit any need! Give a presentation that’s sure to wow your audience with Inkd’s designs!

Last month I was contacted by a gentleman from logomyway. He was interested in getting his site reviewed. At first I thought the idea sounded rather humorous because I knew how well a review of a site like 99designs would go over with the DesignM.ag crowd. So I wrote back and let this guy know that I would be happy to do a review but that I could not promise it would turn out positive.

For those new to the designing game the issue of whether or not spec work is evil has been a hot topic in the last couple of years. Because of sites like the ones mentioned above designers have felt slighted. For example, if you as a designer entered a design contest on a site like the ones mentioned above you would have the opportunity to compete for a few hundred dollars. The unfortunate thing is that only one designer wins. So the business owner or person launching the contest is offering a prize and gets to see hundreds of concepts but ultimately has to choose only one winner and therefore, pay for only one concept.

So for the record, our position at DesignM.ag is the same as it has always been. Spec work sites are not increasing the number of quality work. They are contributing to a problem that is blurring the lines between good and bad design work. If you want to see examples of the type of work we are discussing visit logomyway’s logo contest page.

Ultimately the decision to do this review was because of the a marketplace that was brought to my attention. Logomyway has introduced a new concept that allows designers to make money on their designs. It works much like a traditional e-commerce site. You can shop logos, select one, and then checkout. Then, the designer will integrate your company name into the concept. I’ve added a couple of sample designs from the marketplace below.

In a field that is as saturated as design I see the need for designers to have the ability to get their name out there. The marketplace gives designers an opportunity to put their design work on the table without everyone knowing what concepts are winning and losing. I do not, however, see this as a long term place for designers. I think that many businesses would be happy with the quality they would receive from something like this. Businesses that have a lot of brand equity will not be getting their new logo design done through a contest or marketplace. Your logo, web design, business card, etc says more about you than you think. As businesses grow they realize this. At the end of the day your brand is what you have.

I attached a video from a presentation a couple of years ago at South by Southwest Interactive. I encourage you to consider where you stand on this issue as a designer. I would like to know what the DesignM.ag community thinks about spec work. Have any of you ever made money from one of these contest sites? Can you make a living from spec work? Share your thoughts.

It seems that for many designers of Wordpress themes, the design often becomes victim to one’s abilities with functionality.  As a huge fan of Wordpress, and after reviewing, buying, and selling many themes myself, I have found what I would call the cardinal rules for building a successful theme to sell.

Rule #1: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Albert Einstein

Always seek to keep it simple.  I am sure many of us have seen very extravagant designs that in the end lose focus.  It’s very important to truly understand who your target audience is.  You will notice upon scouring over different marketplaces that the top selling tags are business or portfolio based.  Business themes have proven to be successful by leveraging simple layouts that can be branded very easily.  For example, a great sample of effective simplicity is with inFocus Wordpress Theme.

Rule #2: “I think the best way is to forget about racing people and just find territory that’s fresh.” Tom Jenkinson

I almost cringe at the fact that in Rule #1 I talked about a past success.  I personally like to think of past successes like yesterdays, everyone has one.  From my experience, it’s not possible to attend a family reunion or party without hearing at least one person talk about some sort of glory days.  All night you hear some loud mouthed (often drunk guy) saying something of “oh, thats nothing!  Back when I was…” or “We used to be the best at…”.

Since observing the Wordpress trends, it is very clear to see literally how many people have tried to imitate the success of past themes.  The key to Rule #2 is to always try to innovate.  Push the envelope when designing your theme.  Worst case scenario is you will take it down and restructure with a different strategy.  Don’t be afraid to be different.

Rule #3:  ”It is the ability to choose which makes us human.” Unknown

Offer your customers choices.  This is the element of the game where design often becomes victim to your functionality.  People want choices.  As grand as your design may be, it’s the backend which will keep the customers coming back for more.  For those that are new to the game, and are looking for great examples of functionality, check out the back-end of any Woo-Theme.  Every controllable element is labeled with appropriate titles for easy understanding as you can see below.

In addition, you will notice that most top selling Wordpress themes also include the following elements in their live demo:

• Short Codes
• Multiple Layouts
• Multiple Styles
• Colors (6 in 1)
• Beautiful Typography
• 404 pages included
• Sitemaps
• Different page width Options
• And last and definately not least DESCRIPTIVE DOCUMENTATION!

I understand that most designers do not have the development experience of an established shop, yet I truly feel this is where you will retain your customers.  For those of you lacking experience in either category I would highly recommend trying the system that MOJO-Themes has established with their “Joint Forces” program.  Joint Forces enables designers and developers to partner on projects and split the commissions.

I stand by these rules in every theme I pursue or build.  And for those of you considering developing a theme, just know your success with your customers is ultimately limited to your ability to capitalize in each of these 3 categories.

Please let me know your thoughts…

1. A Realistic Timeline

Designing and developing an effective website takes time. Most designers understand this, but some clients assume that the process can easily be done faster without considering the impact.

It’s not uncommon for a designer to be contacted by a potential client who has an unrealistic deadline. At this time the designer can either make promises that they may not be able to live up to in order to land the job, or the designer can explain to the client why the deadline is unrealistic, what steps will be rushed with this deadline, and what the consequences may be. In many cases the client will be more flexible with their projected time frame if they understand the long-term ramifications of rushing through the project.

2. Proper Client Intake

Custom web design services address the specific needs of each client and their customers/visitors. No designer is going to know the client’s business as well as they do, so it is important to have an effective intake process that gathers sufficient information to help the designer to understand the particular situation of the client. Jumping right into the design process is a temptation for both the designer and the client, but doing so typically cuts out some important steps in the process.

Think of the intake process of getting to know the client much like setting a proper foundation before building a house. All future efforts will be made stronger with a proper intake process, and without one, anything that is built will be unstable.

Each designer will have a different process for getting started with the client, and it may even vary from one project to another. What’s important is that the designer and client take the time to get on the same page and start the project on a solid foundation.

3. Client Involvement

Some (but not all) clients will want to tell the designer the basics of what they want and then step away from the process. A successful project will include involvement from the client at the early stages of the project, as well as throughout the project for feedback. From my experience hands-on clients are actually easier to work with because you know what they want and what they are thinking throughout the process. It’s difficult to create a website that truly represents the clients and serves their business well without much involvement from them.

If you’re in communication with a potential client and they seem like they seem like they don’t have much interest in being involved in the process, take the time to explain to them why you will need their input and how it can affect the end result.

4. User Focus

An effective website focuses on meeting the needs of users. The designer can create something that’s visual appealing and something that the client likes, but if it doesn’t focus on the users and meeting their needs it will ultimately not be successful.

During the intake process the designer needs to make an effort to get a good understanding of the users of the website and the target market of the client. Without knowing who you are building the site for, what they want and how the behave, it’s impossible to create a user-focused website.

5. Specific Feedback from Client

In order for a project to be successful it will need to satisfy the client, however, getting specific and helpful feedback isn’t always easy. Some clients tend to give very general feedback without pointing out specific details of what they like and what they don’t like. With vague or general feedback it’s very difficult for the designer to know why they don’t like something, or what can be changed to please the client.

When you’re dealing with clients that only provide general feedback, take the time to ask questions that will lead to answers that are more specific. Explain to them that in order to come up with something that they like you will need to understand the details of what they do not like.

6. Implementation of Feedback

Once the designer has some specific feedback from the client, that now needs to be applied productively. Using the feedback that has been gathered, the designer needs to make changes that will lead to an end product that the client is happy with. Getting specific, helpful feedback and implementing it effectively will result in fewer revisions and changes that need to be made.

7. Effective Testing

Before any website is launched to the public there should be some testing involved. This includes browser testing, usability testing, and simply checking for errors and mistakes. Ideally the designer will have an established process for testing, but the client, and even users, should be involved if possible.

What’s Your Experience?

From your experience, what are the most significant keys to a successful design project?

ThemeForest has grown very quickly to become the leading source for buying templates, and this growth has led to increased sales and payouts for designers. While the prices of themes and templates seem low to many designers (myself included), Envato’s business plan seems to be working out beautifully as a the volume of sales has many designers earning a substantial amount of money.

If you have considered designing themes or templates to sell on your own or through a marketplace like ThemeForest, it can be interesting to browse through the site and see what you can learn. This post will discuss my observations, and hopefully the information will be helpful to designers who have considered selling items. If you’re a freelancer and you have some time to spare, creating templates or themes could prove to be an excellent supplemental income aside from your client work.

For disclosure purposes, this post is not supported or endorsed by Envato in any way. I like to observe what other designers are doing to earn a living and I thought it would be interesting to take a deeper look at a marketplace that is quickly becoming a part-time or full-time career for a number of designers.

1. It is Possible to Make a Very Good Income Selling Themes/Templates at ThemeForest

You may have seen ThemeForest banner ads that say “When did web designers start earning $25k a month?” That’s a really great way for ThemeForest to get the word out that top sellers at their marketplace are making a substantial amount of money. The top selling contributor, Kreisi, has sold over 12,000 items at ThemeForest, most of which are WordPress themes priced at $30 – $40 each.

Aside from the top sellers, a very large number of designers are making enough sales to produce a significant part-time income. With ThemeForest’s growth over the past year, the opportunity should continue to increase for designers who want to sell their products.

2. Presentation Counts

If you browse through the most popular items overall, or the most popular items in any of the more competitive categories, you’ll see the products that are selling very well all are presented in an appealing manner. The ThemeForest marketplace includes a small thumbnail for each item, and then a larger image on the page for that specific item. The top-selling authors clearly have placed an emphasis on not only creating a quality theme or template, but also on designing attractive images that will draw interest from browsers.

Because the ThemeForest marketplace includes a few thousand items for purchase, in order for an item to stand out to browsers it must be presented effectively. Themes and templates may be very well designed and coded, but if the thumbnail doesn’t capture the interest of visitors, it will have a much harder time selling.

3. Options are Desired

By looking at the items that are generating the most sales you can clearly see that buyers like options. It could be multiple color schemes, layout choices, various page templates for WordPress themes, added options for the WordPress dashboard, or any other type of option that is given to the user. Of course, all of these things make it more time consuming for the designer, but they also make the item more customizable and allow it to be usable for a greater number of purposes, which leads to more sales.

4. WordPress Themes Sell

ThemeForest includes HTML/CSS templates as well as many themes, templates, and skins for various content management systems and shopping carts. Of all the different types of items that are available, WordPress themes sell the best and offer the highest potential for designers. In contrast, at this point themes and templates for Drupal, Joomla, Magento, Shopify and others do not sell nearly as well.

5. Portfolio Themes are in Demand

The “portfolio” category for HTML/CSS templates as well as for WordPress themes is as popular as any category (in terms of number of items for sale). Also, if you look at the top selling items you’ll notice a considerable percentage that are for portfolio sites. “Business” is also a popular category. Most of the top-selling authors have most of their items in these categories.

6. Support is Still Important

Although selling themes at ThemeForest may not require the same type of support that would be necessary with running your own theme/template business, support is still needed to keep buyers happy. If you look at the pages of any top selling items you’ll see that ThemeForest authors get plenty of questions and support requests. Each author has a rating, and without sufficient support the rating could fall, which may impact future sales. Providing quality support will encourage users to give a higher rating and may also encourage some users to buy more items from the author.

7. There are Advantages to Being a Top Seller

ThemeForest users that are logged in can choose to follow a particular designer. Top sellers tend to have a high number of followers, so any new items that they release will be likely to get some attention right away. Top sellers are also displayed on the top authors page, which means even more sales for those who are doing well. Becoming a top seller is not easy, but I’m sure those who are already at the top will say that it has some significant benefits for making new sales.

8. Quality New Items Can Rack Up Sales Quickly

Theme and template development is sometimes considered to earn passive income (although I would disagree because of the support that’s involved), but that doesn’t mean that money cannot be earned quickly. At the time of writing, the Synthetik WordPress Theme has made 81 sales in 4 days, and has even made 4 of those sales since I started writing this article. At a commission of 40%, 81 sales of a $37 item would equal just under $1,200 in its first 4 days. Of course, most new items do not sell that quickly, but this example shows that designers will not always have to wait months before items are earning a significant amount of money.

9. Going the Extra Distance is Worth it

As you look at the top-selling items you’ll notice that the designers have not cut corners. This may be evident in terms of the design and appearance of the template, or it could be in terms of the added options, or maybe even bonuses that the designer has included. For example, WPA Storefront, an ecommerce theme for WordPress, has made over 800 sales. The designer has created a video tutorial that shows the capability of the theme, and a separate support forum is also available on the site of the designer.

10. Some Categories Still Have Little Interest and Competition

Despite the fact that ThemeForest has grown rapidly to become the leading marketplace, there are still a number of categories that have only a few items for sale. Generally, items in these categories have a much lower income potential than successful items in other categories, but it’s also easier for new items to stand out. After browsing through ThemeForest, if I were to start designing themes for the marketplace I would probably start with a few in some of these categories with lesser competition to get a good feel for things before moving into the more competitive categories.

The “churches” category for WordPress themes has only one item, but it has made over 300 sales. Likewise, the “churches” category for HTML/CSS templates has only two items, both with around 100 sales. The “marketing” category for WordPress themes only has three items, but one has over 500 sales. A number of categories have no items at this point. While items in these types of categories are unlikely to become top sellers in the marketplace, opportunities are available to make some money with a quality item and relatively little competition.

11. Selling Multiple Versions of One Item is Possible and Profitable

There are a number of items that are available in multiple forms. Many of the leading items are available as an HTML/CSS template or as a WordPress theme. Selling the PSD file separately is also a possibility. Many WordPress developers will chose to code an item in HTML/CSS before converting it into a WordPress theme, and selling it in both formats brings added income potential and makes it more versatile for buyers. Also, if you’re looking to test an item’s interest, it could be offered as an HTML/CSS template to see how well it sells before creating a WordPress theme.

What’s Your Experience?

Have you sold items on ThemeForest or on your own? If so, what advice do you have for others? What things have you observed by browsing through ThemeForest?

In this post we’ll look at the early stages of a freelance design business and what aspects can have a significant long-term impact. Focusing on these important issues from the start will help you to save time and headaches down the road, and your business will be more solid because of it.

1. Know Your Goals and Priorities

Not every freelance designer wants the same thing out of their career. Some may want to simply do a little part-time freelancing as a creative outlet that gives them time away from their full-time career. Some may want to use a short stint as a freelancer to build up their portfolio and profile in order to help land a job with a design agency or as an in-house designer. Others may want to freelance full-time for the foreseeable future, maybe even with the possibility of expanding and hiring some employees at a later date.

The goals that you have will impact how you go about marketing your business, and even how you set it up. If your goal is to use freelancing as a gateway to full-time employment, the long-term aspect is probably not a major concern. For the purposes of this article we’ll be focusing on those who want to establish a career as a freelancer and those who want to eventually transition from freelancing into an agency by hiring others.

One example of how your goals and priorities would impact your approach is in regards to your name. If you’re attempting to build your profile within the industry you’ll most likely want to operate simply using your own name, as this will help to build name recognition and to brand yourself as a leading designer. However, if you’re hoping to hire other designers down the road or even sell your business at some point, you’ll probably want to operate under a business name. Any work you do to brand your business or build up a reputation will have a greater impact on the long-term health of your business this way.

2. Have Savings Set Aside to Fall Back On

Even for talented and experienced designers, there is always some risk involved with making a move to full-time freelance work. In order to minimize the financial risk to you and your family and to reduce the amount of stress and pressure that you’ll be feeling right away, it’s best to have some money set aside to live on while you’re getting your business established. With no cushion to fall back on you may not be able to invest the time and money at the start of your freelance business that is required. If you’re forced to make money right away you will need to place most of your focus on getting clients and that may prevent you from doing some of the other necessary things that we’ll talk about in this post.

3. Register Your Business

Depending on where you live and how you will be operating your business, you may need to register your business or file some paperwork. If you’re choosing to incorporate or form an LLC this would of course take some effort on your part. Check with your local government to see what needs to be filed, if anything, to make sure that you are operating legally and in the right manner.

4. Hire an Accountant

Taxes and accounting are not a strength for most designers, and even if they are, you’d probably be better off by paying someone to do this for you and to use your time for what you do best. Accountants can be pricey, but when you consider the amount of time that it can save you and the fact that you’ll have a professional who is working to put you in the best situation possible, it is well worth the cost.

Ideally, you’ll want to find an accountant who has a lot of experience with those who are self-employed, and maybe even with other freelancers. Someone who understands your business and the laws as they relate to you will be able to do the best job for you.

5. Open a Business Bank Account

One of the major financial challenges for freelancers involves managing your personal finances and business finances separately. It’s a good idea to open a separate bank account specifically for your business income and expenses (if you’ve incorporated or formed an LLC you will need to). This can help to avoid the downfalls associated with assuming that all of the money is yours personally and forgetting about upcoming expenses that will be due.

With a business account and a personal account you can easily have a clear separation of your money and you’ll be able to more effectively manage both your personal and business finances. One practice that can help is to pay yourself a set amount from your business account to your personal account at specific intervals (like every 2 weeks), just like you would receive with full-time employment.

6. Have Legal Documents Prepared

Running a freelance business will require some legal documents like contracts to be signed by you and your clients, as well as other documents like non-disclosure agreements. You can either hire an attorney to draft the documents that you will need frequently, or you can find some examples available online that you can use. The AIGA provides a standard form of agreement for design services that can be customized and used for free. Creative Public is a membership site that provides contracts, legal forms, and pricing guides for the creative industry.

7. Start Working on Items for Your Portfolio

Your portfolio site will be one of the most important marketing materials and it will also serve as the face of your business that typically makes the first impression on potential clients. It’s important to have a portfolio site that is attractive and user-friendly, as well as to have high-quality work that is being shown in the portfolio. At the start of your work it’s critical that you have some work to show to would-be clients to demonstrate what you are capable of. Many designers use personal projects, work for friends or family, pro bono work for non-profits, or work from a previous job as the basis for their initial portfolio.

If you haven’t worked as a designer before or if you don’t have any work that you feel represents your best work, make an effort to find some opportunities to build up your portfolio. Reach out to some friends and professional contacts to ask for referrals. Many designers start out by doing some work for free or for deeply discounted rates simply for the purpose of building up a portfolio that will attract some attention.

8. Establish Policies and Procedures

Most freelancers learn pretty quickly that it is necessary to have some policies and procedures, but it’s helpful if you can consider these things ahead of time before any problems have arisen. Here are examples of a few issues that you’ll want to consider:

• How much will you be charging clients up front?
• When will you expect final payment to be made?
• How will you handle revisions when clients want something to be changed?
• Will you outsource any of the work (example, PSD to HTML services)
• What will be involved in your intake process?
• How will you determine your prices?
• Will you offer package-based pricing or provide quotes for all projects on a case-by-case basis?

9. Take the Time to Design a Quality Portfolio Site

Once you have some work to include in your portfolio you should work on designing a portfolio site that will do an effective job of promoting your services and encouraging inquiries from potential clients. Since the portfolio site is such a critical aspect of your business, take the necessary time to make sure that it is done well and that it accurately reflects you and your quality of work.

For inspiration see our showcases of portfolio sites:

• 101 Awesome Portfolio Sites
• 50 Excellent Designer Portfolio Sites
• 30 More Portfolio Sites for Your Design Inspiration
• 25 Amazing Flash Portfolio Sites
• 25 Flash Portfolio Sites for Your Design Inspiration

10. Focus on Creating Success for Your Clients

Long-term success as a designer will require that you keep your clients happy and work towards developing a significant flow of referrals. While quality of design and the general appearance of the sites that you create is important, what is far more important is that your clients get results because of your work. Focus on designing and building websites that will enhance the business of your clients and you will not lack for work.

A successful website must meet the goals of the client. That may be to sell products (e-commerce), to attract leads through the website, to increase traffic, or any other goal that the client may have.

11. Start to Build a Professional Network

Every web designer that has achieved long-term success is well-connected with others in the industry and with those who provide related services. Building your network will occur naturally over time but you can get started now by being proactive in meeting other designers and other professionals. I recently wrote a post 10 Steps to a Stronger Professional Network that provides some tips and guidelines for designers who are looking to get more active in networking.

12. Set Up Social Networking Profiles

Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are great for getting to know other designers and branching out. If you haven’t already, take the time to set up some social media profiles and start interacting on a regular basis. Social networking can lead to connections with other creatives, inquiries from potential clients, traffic to your portfolio site or blog, and another means of showcasing your work to a larger audience.

13. Ask Clients for Feedback on the Experience

As you complete some client projects, make it a priority to get their feedback on the experience of working with you. Hopefully this will help you to identify some things that clients like as well as some areas that you could improve upon. Not only does this help you to improve your process of working with clients, but it also shows clients that you are concerned with doing the best job that you can for them, and they’ll be more likely to hire you again or to refer others to you. Over time you can use the feedback that you’ve gotten to refine your processes to the point that you are doing a more effective job for your clients.

14. Re-Invest in Your Business

Running a freelance business require some financial investment and there will be expenses. While these expenses will usually be small in comparison to running other types of businesses, there is still a need to be willing to re-invest some of your revenue into the business. This may include spending some money on marketing, software and hardware, online apps (such as invoicing and time tracking), and maybe even outsourcing. If you’re concerned with your long-term success as a freelancer, make it a priority to re-invest a certain portion of your income.

15. Set Aside Time for Learning on a Continual Basis

Being a web designer and staying on top of industry changes and trends requires that you keep learning, growing and adapting your skill set. Technology and the internet change so quickly that there will always be a need to be developing and improving yourself and your capabilities. While many projects will allow you to learn and improve your skills while working for the client, it may not be enough and it may not allow you to learn some of the things that you need to learn.

It’s a good idea to set aside some time each week, or at least each month, where you can concentrate on learning something new or improving on some existing skill. Maybe you’ll want to follow some online tutorials, read a book, work on a personal project of some kind, or simply examine the work of other designers in detail. There are a lot of ways to learn and we all have different preferences, but the important thing is that you keep developing and growing. Without setting aside time specifically for this purpose it’s easy to get caught up with client projects and neglect the learning.

What’s Your Experience?

If you have any tips for new freelancers or anything that you would like to share from your experience, please leave a comment.

1. Don’t Provide Quality Work

Clients will always have a certain expectation in terms of quality of work. It might seem that these expectations will correspond to their budget (high budget = high quality, low budget = low quality), but this is not always the case. Failing to live up to the quality expectations of a client can lead to a lack of repeat business, no referral business, and even the loss of a client before a project is completed.

2. Don’t Provide the Services that They Need

Most clients will need a variety of different services. Maybe they need web design, WordPress theme development, SEO, and copywriting. If you don’t provide these services yourself, outsource them, or have someone that you can refer to handle the services that you don’t provide, you could lose the client.

Most freelancers offer some variety in the services that they provide, but there will always be some clients that need services that are outside your area of expertise. For these situations, it is good to have an established network of contacts so that you can outsource the work or help the client to find someone for a particular aspect. Doing so can help you to meet the needs of the client, which is necessary for client retention.

3. Overpromise, Underdeliver

Making promises to clients that you cannot keep or failing to deliver on the commitments and promises that you have made will cause your clients to look for a new designer. Making that big promise may help you to land a certain client, but being able to live up to it is equally important if you hope to keep the client happy.

Underpromise and overdeliver is often used as a key to keeping clients happy. That way the clients don’t have unrealistic expectations and they are not disappointed or let down, instead they are pleasantly surprised when you overdeliver.

4. Don’t Meet Deadlines

Almost all projects will have deadlines of some sort. While there may be situations where it is ok, or even necessary to push back a deadline, in general it is a good way to upset clients and to cause them to lose trust in you. Deadlines are there for a reason, and when clients really need something to be done by a specific date it can have a significant negative impact on their business if the designer does not come through.

If you want to keep clients happy and avoid losing them to other designers, meeting deadlines is a great start. Always be sure that the deadlines you are agreeing to are realistic and set your schedule so that you will exceed them with some time to spare. That way if you run into complications you will still have time to work through them without missing the deadline.

5. Don’t Dedicate Time to Planning

If you want to produce poor quality work that will not be effective for your clients, don’t allow adequate time for planning. Getting to know the client, their business, and their customers is an essential part of the design process. Taking the time to understand their needs and to develop a plan that will work for them is necessary for quality results. Rushing into the project without proper planning is a great way to ensure that you are not doing your best work and not creating something that is truly effective for their business.

6. Don’t Handle Your Business Professionally

Clients expect to have a professional relationship with their designer, so if you want to lose them, treat your business like it’s a hobby and don’t provide them with the appropriate amount of respect.

If you’re aiming to keep your clients satisfied with the work that you are doing for them, demonstrate professionalism in your work and they will have a great deal of confidence in your ability to get the job done.

7. Don’t Respond to Calls or Emails

Customer service is a major concern for clients, so a lack of response will often lead clients to look for a new designer. This applies to the initial period of the design project as well as any on-going requests for maintenance, updates or support.

If you’d like to keep your clients happy with your services, always make an effort to get back to them as quickly as possible. In situations when you are busy and unable to help them right away, they usually appreciate a quick message to let them know that you will be able to help them and an estimate in regards to when that will happen.

8. Don’t Allow Clients to See the True Value of Your Services

Many clients will at some point evaluate the services that you are providing to determine if it is worth the cost for them. They may even be comparing you to a less-expensive option or someone else that they are considering hiring. By not letting them see everything that you are doing for them and demonstrating the true value of your services, you will be making it easy for them to feel like your services are overpriced.

Most clients don’t really understand everything that is involved with the work you are providing, and unless you break it down for them they may not appreciate everything that you are doing. If you’d like to show the value of your services to your clients, be complete and thorough in your estimates, proposals and invoices. Show them all of the phases involved, how much time is spent on each, on why each is critical to creating a successful end result. If you can help them to see everything that you are doing and the need for each step, they will not be as likely to choose to go with a lower-cost option.

9. Don’t Treat Them as a Unique Business

Each business has its own unique situation and requires an approach that is dedicated to creating something that meets the needs of that business. Treating each client as the same or taking a cookie cutter approach will lead to poor results and unhappy clients.

If you want your clients to get the most out of your services and to retain them long-term, remember that they are not exactly like any of your other clients and take the time to find out what is best for their specific situation.

10. Don’t Take Time to Answer Their Questions

Clients will frequently have questions about the design process, about their specific project, or just general concerns that they would like the designer to address. When they don’t get their questions answered or their concerns addressed they will often lose some confidence that the designer is doing a good job for them.

For designers who want to retain their clients and keep them happy, taking time to answer questions and get on the same page with clients is a good practice. It helps to show clients that you value the designer/client relationship, that you know what you are talking about, and that they are in good hands with you.

What’s Your Experience?

Want to share anything that you have learned about retaining or losing clients? If so, please leave a comment.

For more freelancing-related content please see:

• 9 Ways Freelancers Disrespect Their Own Time
• 10 Keys to Growth as a Designer
• 13 Principles of Effective Time Management for Freelancers
• 15 Tips for Breaking in as a Part-Time Freelancer
• 16 Business Lessons for Freelancers

1. Establish Reasonable Working Hours

One of the most obvious contributors to burnout is simply working too much. Most freelancers, myself included, struggle with setting working hours and sticking with them. It’s easy to work more hours than you plan when things don’t go as you expected, or when you have a lot that needs to get done. Certainly there are times when upcoming deadlines may force you to work longer hours, but that should be the exception not the norm.

The first step towards avoiding burnout is to have some sort of a set schedule that involves only working a reasonable number of hours each week. Most freelancers cherish the freedom that they have to work whatever hours they choose, and this often leads to a hesitance to establish a normal schedule. Setting working hours doesn’t require that you have a boring schedule with no room for flexibility. You can work varied hours that change from one week to the next, but the important part is that you set a schedule for yourself that will help you to avoid working ridiculously long hours on a regular basis.

2. Separate Your Work Space from Your Living Space

Equally as important as the number of hours that you work is the ability to truly get away from work during your off hours. One of the difficulties for freelancers is that the work space and living space are often the same or they may overlap. Ideally, you should have a separate space in your house (or even an office outside of the home) that is used only for work. If you can close off this space when you are not working and not let it interfere with your personal life, you will have an easier time relaxing and getting away from work during those off hours.

3. Charge What You are Worth

If you are trying to limit the number of hours that you work each week, you should evaluate the rates that you are charging to make sure that you are not underpricing your services. Many freelancers charge less than they are worth, whether intentionally or unintentionally. By pricing your services too low you will be forcing yourself to work more hours in order to earn a living. If you’re able to increase your rates and still retain the same interest level from clients, you can reduce the number of hours that you’ll need to work.

4. Work with Clients on a Selective Basis

Not every client that will contact you about doing work for them will be a good fit. Take some time to think about what types of clients are ideal for you, and what types of clients you tend to do the best work for. As you are in communication with potential clients, evaluate them to see if they are the type of client that you are looking for. Make sure that you are not missing out on good opportunities because you are too busy working with clients that are not ideal for you.

Hopefully you will have enough inquiries and potential clients that you won’t feel like you have to convert every lead into a client. Don’t be afraid to tell a client that you are not the best fit for a project or to refer them to another designer. For more see How to Determine if You Should Accept a Freelance Project.

5. Accept Projects that Interest You

As you are evaluating clients to determine who you should work with, consider the types of projects and how they match up with your own interests. It’s inevitable that certain projects will interest you more or less than others, and each designer has things that they are passionate about. Finding work that allows you to focus on things that interest you will go a long way towards avoiding burnout. Spending all of your time on projects that have no meaning or significance to you is a good way to lead to burnout.

Your interests and passion could be related to doing work for a particular type of company or organization (such as non-profts or start ups), working withing a specific industry, or specializing in a particular type of design or development (e-commerce, working with a specific CMS, etc.)

6. Prioritize Long-Term Relationships with Clients

The stress of finding new clients can cause a lot of stress and burnout for many freelancers. If you’re able to establish long-term relationships with some of your clients you will reduce the need to always have new clients coming in, and hopefully it will result in lower stress levels. In addition, you can reduce the amount of time that you need to spend getting familiar with new clients, their customers, and their industries because you will already know a lot about the clients that you are working with.

Finding long-term clients is not always easy, but it’s also not impossible. Chris Coyier wrote an interesting article, The Heating Company Analogy, that discusses a method of attracting long-term clients by offering a set monthly fee for site maintenance and on-going services. It’s a pretty interesting concept if you’re not currently doing much to build long-term relationships with your clients.

7. Don’t Agree to Unrealistic Deadlines

Another major source of stress for freelancers is the constant deadlines that surround our work. Deadlines and milestone dates are an inevitability of the job (although not on every project) and they’re actually a good thing for keeping projects on track and moving through to completion. But when deadlines are quickly approaching, they will cause stress and longer working hours.

While you cannot eliminate deadlines altogether, you can be more conscious to only accept deadlines that are reasonable and realistic. If you have a potential client that wants to hire you but with an unrealistic deadline, don’t just accept the job so that you can get some work. You’ll probably regret it later. Instead, take the time to explain to them why it is not realistic and how it can hurt the quality of your work, and suggest a reasonable compromise that will allow you to get everything done without working around the clock.

Another point to mention here is that before accepting a deadline you should communicate what you will need from the client in order to meet the deadline, and even place a deadline on the information that you need to get from them. This way if you are held up because a client is slow to get you what you need, when the deadline for your work is approaching, you can easily justify why you are running behind schedule.

8. Take Vacations to Re-Charge

Time away from work is necessary in order to re-charge and re-energize yourself. Freelancers often deprive themselves of adequate vacation time because they don’t want to miss out on potential work or because they don’t want their income to drop temporarily. Taking vacations is important, and with the proper planning and preparation a vacation does not have to hurt your business (see 9 Tips to Help Freelancers Prepare for a Vacation).

9. Outsource

If you feel like you don’t have enough time in the day to get all of your work done, consider outsourcing to other freelancers. There are plenty of opportunities for designers to outsource, although it needs to be done carefully since your reputation is on the line for their work. A popular option is to outsource PSD to HTML coding, which can help to speed up your development time and leave you with more time to do other things, or just less time for work.

There are plenty of other ways that you could incorporate outsourcing into your processes. Finding others who are interested in doing the work for you is not difficult, although you will need to be very selective of who you hire. Ideally, you’ll be able establish long-term relationships with other service providers that you know and trust to do quality work and to be reliable.

10. Prioritize Your Tasks

Efficiency in your daily work is really just as important as setting limited working hours. Without efficiency you will always find that you’re not getting everything done, and you’ll have more stress and you’ll wind up working longer hours on a regular basis. Focus on achieving efficiency in your daily tasks and waste less time. An important step is to create a prioritized to-do list each day that shows you exactly what you need to be working on and what is most important.

I find that when I do not have prioritized tasks that I need to get done each day, I wind up spending way too much time on insignificant work, and the important stuff that I need to get done winds up taking more time. Make it a habit to never go into a day without knowing exactly what you should be working on and what you need to get accomplished. This will lead to much less wasted time and you should be able to get your work done in less time.

11. Dedicate a Portion of Your Time to Personal Projects

One good way to fight off burnout is to have some time separated for working on your own projects that will provide a nice break from client work. This could be time that you use to update your portfolio, work on a blog, start some other type of website of your own, work on following tutorials that interest you, or just about anything else you choose.

Personal projects have been a big part of my own development as it gives me an opportunity to choose new things that I want to learn or areas for improvement. It’s also possible to use these personal projects to produce income that will reduce your reliance on client work, which can go a long way towards lowering the amount of stress in your daily life. But even if you are not pursuing personal projects that will bring in income, simply having some time to work on things of your choice rather than that of clients will help to re-fresh you and avoid burnout.

12. Take Care of Your Body

Stress and burnout are also effective by how you take care of yourself and your level of health. Make an effort to eat healthy foods and to get regular exercise and you should find that the stress of work can be reduced. Not only will stress be more manageable, but you should also do a better job of avoiding sickness that can result in lost work time, more difficulty meeting deadlines, and lost income.

Suggestions?

Is burnout an issue that you face, and if so, how do you deal with it? If you have any suggestions for our readers please leave a comment.

For more freelance-related content please see:

• 10 Passive Marketing Opportunities for Freelancers
• 9 Ways Freelancers Disrespect Their Own Time
• 11 Tips for Making Your Home Office More Comfortable
• Financial Management Tips for Freelancers
• 10 Keys to Growth as a Designer

Whatever your situation, you could probably stand to make some extra cash. We all could, right? Luckily, skills in design and development are in demand, and due to the downturn, companies are more likely to hire freelancers to do their web design and development work. And, even better, you can make extra money with the work you’re already doing! Here are 11 ways, then, that you can make some extra income as a freelance designer by adding some value to your existing services, or by leveraging your expertise in a more piecemeal fashion.

Become a Hosting Affiliate

When a client hires you to design their site, sometimes they have a hard time understanding that not only do they need a domain, but they need to host that site somewhere. And, usually, they leave it up to you to decide who will host it. You probably already host the majority of sites you design with the same company, so why not profit from that loyalty? Most hosting companies offer a commission for hosting account referrals, so give them a call and ask how that might work for you. Most hosting companies will also allow you to add an affiliate link to your own site, and that will pay off anytime someone clicks through the link and purchases hosting. Both scenarios will earn you some extra money with very little extra effort on your part.

Advertise On Your Site

One great thing about being a designer is that you’re part of a strong community with the same interests. You’ve probably noticed that you see the same kinds of ads over and over on your favorite design blogs, and that’s for good reason – people who read design blogs are interested in the same types of things. Well, you can help those companies AND yourself out by advertising their products and services on your site. You can either seek these advertisers out yourself, or you can use a service like Google AdSense, BuySellAds or The Deck Network, which will take the work out of managing your advertisers. If you can get traffic, you can make some money.

Add Value To Sites You Design

You probably know how to do some stuff besides web design that your clients need – stuff like content production, SEO services, debugging, and site maintenance. Chances are you know more about what works on the Web than your clients, and if you have examples of your past efforts in these departments, that’s better still. These are valuable services, and you should account for the fact that you’re doing them when you quote a price.

Charge For Consulting

Has this ever happened? You’re in the running for a pretty good gig, so you meet with the potential client at your local coffee shop for a few hours. You lay out, in detail, your plans for their site. They hire someone else. Of course you’re disappointed that you didn’t get the job, but you’re livid when you see that the finished product uses your ideas! Guess what? You were a consultant, and you didn’t charge for it. Lesson learned, so next time, be up front that you charge for consultations. Doing business this way will weed out the less-than serious prospects and, if do land the job, you can wipe the charge off the client’s bill.

Teach Your Skills

This can refer not only to more traditional, classroom-based teaching (like teaching design at a learning annex or community college), but also teaching your clients how to run, update, and maintain the sites you build for them. You can offer online webinars or tutorials in SEO, social media, database management, site updating — the possibilities are effectively limitless. And, with services like video chat, Skype, and GoToMeeting, you can do it from home. Pretty sweet, eh?

Write Articles

I bet you’ve wondered – how do my favorite design blogs keep pumping out such quality content, day in and day out? Here’s the truth – designers like you submit tutorials, review tools and software, and showcase brush sets. And sometimes, they even get paid for it, whether in publicity or actual money. Whether it’s about CSS3, jQuery, or WordPress, harness your expertise, put in in “Top 10” format, add some killer graphics, and submit it. A site like Smashing Magazine will offer some money for articles they accept for publication, and a site like CatsWhoCode will publish your link. Either way, if you can write a compelling, useful article, you can get some credit, some money, or both. That’s what we call a “win-win-win” situation.

Sell Your Cast-Offs

You could be the best designer in the world, but it’s a fact that no client is going to like everything you do. You’re going to go through different versions of designs, scrapping some altogether in favor of others and tweaking the best even further. So what do you do with the stuff a client passes on? Here’s a tip – you can likely sell some of it, especially things like social media icon designs, WordPress themes, and the like. You won’t make a ton of money, but you’ll certainly make more than if you just left them on your hard drive.

Sell Merchandise

In this era of Web 2.0, crowdsourcing, and niche communities, you don’t have to mass-produce things to make a little bit of money. Threadless and Design by Humans are two companies that combine the old (silk-screening T-shirts) with the new (Digg-like social voting) by allowing designers to submit designs for T-shirts and then vote on their favorites to see which get printed. If your design is selected, you can earn some decent money. And Zazzle.com allows you to create smaller batches of shirts, posters, gifts, and other merchandise that an intrepid and entrepreneur-minded designer could sell on his or her own. Either method is an opportunity to make some merch for sale or get your designs out there in the wild.

Enter Contests

Got a flair for logo design? Then truck on over to DesignContest and check out some of the logo design contests running. Besides a way to earn between $200 and $500, it’s a good way to keep busy between website projects and other major undertakings. It’s also a good way to hone your logo design skills and see what other designers like you are putting out there. Similar sites include 99designs, CrowdSpring, and Guru.

Buddy Up

If you’ve got a programmer friend who can make great iPhone apps or desktop programs but has no eye for design or content creation, maybe you two can help each other out. Adding value to your services is something that can set you apart from others with your skill set, and if that means partnering up with someone who can do something you can’t, then you should consider it. It could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Leverage Your Expertise

Who knows more about website usability than a website designer? As I’m sure you know, big design firms and corporations sometimes pay to have people test the usability and design of their new sites. Why not get in on that? You can go to UserTesting.com and sign up to test out new sites. Just like the offline equivalent of participating in focus groups or marketing surveys, your web experience is valuable, and some companies will pay to pick your brain.

About the Author:

Blue Derkin writes for Web Hosting Help Guy, InMotion Hosting’s blog dedicated to all things web design, web development, and webhosting. You can follow him on Twitter @WHHG_InMotion.

Editor’s Note: DesignM.ag does not support the practice of design contests or spec work (see Spec Work Can Damage Your Business by David Airey for a good explanation).