A freelancer is not just a designer or developer, you have a few new roles now like sales, accounting and customer service. Introverts have to work a bit differently than our outgoing counterparts. So here are some helpful tips for freelancing and keeping the business going.

“Sir, Would You Like to Buy These Pixels?”

Our biggest hurdle is sales.

We don’t typically make good salesmen, but we can use this to our advantage. People who are serious about getting results are less interested in getting sold to and more interested in what you have to offer. Spend some time and go through your own resume, why are you qualified? Did you get results for clients at your last job? Talk about it, especially if it’s a well-known client. Be real and don’t fake it trying to sound like Joe Schmoozer, because it will show!

Build partnerships. Lets face it, even if we hold to the advice above, our cold calling skills aren’t going to win us a lot of business. We sound awkward, and we’re not good at holding conversations about the weather or the Dallas Cowboys. Get some friends that compliment your services. If you’re a designer start getting in touch with some development agencies (and vice versa). Even if you have to offer a discounted partner rate (and you should) partnerships will be keeping your lights on.

Keep a great portfolio. I won’t spend time on this because it’s obvious, but the point should be made that our work is what’s going to sell what we do.

Take GOOD care of your clients. Your business is going to be made up of a lot of referrals and repeat customers. This is a good thing. Referral projects and projects for repeat customers cost us no advertising or sales dollars. Be sure to hook your clients up with a freebie here and there, and if you close a referral they send, give your referring client a gift or work in a cut of the profit.

“Where Does This Decimal Go?”

This really isn’t just a tip for introverts… but don’t be afraid to get professional help. Don’t mess around and get yourself in trouble with the IRS, find a good accountant to take care of your taxes. There are a lot of invoicing and accounting software packages that will help you out as well. Definitely check out Harvest, FreshBooks and QuickBooks to name a few.

Keep yourself accountable and don’t let the freedom get the best of you! Since you no longer have a manager breathing down your neck, you’re going to need some goals. Use time-tracking software to make sure you’re still working a solid workday. Check out Harvest, FreshBooks and Basecamp to name a few.

“The Phone Keeps Shaking, and So Do I”

Being a business owner you’re going to feel that need to always be connected. Do yourself a favor, turn off email notifications after business hours and give social media a break. Sure you can still check it when necessary to make sure the sky is still in place. But let’s be real, we’re quickly drained by a lot of social activity, I think this still applies on the digital world. Give yourself some time to enjoy peace and quiet. If you feel the phone shake, you’re going to check it and too much connectivity can be dangerous.

To Conclude…

There will always be ups and downs, but that’s the recipe for any good adventure. Above all things mentioned in this article, the best advice is to use what some consider to be downsides as an advantage. What you lack is networking skills make up for in solid client relationships, what you lack in sales make up for with building trust with partners and existing clients.

2. Magento just launched it’s first production build (v1.0)

3. Nathan Smith released 960.gs a web design grid system for 960px wide designs.

4. This guy raps about SEO & Conversions (thanks Luke)

(one thing I do like is that the dropdown *is* keyboard accessible, so when you’re tabbing through the dropdown you can actually get to all of the options. Nice!)
JiffyLube.com

Now I’m a savvy web user with a hot mouse that has a scroll wheel, so I can get around it simply by staying on the dropdown and scrolling down with my wheel. That’s great for me, but it’s just not appropriate to think that most of your customers will be able to do that. Especially if a customer has problems with hand dexterity or any other disability leaving them unable to get to the rest of that dropdown.

How Do I Fix It?

Well, one thing is to always provide an alternate way of getting into any dropdown sub-item. ie, if you have a dropdown called “Products,” make the hyperlink for products actually go to a products page. Sounds simple enough.. However, that’s not always an option, in that case, take a look at Gmail. There’s a handy scrollbar in the dropdown itself to get into all of your labels (which works nice for people like me who have 20+ labels).

Something to think about!

I’m putting my 301 redirect lecture to the test for all of my rmspangler.com URLs.

New Hosting!

I was originally hosted on asmallorange. They treated me well, it was a very cheap and easy hosting solution, I just kinda outgrew it. Now I am hosted on DreamHost and so far so good! <plug> If you ever make the switch over to DreamHost make sure you use my promotional code: ROBSPANGLER1. You’ll get 10% more disk space, and save $20 on the 1 year hosting option.</plug>

The switch was _relatively_ easy; however, If you ever need to switch your Textpattern to a new host be sure you read Moving a Textpattern Install to a New Host. That saved me some time i’m sure. The only problem I ran into was that my Textpattern account no longer worked after I restored my database (even though I attempted to use the same username and password for my new install). I simply had to do some phpMyAdmin queries to straighten it out.

A lot of people were looking to do a complete redesign and/or change their eCommerce platform. Meaning most (if not all) of their URLs may be changing. I was blown away by the amount of companies that almost made that switch without being told about redirecting their pages using 301 redirects.

What Is a 301 Redirect?

A 301 redirect is basically a code that says “This page has moved permanently” and redirects any HTTP user agent (including your browser) from an old URL (ex: http://www.rmspangler.com/blog.php?blogid=389/) to your new one (ex: http://www.rmspangler.com/blog-post-new-home/).

Why Does It Matter?

Basically if you’re not redirecting your old URLs to your new URLs you’re leaving any links to your site pointing to the wrong place. This includes organic search listings and links from other websites. Not only that, but it also means that any PageRank associated with those old pages is now lost! With a 301 redirect you’re telling search engines that “the page has moved permanently, so please update your listings” (and you keep my PageRank!). At work we’ve had clients come to us, who had their redesign done by another company, go from 6 digits in sales a month down to 5 (as much as 100,000 down to 20,000). All because the company responsible for the redesign did not do any redirecting for their new URLs.

Don’t Let This Happen To You!

301 Redirects are easy to do! However, depending on how many pages you have it can be a very time consuming process… it’s definitely worth it though.

Example Using .htaccess (Linux / Apache)

redirect 301 /old-page.php http://www.example.com/new-page.php

Example Using httpd.ini (Windows)

RewriteRule /old-page.asp http://www.example.com/new-page.asp [I,O,RP,L]

For more examples of doing 301 redirects, check these sites out:

• Webweaver 301 Redirects
• TextLinkBrokers 301 Redirects

Kidz-Med

Worldwide Shelters

The Spectrum Group

The site is for Mr. McGroovy’s Box Rivets, a very unique products with plenty of potential. Mr. McGroovy was originally running on a PayPal shopping cart but quickly outgrew it, we came up with a custom solution that will really take his store to the next level.

My role in the project was designer and front-end developer. So I did all of the design and front-end coding (xHTML/CSS/JavaScript).

More to follow on the Groove eCommerce Blog.

I love it, and the price didn’t break my bank; however, when the sales person asked if I wanted to pay an extra $100+ for a stain guard treatment…I just really couldn’t justify it, I was pretty sure I could find a way to do that myself (for a lot cheaper).

So of course I started at Google, I ran a search for ‘stain protection for microsuede’ the first sponsored link was at Target.com.

I was excited, because I do like Target; however, I was extremely disappointed once I got to their “landing page”…

It simply took me to several irrelevant search results…

Makes you wonder how much money they must be wasting on AdWords, as I’m sure that this isn’t the only instance of an irrelevant landing page. I would love to get my hands in their AdWords account and see what kind of ROI(Return on Investment) they’re getting with their current strategy.

h3. The Moral of the Story

If you’re going to pay-per-click and you expect a sale in return…give the customer a decent landing page with some relevant products.