Work at Home as a Webdesign Freelancer

It's not important if you don't know how to program, design, optimize sites or do similar things. You can still earn money doing things everybody knows. Start working from your home today, without any extra investments.

You can do many "non-technical" things. Some of them are writing (articles, reviews ...), data research/collection (finding specified info on the web), data entry (mostly copy/paste), translation and many more. Off course for all those technical people, there are things like programming, design, seo and others.

Sites to find jobs/projects:

Ranoo.com - This is a great website. Most of my projects were done on this website. And I recommend it. While it's name determines that most of the jobs are in web development, there are other not so technical jobs as article writing, data entry, data collection (research) and others. You don't need to pay for sign up, their fees are one of the lowest (4%) or 4 $ and you can withdraw money in many ways. They also offer escrow system, so you are ensured from cheaters. Users can leave a feedback about each other - which is a nice option.to post a project is free and the webmasters are not charged.

Rent A Coder - I did only one project over this one. The overall mood on this site somehow isn't right, but never the less, you can find lot's of different jobs there, not just coding. Also there are some restrictions that make communication with the buyer a little difficult, and they don't offer bank wire withdraw - which I like to use. Their fee is 18%, one more reason for me not to use it to much.

Freelancers Network - This is a UK based website. So naturally many of the jobs are UK specific. Of course there are many jobs that you can work from anywhere in the world from your home. The good thing it's FREE, yup no fees, at the same time, that's the bad news, and it might happened that you finish the job, and not get paid. That cannot happened when using escrow systems.

There are many other websites. But these should be enough for you to start. Eventually you will realize that it's best to concentrate on one or two of this websites. Mainly for the reason of feedback. Most freelance websites offer a way that buyers rate service providers after project is completed, and few good rates, with some nice words about you can work magic in getting future bids.

you will realize that many of the people which you found over this sites, will contact you latter for some additional work (if you worked ok for the first time) - so you will start to build your regular clients.

Good luck with your bids!

The Web Design Business - 5 Surefire Ways To Fail

Several years ago, I launched a small web design company in a rural area of California. Market conditions couldn't have been better, my skill level was above average, and I had a large pool of aquaintences to which I could market.

Within 12 months I went broke.

My business failed because I made some very fundamental mistakes, and made them consistently.

I now work in the web hosting industry. I have had the opportunity to interact with numerous self-employed web designers and have found that the mistakes which I made are extremely common, and usually fatal.

If you are hoping to make a go of your business over the long term, you may want to memorize my top 5 mistakes, and avoid them like the plague.

If, on the other hand, you are determined to run your web design business into the ground, the following list may be used as an expeditious roadmap to failure.

1. Underprice your services

This is the most common mistake web designers make. The temptation is to break into the business by producing a few cheap websites in order to build a portfolio. Don't do it!

Remember that you will only be spending about 40% of your time designing sites. The other 60% will be spent hustling up the next client. If you think your time is worth $10.00 per hour, consider asking for $30.00. This will give you sufficient revenue to pay for all the non-paying time you spend marketing your business.

2. Fail to set and enforce boundaries

Everyone loves a nice guy, and the temptation to be one is a trap which many of us fall into. It's crucial to remember, though, that you are in business for one primary reason - to make money.

You will, doubtless, encounter clients who will pay you for a small website, then end up wasting all of your time with questions about how to remove spyware from their computer and requests to add "one small thing" to an already completed website.

You can avoid this, somewhat, by establishing clear boundaries with the client from the very start. A contract is useful here. Make sure that your client knows exactly what can be expected of you, and what you expect of them.

If your client asks for extras, and you're amenable to providing them, give them a quote. Never toss it in for free. The only thing you have to sell is your time and expertise. Don't give away either.

Remember, you're in business. Try asking a service station owner for a little free gasoline. They would be shocked by your question. Likewise, you should be shocked when someone asks you to provide free service.

3. View your clients as temporary

Many of us get into this business because we love creating something new. By the time we finish a website, we're tired of that site (and sometimes that client) and we're ready to start a new project, and put the old project well behind us.

This attitude can cut deeply into your potential gross.

Over time, your client will need numerous updates to his or her website. updates are sometimes bothersome, but can add a significant revenue stream to your business. More important, a satisfied client becomes one of the major links in your marketing network.

4. Ignore recurring revenue opportunities

During the best of times, web designers live from project to project. While finishing one project, you will be lining up the next.

Every business, however, has slow stretches.

Unfortunately, your own creditors will still expect payment, even when your own revenue slows down.

A wise web designer looks for ways to provide his business with some sources of recurring revenue. Even $400 a month which you can count on can get you through a dry spell.

There are numerous ways to set up some recurring revenue. Take a look at maintenence contracts with your clients, reselling webhosting, etc.

5. Build pretty websites which do nothing

Your best source of advertising is word of mouth. Nothing generates great word of mouth like a satisfied customer. You can build the flashiest, prettiest, most cutting edge websites on the net, but it's all for naught if your site doesn't perform.

Every website has a purpose. That purpose might be to sell goods, leverage an advertising budget, disseminate information, assist in personnel management, or one of a million other possibilites.

Your first job, as a web designer, is to ascertain what the web site is supposed to do. Once you find that "thing" - the thing it should do - make sure that the site you deliver does that particular thing like nobody's business! By doing so, you will ensure a client who will sing your praises at the Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce meetings, and to his or her friends and family. A client like this is golden, and will bring a steady stream of customers to your door.

John Pierce is the Customer Service Manager for 123 eCart - http://123ecart.com - and the webmaster of the Find My Shopping Cart Directory - [http://findmyshoppingcart.com]

9 Ways to Gain Your Visitors Respect

The internet is filled with sites and they are good and bad. Some have been
known for a long time and some still struggle to get the respect and fame they think they deserve.

Although not all your visitors are web design professional they still can put
their finger on a good site and sense the ones that are not that ok. But how
can you convince people your site deserves to be known and respected? How can
you make them feel your site is better than other thousands they could find on
the same subject?

Elegant design

You need a nice looking site. Don't overdo this either, but try to offer your
site a unique and nice feeling. Branding is also important. Try to come up with
a nice logo.

Create a nice layout, try to have a consistent colour theme and use nice fonts.
Don't use templates unless they are unique and you have got the only copy. There's
nothing worse for your "respected" site than a theme people have seen for 50
times before.

Avoid animated gifs, annoying backgrounds and music.

Good and interesting content

Don't just throw links and downloads. Nowadays people need more, not to mention
the search engines would love your site more if you offer them some content.
Organize the content logically and update it frequently.

Good way to advertise

We all need to live and some try to do this from the site they run. It's ok to
have an ad campaign or two. Just don't over do it. Don't fill your pages with
many banners and advertising links. They would make people lose respect for you
not to mention ruin the entire layout.

A good behaviour online

Don't think people cannot trace you just because you are "anonymous" online.
wrong. if someone wants to trace you all the way to your lair, there's nothing
you can do against it. But you can use this in order to get known, in a positive
manner.

Post in forums and respect. People will come to know you eventually from seeing
your good posts and nice behaviour. When they'll see your site this could mean
more visitors and perhaps some clients that are almost convinced you really mean
business.

Respect towards your visitors

Don't treat your visitors bad, offer them a pleasant experience and make them
love the place. Offer them a feed-back form and respond as fast as possible to
any questions they might ask. Word of mouth is a serious promotion. Use it in
your behalf.

Good organization

Don't take prisoners, let people know what's on your site and how they can reach
the information they are looking for. A sitemap is a good thing to add to your
site if you've got more pages. It's also a good trick for the search engines
optimization. Have a good navigation system and don't make people have to guess
what's going on in your little place online.

About information and contact page

For a business and even a personal page, a good about and contact page can do
wonders. When people see a nice site they tend to want to know something more
about the person running it or the business presenting it. And a contact page
is a must on every site. For a business offer phone numbers and addresses, for
a personal page at least an email address.

Updates

Frequent updates make search engines love you, not to mention your visitors.
If you cannot update the information on a daily basis, try at least a monthly
update.

Jonathan Yates
http://www.internetworldchat.co.uk
Internet World Chat is a discussion forum for webmasters to get tips or advice.

Shameless Flashers - Using Flash Tools To Create Spectacular Websites

Flash is a powerful technology that can help you create spectacular websites, tutorials and demos. Find out which inexpensive tools are available to you that have very low learning curve.

SWFText

SWF Text is an author tool of Flash text animation. It embraces 150+ text effects and 20+ background effects, and users may also customize all the properties of a Flash, including font, text color, and layout, etc. With SW FText, a user without any experience of Flash development can easily create a Flash banner or an introductory page within a few minutes. And all you need do is to input text, select font and animation effects. While a veteran Flash designer may use SWF Text for text animation in a project, which sure greatly saves your time and effort.

Sothink SWF Decompiler

Sothink SWF Decompiler is a tool to browse, view and parse Shockwave Flash movies (.swf files). It can extract sounds, images, movie clips from a Flash movies. What's more, SWF Decompiler can decompile the action scripts in a Flash movie and turn them into neat and readable code. Sothink SWF Decompiler can convert your SWF to FLA. It supports exporting the whole movie file in FLA format, compatible with Flash 6 and Flash 7. Sothink SWF Decompiler supports Action Script 2.0 fully. It supports exporting ActionScript 2.0 while converting swf to fla and supports exporting the .as file and Flash Project file (flp) while the swf file contains AS 2.0 class. Within the program, it can decompile the code written in Action Script 2.0 and display the readable code in Action Script window, with syntax highlighting.

ScreenFlash Professional

If you want to build animated, interactive software tutorials in the shortest time, ScreenFlash is your best choice. It is the easiest and most effective tool for demonstrating your software product, adding animations to your application's Help system, or training novices. ScreenFlash captures the action and sound from any part of Windows desktop and saves it to a Macromedia Flash movie file. You can also edit the movie by adding button, sound, picture and text, which can create an integrated interactive demo.

More Flash Resources:

SWFText

http://www.deprice.com/swftext.htm

Sothink SWF Decompiler

http://www.deprice.com/sothinkswfdecompiler.htm

ScreenFlash Professional

http://www.deprice.com/screenflashprof.htm

John Deprice owns and operates http://www.deprice.com

6 Steps To Your Own Website

A lot of people these days are interested in getting their own place on the world wide web. Whether it´s a personal site like a blog, or a business site, they all need to have a decent plan before they get started.

A few years ago I started designing and creating websites myself. I started just to show off to others, but I noticed it wasn’t as easy I thought it was. I mean, it is easy to get a site online; you just buy a template, pay a coder, and pay some one to insert content and advertise for you then you’re done. But if you want to do things yourself, that’s where it gets tricky.

After a few sites, I managed to find a certain pattern in the process of creating and managing my websites.

1. I always start with an idea for subject and content. Believe me - never create a website about something you hate and know nothing about. Instead create a website about something you know a lot about and like to tell other people about. What also works is writing about a subject you would like to know more on, after doing your own research. Newbies can explain information to other newbies easier then pro´s explaining information to newbies.

2. Then I think of a design to go with it, to reflect its idea. Like if your subject is Boats, then don’t go with a flaming red design. Sure it could do it, but I would prefer for a blue, water-like design to reflect its subject.

3. If the design is done, you need to get it coded. Some create their designs while they code, but I prefer to use a graphical program to first create the whole design, just the way I want it to be. Then I slice it all (contact me if you want to read an article about that) and save it for the web. I usually have a small group of coders I trust to code my designs and they send it back to me when it’s coded.

4. Well then everything is almost done you would think. You got a design coded and everything. But the answer is NO. You are just starting. Sure you have a site and all, but you do not have hosting or a domain name. In order to get your site up and running, you will need something called hosting. It’s like when you buy a house it needs to be on ground. Well the hosting is the ground here, and your website is the house. Without hosting, your site is almost useless. These days you can choose between free hosts, which in my opinion aren’t great, but if you want to start and try out, I’d suggest you work with a free host first. And then there is paid hosting, you pay for a certain amount of server space and bandwidth and sometimes extra features.

5. Now if you have chosen to go for a free host, then please skip this step, cause you probably won’t be able to use it. A domain is needed for people to find your website. For example if you website is called BoatFish, then you could make the domain http://www.boatfish.com or http://www.boatfish.net, whatever you choose for. There are quite a large number of extensions you can go for. But I always suggest you go for a .com domain name. People tend to look for them more often than for a .net or any other extension.

6. The most important part of your website is your content. People stay or come back to your website because you have good content, or leave if you don´t. So please write up some good content for your site before launching it; this can cost you a lot of visitors. I can’t show you how to submit content, or what kind of content you should be submitting, this is something you should look into yourself.

7. Now you got everything you need to get your site online. And still you are not done at all. You can site around and wait for people to come to your website, but not many will. That’s why advertising will be your best bet to go for. You can link exchange and/or go for SEO. Search Engine Optimization is a great way to get many hits towards your website. I do not have any websites that haven’t been optimized for search engines, because I know seo’ing brings in many visitors, and customers. SEO means Search Engine Optimization, which means that it will try to rank you as high as possible at search engines. If some one searches for a keyword regarding your website they will see your site and click on it. This is seriously a great way to get many, many visitors.

8. Now your site is done and you can keep submitting content to your site, to keep visitors coming back. Good luck! And let me know if this helped you in any way.

---

If you want to get more articles or Webmaster related information go to Http://http://www.webmasterspalace.com. It’s a place for all webmasters to unite and get their resources from. My name is Klaas Koopman and I am a Dutch Webmaster. You can contact me if you need anything Webmaster related. Thank you for reading. For Designs go to http://www.kkportfolio.net.

Effective Webdesign

The Basics

Before starting on how to design a website effectively, how about clearing some basic web design concepts? Designing Effectively

Now that you know what web design and related terms mean, lets get down to the real thing: Designing Effectively How to balance artistic design with practicality and functionality.

Use of graphics and content

Unless your website is all about graphics, how to make them, edit them or just a bunch of links to graphics websites, I suggest you use graphics sparingly, especially the flashing, twirling kind. They not only detract readers from the content, but they also take ages to load. You do not want your readers to leave your website because your graphically attractive page does not seem to load fast enough. Then again, too much text is boring. So mix and match the graphics and text on your page, having enough white space so that the page is not plain annoying.

Layout and design

While designing, keep in mind that poor layout and design will make your pages unreadable and difficult to keep your visitors on your website for long. Some of the things that make a poor design and layout:

1. Text that is too small to read
2. Color combinations of text and background that make the text hard to read
3. Large graphic files that take forever to load
4. Multiple things that blink
5. Unclear navigation; over complex navigation
6. Paragraphs of type in all caps, bold, and italic all at once
7. Graphics that don't fit on the screen (assuming a screen of 640x460 pixels)
8. Animations that never stop
9. Complicated frames, too many frames, unnecessary scroll bars in frames
10. Cluttered, not enough alignment of elements

Some of the things that make a webpage stand out from the crowd:

1. Stay away from bad design features listed above.
2. Background does not interrupt the text
3. Navigation buttons and bars are easy to understand and use
4. Good use of graphic elements (photos, subheads, pull quotes) to break up large areas of text
5. A large site has an index or site map
6. Link colors coordinate with page color
7. Every graphic link has a matching text link
8. Animated graphics turn off by themselves
9. Pages download quickly
10. All pages have the immediate visual impact within 640 x 460 pixels

Planning

Most of the time, all it takes to design your website effectively is a little planning. When designing a website, it needs to be clean, uncluttered, attractive and easy for users to read and find what they need. Begin with a webdesign plan:

1. what colors do you want to use?
2. Are these colors complimentary?
3. What items - text, images, data - do you want to put in your pages?
4. What layout do you want? Look at other websites and then decide.

Follow the above steps to get a website that speaks for itself and your business. You can always contact me for suggestions and webdesign projects.

Tasneem Rangoonwala is a freelancer Web Development Co-ordinator at D.zigns Enterprise Solutions, offering webdesign, development and other related services.

Effective Webdesign

The Basics

Before starting on how to design a website effectively, how about clearing some basic web design concepts? Designing Effectively

Now that you know what web design and related terms mean, lets get down to the real thing: Designing Effectively How to balance artistic design with practicality and functionality.

Use of graphics and content

Unless your website is all about graphics, how to make them, edit them or just a bunch of links to graphics websites, I suggest you use graphics sparingly, especially the flashing, twirling kind. They not only detract readers from the content, but they also take ages to load. You do not want your readers to leave your website because your graphically attractive page does not seem to load fast enough. Then again, too much text is boring. So mix and match the graphics and text on your page, having enough white space so that the page is not plain annoying.

Layout and design

While designing, keep in mind that poor layout and design will make your pages unreadable and difficult to keep your visitors on your website for long. Some of the things that make a poor design and layout:

1. Text that is too small to read
2. Color combinations of text and background that make the text hard to read
3. Large graphic files that take forever to load
4. Multiple things that blink
5. Unclear navigation; over complex navigation
6. Paragraphs of type in all caps, bold, and italic all at once
7. Graphics that don't fit on the screen (assuming a screen of 640x460 pixels)
8. Animations that never stop
9. Complicated frames, too many frames, unnecessary scroll bars in frames
10. Cluttered, not enough alignment of elements

Some of the things that make a webpage stand out from the crowd:

1. Stay away from bad design features listed above.
2. Background does not interrupt the text
3. Navigation buttons and bars are easy to understand and use
4. Good use of graphic elements (photos, subheads, pull quotes) to break up large areas of text
5. A large site has an index or site map
6. Link colors coordinate with page color
7. Every graphic link has a matching text link
8. Animated graphics turn off by themselves
9. Pages download quickly
10. All pages have the immediate visual impact within 640 x 460 pixels

Planning

Most of the time, all it takes to design your website effectively is a little planning. When designing a website, it needs to be clean, uncluttered, attractive and easy for users to read and find what they need. Begin with a webdesign plan:

1. what colors do you want to use?
2. Are these colors complimentary?
3. What items - text, images, data - do you want to put in your pages?
4. What layout do you want? Look at other websites and then decide.

Follow the above steps to get a website that speaks for itself and your business. You can always contact me for suggestions and webdesign projects.

Tasneem Rangoonwala is a freelancer Web Development Co-ordinator at D.zigns Enterprise Solutions, offering webdesign, development and other related services.