17 Reasons You Shouldn’t Charge by the Hour
Matthew Griffin has written an absolutely great post with 7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Charge by the Hour. It’s great reading for a freelancer or any company that often uses hourly billing.
134 Tips to improve your Design Firm’s Website
After running the Xemion Directory for several years, I’ve seen my fair share of web design company websites. I’ve noticed four elements that many companies leave off their website which negatively impacts sales: Continue Reading 4 Tips to improve your Design Firm’s Website »
1The Death of the Confirmation Password
Removing the confirmation password from signup forms has become a growing trend. Two recent examples I noticed include Twitter (follow me) and Raven SEO Tools. This is an awful move for usability. I’ve mistyped my password and confirmation password enough times to realize that I’m not a perfect typer. Nothing is more annoying than going through a forgot my password request, especially when a simple form confirmation would prevent this from happening.
Am I crazy? Why is this trend spreading?
33How to Find New Clients via LinkedIn
Before you start seeking new clients on LinkedIn, your LinkedIn profile must be up-to-date and include detailed information on at least your last three job positions. Include what your responsibilities are and what you accomplished while you were there. Your profile is essentially your resume.  This is what a potential client will look before contacting you.  Be sure to point out areas in which you have expertise. Your LinkedIn headline must reflect what it is exactly you do. Include a word like “expert”, “specialist”, “senior”, “consultant” or “experienced” in your title. Your title will be the first impression you make.
Secondly, post links to your website and your portfolio. If you regularly update your blog, post a link to it too. An infrequently updated blog gives off a bad impression, so don’t link to it unless you’re posting at least every other week.
Once your profile is ready, connect to as many people as you can. This includes clients, vendors, friends, colleagues, past colleagues, family, etc.. If it’s not a close acquaintance, be sure to include a personal note stating who you are and how you know them. From now on, attempt to connect to everyone you meet. Building your network is extremely important. When a search is conducted on LinkedIn, contacts are often ranked by the number of connections they have. Plus, the larger your network the more often you will show up in searches. Get as many recommendations as you can (tip: recommend your connections first).
Those are the basics. The real key to finding new work on LinkedIn is participating in the network and increasing your visibility. The best way to do this is by asking and answering questions on LinkedIn Answers.
Answers are by far the most visible part of the LinkedIn community.  Answering a question helps someone out and establishes yourself as an expert in that field (it will show up in your profile too). Many questions are often along the lines of “Do you know someone who does…?” Be sure to state that you have experience in that area and you’d be happy to help (if you truly do have experience in that area). And if you answer enough questions in a particular category, you’ll be shown as an expert in that category.
Asking a question also increases your visibility.  If you need help with something business related, LinkedIn is a great place to ask. Keep your tone and grammar professional at all times.
It’s important that you be genuine with all your answers and questions. Make sure your answers are detailed and relevant. LinkedIn is just like networking in the offline world. It’s a great place to meet people and help them fix their problems. If you simply try to hand out business cards, it won’t do any good.
The second great way to pick up new clients is through a recommendation. Recommendations can come from a connection’s profile or from a connection answering a question. The easiest way to get recommended is by recommending others and remaining active in the network and in their lives.
If you’ve found any clients on LinkedIn and have any additional tips, please share!
0CSS Text Gradients - No Javascript!
Both WebDesignerWall and CSSGlobe both posted today a really neat trick for making CSS-only text gradients (albeit, not semantic…but it’s not a perfect world). The same-day posting was just an odd coincidence, but this will be a very handy little code.
0DreamHost mistakenly bills customers $7.5 million
So I woke up this morning to a $300 bill from DreamHost and a disabled website. I spent an hour before work frantically trying to get the site switched over to another host. I had already decided I was tired of DreamHost’s mysql server going down so I sure wasn’t going to pay the bill and renew. I thought the bill was pretty odd since I did not receive any warnings.
Turns out I wasn’t the only one affected. DreamHost mistakenly billed customers for an estimated $7.5 million dollars and then laughed about like it was no big deal. Continue Reading DreamHost mistakenly bills customers $7.5 million »
73 things you can do right NOW to get more sales
Ok, it’s more like three variations of the same thing, but here goes: Continue Reading 3 things you can do right NOW to get more sales »
13Never ever search for a domain name at Network Solutions!
This week NSI openly admitted to “front running” domain names. Basically, whenever you search for a domain name at Network Solutions, they’ll register the domain in their name for four days thereby locking you from purchasing it anywhere else. Rumors have existed for years of front running by private individuals on a very small scale who hold the names for profit. Front running causing great pains to business owners and web developers who search for domain names and then find them taken the next day. In order to combat front running, NSI decided that they should get in the game too.
They implemented this “service” under the guise of protecting us from front running by register/locking the domain for us. But anyone can go back to NSI and purchase the domain, the only thing they’re preventing is the domain being registered by another registrar. This is simply an anti-competitive move and a very slippery slope for the domain industry. Other registrars will be forced to do the same thing if the practice is not stopped and pretty soon 4 days will turn into 30 days and the entire industry will become completely locked down.
Hopefully you don’t purchase your domains from NSI anyway, but if you do, please stop now and whatever you do, don’t search for domains at NSI. For the full scoop and additional updates, visit Domain Name News. If you’re looking for a good registrar, I highly recommend NameCheap. Note: I’m slightly bias as I designed the previous version of NameCheap’s website.
4The Least Valid Site Ever
Great job by Harry Roberts to find the least valid site ever (or atleast that he’s found so far).
2Free CSS Text Wrapper Tool
The CSS Text Wrapper is a really great tool for easily creating the complex CSS needed to make professional looking image wrapping. It’s something I’ve messed with a lot in the past and this will definitely make my job easier.
2SEED Conference January 2008 - Chicago
I’ll be attending the January 18th SEED Conference at the IIT Campus. I was really close to going to the first one, so I was glad they’re having a second. The SEED Conference is put on by Jason Fried, Carlos Segura and Jim Coudal. It’s about design and entrepreneurship - my two loves. For more info, see the site or Mike Rohde’s illustrated notes which are really fantastic. Leave a comment if you’re attending so I know to look for you. If you’re not attending, sign up now because I’m sure it’s almost full.
765 Steps to the Perfect Web Designer Resume
NOTE: If you are looking for a web design job or looking to hire a web designer/developer, please visit the Xemion Job Board.
If you’re a web designer, having a well-designed resume is extremely important. It’s important for all job-seekers to have great resumes, but for you, as a designer - this is your chance to strut your stuff and make a big impression. It’s also important because all the other designers competing against you should have great resumes, so yours is just average, you’re in trouble. I’ve hired designers before, it makes an impact. When I’m hiring, I want an employee who loves all facets of design and has an eye for detail.
I recently noticed Kevin Fox was leaving Google for an undisclosed startup. For those of you who don’t know, Kevin Fox was the Senior User Experience Design Lead at Google. He worked on Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Reader. His resume is published on his site so I thought I’d take a peak. It’s one of the best resumes I’ve ever seen (and I’m not even talking about his impressive work experience).
Below are five things I gleaned from Kevin’s resume that will lead you to creating your own perfect resume. For comparison, here’s my resume (it’s a little dated). They’re pretty similar, but Kevin’s is better.
Continue Reading 5 Steps to the Perfect Web Designer Resume »
