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CSS Three — Connecting The Dots

As a web community, we’ve made a lot of exciting progress in regards to CSS3. We’ve put properties like text-shadow & border-radius to good use while stepping into background-clip and visual effects like transitions and animations.

We’ve also spent a great deal of time debating how and when to implement these properties. Just because a property isn’t widely supported by browsers or fully documented at the moment, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be working with it. In fact, I’d argue the opposite.

The Art of Branding Yourself and Your Freelancing Business

Just as it is for big corporations, successful branding is essential to the success of a freelancing business and to just one self-employed web worker.

It is often times overlooked, most likely because many don’t realize the large benefits that can come from it.

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With the economy so unstable and a personal down-shift in the number of good-paying projects, I have begun to search for a full-time job, or at least a part-time job to fill in the financial gaps. My preparations for this search has included some deep thinking about my skills, assets, and what it is I really offer a client and how different that is from working in a company. Based upon my discussions with contractors, recruiters, and line managers, I’m finding that the current needs of organizations differ enormously from the work I’ve done for the past twenty years as a freelancer. For me, the shift from “one-stop-shop” web designer and marketing writer to some sort of singular role on a team within an organization that creates web sites is a paradigm shift.

This article is part therapy and part research about what we offer to our clients as freelancers and how that translates back into corporate life. Continue Reading

In this issue of Ask FreelanceSwitch, Travis King and Thursday Bram look at final payments and how to ask for a deposit.

Ask FreelanceSwitch is a regular column here that allows us to help beginners get a grip on freelancing. If you have a question about freelancing that you want answered, send an email to askfreelanceswitch@gmail.com.

Let’s get ready to rumble!
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The latest episode of Freelance Radio, the official FreelanceSwitch podcast, is now available! This episode, the panel (John Brougher, Dickie Adams, Kristen Fischer and Von Glitschka) gives some of their favorite recommendations in four different categories.. Subscriptions to the podcast are available via iTunes and an archive of all podcasts will appear in the podcast section. We hope you enjoy it!
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Freelancers are great list makers, and it is little wonder. Running your own business, handling multiple clients and projects, leaves you with lots of things to manage and remember.

I know that I start every week, and every day, with “to-do” lists. I consider what needs to get done, what I want to achieve in a given time span. Then I generally end up with a list that is too long, and cut it down to focus on priority items.

Unfortunately, for a long time I found that items I dropped from the day’s “to-do” list didn’t really go away. Continue Reading

Today we’re launching a redesign and refresh of our popular Creattica gallery of inspirational work. The site features almost six thousand items, many of which are just mind-bogglingly amazing. Anyone can submit work for inclusion to the gallery, and we pick the best of the best for showcasing.

Over the years the site has become the premier gallery for business card design and this post is just a taste of some of the more unusual examples we’ve got in the gallery. Scroll down to check it out, and jump to the end of the article to learn about the redesign and some of the new features now available on Creattica.

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Are you a great writer with great ideas who wants to join our team? FreelanceSwitch’s sister blogs, WorkAwesome and the Netsetter, are undergoing big and exciting changes and we need writers who can make great, engaging content happen. Continue Reading

A good collaboration is like a good marriage. You want someone you feel that you can trust, and you especially want someone who compliments your style. When a client picks you, they pick you for your style, techniques, portfolio, and value. Likewise, you want someone that can match the clients requests as well as your own. You want a professional to work with, and you can’t afford to mix different styles for a client. You might end up re-doing the entire design or even lose the client completely. So how do you pick out your freelance back-up, your designing duo….and not a dud? Continue Reading

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You’re a freelancer, and you know what your job is. You’re a web designer. You’re a copywriter. You’re a marketing consultant.

Here’s what you probably don’t think about often, but should:

What’s not your job?

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When dealing with clients and potential clients, it’s important to understand that what they’re saying is not the same as what they mean, and how to react. Let’s look at these five examples:

“I’ll keep you in mind.”

You’ll often hear this when you’re prospecting for new business. It’s a nice-sounding sentence that may put you in a hopeful frame of mind. But don’t be fooled. People have lots of other things to think about beside you and your business. It’s your job to stay top-of-mind with them. So, with their permission, add them to your e-mail newsletter list or RSS feed. Ask them to follow you on Twitter or join your social network. Arrange to meet with them in person. Stay in touch with periodic phone calls. Learn other methods of staying in touch. Continue Reading