Linkswitch #66, Crafting Headlines, Saying No, Start a Conversation
Ultimate guide to crafting extraordinary headlines
No amount of effort put into a pixel-perfect design, with eye-pleasing typography, and heart-warming content can ever offset the importance of an incredible headline. Without it, your efforts will go unnoticed. Yet some of the ugliest websites can get all of the attention and recognition that yours deserved. A shame, isn’t it? But it is probably because you forgot to work on the most important part of any piece of online content: the headline (or title).
How to Take a Vacation Without the Internet
Even though we can work from anywhere and can dictate our own schedules, it’s not often that we allow ourselves to take non-working holidays, especially ones where we’ll be completely off the grid with no phone or internet access at all. I never thought about this issue until about eight months ago when I got engaged. In another month, we’re going on a Caribbean cruise for our honeymoon, and I have no idea if I’ll even have a phone, much less internet access. But then again, do I really want to?
Linkswitch #65, Prioritizing Tasks, Personal Life, Employee to Freelancer
5 Ideas for Choosing Your Home Office Equipment Setup
Now that you’ve made the decision to become a fulltime, stay-at-home freelancer, it’s time to start thinking of ways to outfit your home office. There are a few things to consider when choosing home office equipment – form and function being part of it, but personality is important, too. The equipment in your home office needs to fit a set of criteria; such as: be supportive, ergonomic, useful, durable, affordable and yes downright cool. Let’s look at a few ideas to consider as you setup your home office.
Artists unite for Japan Flags
Since March 11, the tragedy in Japan has impacted the entire world in many ways and unfortunately continues to do so. But can we make a difference? We certainly can! As artists and designers, we can support the people of Japan and their struggle with our art. French Agency Creasenso did exactly that by gathering 11 talented illustrators to create some amazing designs for sale, in order to support the Red Cross in its efforts to aid refugees. They will donate 100% of all profits to this worthy cause.
Linkswitch #64, Networking Tips, Using a Collection Agency, Make a Difference
Networking Tips for Freelancers
The idea of working at home is a dream for a lot of people and for good reason. Let’s face it: Who doesn’t like the idea of staying indoors in a nice warm house on a cold snowy winter day when everyone else is scraping ice off their windows so they can make a long slow commute during rush hour?
Beautiful Disney Portraits by Annie Leibovitz
Annie Leibovitz is a celebrity photographer born in Waterbury, Connecticut. There isn’t just one photograph that made Annie such a popular photographer. She started her career working as a staff photographer for the Rolling Stones (magazine). She was soon on tour with The Rolling Stones as their band photographer. Before long she was photographing celebrities and band members all over the world, and has been ever since.
Using “Preventive Medicine” Against Bad Clients
Bad clients have been an issue in everyone’s career at some point. Managing difficult client relationships when they occur or avoiding bad projects in the first place are two of the most important skills in managing any freelance business. Many articles offer great advice on how to handle such situations and how to stay as far away as possible from these troublemakers. But the problem still exists: bad clients are always lurking out there, keeping you on guard and plaguing others in the industry who weren’t lucky (or cautious) enough to avoid them.
Linkswitch #63, Creating Engaging Content, Website Redesign, Four-Day Workweek
How to Create Content That Engages Prospects and Customers
When Rick Short, director of marketing communications for Indium Corporation, began thinking about his social media strategy, he started with keyword research. He identified 73 of the most important keywords his prospective customers would search for. Then he created 73 different blogs that focused on each keyword and assigned a dozen employees to write those blogs.
25 Amazing Photographs Taken in the Rain
Although rain can make photography difficult, there are some amazing photos that have been captured in the rain. In this post we’ll showcase 25 photos that fit into this category. If you see something you like, click on the image or the credit link to be led to the source. Many of those pages will have a larger version of the image to be displayed, and you can also browse through more work by the photographer.
Linkswitch #62, Home Office, Facebook Branding, Project Management
Creating an Awesome Home Office Plan
Good home office plans can influence how successful you are while working from home. This means having the resources to get the job done, minimizing distractions and being comfortable.
Designing For The Future Web
Designing for the future Web. That’s a big subject. Where do we start when we’re talking about something that isn’t here yet? In this article, we’ll look at what the future Web might look like and how we can adapt our current skills to this new environment, as well as how to create fluid websites that are built around a consistent core and that adapt to the limitations and features of the device on which they are viewed. We’ll also look at how our conceptual approach to designing websites should evolve: designing from the simplest design upwards, and not from the richest website down.
Linkswitch #61: Presentations, Balanced Life, Too Much Work
22 Tips: Designing an Effective Slide Deck Presentation
Every once in awhile an opportunity arises for freelancers to present their work or expertise to peers and prospective clients. Agreeing to take part is at best a fantastic chance to network, a way to exchange ideas and insights or to pick up contacts that will give you work. At worst, it is a terrifying and overwhelming commitment.
The Pros and Cons of Art-Directed Blogs
Art-directed blogs (sometimes also referred to as “blogazines”) are making strides in the blogosphere. Looking at them, it can be tempting to jump on the bandwagon and start creating your own art-directed posts. But it’s not that straightforward. There are a lot of pros and cons to designing each and every post on your blog. Below, we’ve covered the most important advantages and disadvantages to creating custom designs for your blog posts and we also included a collection of some great examples.
Resources for Traveling Freelancers #4: Travel Linkswitch
This is the forth article in a series on resources for the traveling freelancer. Jump over to Traveling Freelancer #1, #2, or #3, if you haven’t read them already.
While you’re working on the road you’ll need to keep in touch with your contacts while keeping your expenses low and your load light. In this special edition of LinkSwitch we have a number of links to resources that will help you out, as we wrap up this traveling freelancer series.
Keep in touch with clients and other contacts
Skype is probably the most popular communications software out there. It offers free computer-to-computer calls, including conference video calls, and call quality is generally good. For the iPhone user there’s also a Skype app. Prices for computer-to-phone calls are not particularly inexpensive but they’re not too horrible either. SMS prices are decent.
Send and receive free SMS messages around the world (sort of)
I’ve heard many good things about WhatsApp, a paid app for the smartphone. If you use it with a WiFi connection you pay nothing to send and receive unlimited text messages to other WhatsApp owners anywhere in the world.
Linkswitch #60: Spec Requests, Productivity, WordPress Plugins
10 Productivity-Enhancing Apps from the Chrome Web Store
Google launched their Chrome Web Store last year to some well-received notice. But in reality, it serves only as a glorified directory for web apps accessible on any standards-compliant browser. And that isn’t necessarily a downer. In fact, with little intervention needed to work on Chrome, many web apps were immediately available via this store — including a bunch of awesome apps that can enhance anyone’s productivity.
Prove It: Handling Tests and Spec Requests from Clients
I was called recently about a freelance job for a local corporate entity and met to speak with the marketing director. After a few days, I received an e-mail informing me I was one of six “finalists” for the assignment. The message contained a list of several advertising campaigns, a rebranding of the logo, signage and billboards. It said all finalists were to do these for a presentation in two weeks. My first thought was…not fit to be printed here.
Linkswitch #59 Data Backup, Creative Design, Planning for Retirement
Backupify: The True Data Bodyguard
A major USP of the cloud and SaaS apps is data security. Anyone with logical thinking would understand the benefits of having their data stored in a world class data center managed by experts and their data duplicated across multiple centres across the globe for redundancy.
7 Ways to Garner Local Clients and Referral Business
It is assumed in the online business, especially in the design field, that most big clients are international. But that doesn’t mean that all lucrative projects are with international clients. As companies such as the controversial BlitzLocal have discovered, there’s a vast and lucrative market for providing local businesses with online visibility.
Linkswitch #58, Design Process, New Facebook Pages, Useful Freelance Tools
7 Reasons Your Website Doesn’t Bring In New Clients
As a freelancer, you count on your website as an important part of your marketing system. It is like a sales representative, gathering leads and warming them up to become paying clients, 24/7. That is, IF your website provides the appropriate content, attracts the right readers, is properly optimized for conversion, and is a pleasure to use.
Introverts: 6 Ways to Find Your Niche in the Office
It’s the same story everywhere you work: You can’t think on the fly during meetings or jump in during call-it-out brainstorming sessions. You feel drained after office events that involve being around a lot of people, no matter how nice they are. And you’re always pegged as the quiet one.
25 Amazing Photographer Portfolio Websites
Portfolio sites are often excellent sources of design inspiration. With photography portfolios the primary focus is of course the photography itself, so the design is often minimal to allow the photos to have the attention of visitors. In this post we’ll showcase 25 photography portfolios that show how design and photography can work together to create a beautiful portfolio site.
Linkswitch #57, Typography Tips, Freelance Startup, Getting More Work
The Netsetter: Web Pages vs. Web Sites
A couple of weeks ago, I was trying to explain to a friend why links from high PageRank sites are often overrated. When he then insisted that I was contradicting advice I had given him earlier, I was confused for a moment, until he gave me a concrete example.
Useful Typography Tips For Adobe Illustrator
Typography is not only an all-important aspect of design, it is also an art form in and of itself. Choosing the right font, the perfect spacing and even the correct shape of text can be an important factor as to whether a project fails or succeeds. Although Illustrator is not really used for multiple-paged projects, many would agree that it is one of the most powerful applications for creating vector graphics, such as logos, and it is also often used for one-page documents, such as business cards, posters, or postcards.
Linkswitch #56: Web apps, writing, and marketing
5 Things You Never Want to Hear Your Client Say
You know what you call a client that knows exactly what they want, does not require revisions, always pays you on time and loves colored eggs? You call them the Easter Bunny because they do not exist.
In a perfect world all client relationships would go this smoothly. Unfortunately, it’s not a perfect world. As a freelancer, you have horror stories, but here are five strategies to help you work through these difficult situations.
Get a Life! 7 Ways to Have a Social Life When Home is Your Office
There’s no doubt about it. Working from home can be a pretty sweet setup, with an array of privileges and perks. So sweet, in fact, that it would take an act of God or near-death emergency to claw some of us from our comfy confines and our daily “uniform” of bunny slippers and lounging pajamas. True? Continue Reading
