Vexcom Web Design News: The Joy of Flex: Adobe Air and the future of the desktop (with Ben Forta)

Adobe Flex gives you almost all the power of a full-blown desktop application (except for local file access) and it runs right in your web browser, it's the future of hosted applications.

The Joy of Flex: Adobe Air and the future of the desktop (with Ben Forta)

A Ninja's Best Friend: Referrals

The Freelancer's Guide to Increasing Referral Business

One of the biggest challenges involved in freelance work is reaching and maintaining a steady workload. For many freelancers finding new clients can be a time-consuming process, which leaves less time for income-producing work. What if this effort could be reduced or eliminated? You could more completely dedicate your focus to earning money and doing a great job.

Increasing the amount of referral business you receive can be one of the most effective ways to reduce the amount of time that is spent on no-income producing activities. Actively working to increase referrals from clients, friends, and family is often not a priority, as many freelancers feel that is not in their control. Instead, they just wait — and hope — that someone sends them a referral.

Reasons to Love Referrals

They Find You

Less work is required on your part to land new gigs via referrals. Less work for the same results is always good.

Trust

Those who are referred to you will have a higher opinion of your services and more trust for you because someone they respect has recommended you. The trust that they have for whoever recommended you is partially transferred to trust in you.

You Have an Advantage

If a client is talking to other freelancers in regards to their project, as a referral from a friend you will have an advantage over the others (all other factors being equal).

Free Advertising

Word-of-mouth referrals are essentially free advertising for you and your services. Not only is it free, but it’s actually more effective than just about any other type of advertising you can do.

They Snowball

The more happy clients you have, the more referrals you’re likely to receive. And the more referrals you receive, the more customers you’ll have spreading the word about your services. In most cases, the longer you’ve been around the more referrals you’ll get.

12 Ways to Increase the Number of Referrals You Receive

1. Provide Superior Quality

The best thing you can do to improve your chances of getting referrals is to provide a quality of work that blows clients away. Clients that get these results will be your best advertisements as they have had a great experience and can share their story with others in need of great service.

Without high quality work, you’re unlikely to get many referrals, if any. People simply don’t want to refer a friend to someone who won’t live up to their expectations. If you’re focusing too much of your effort on the other methods of growing referrals, your quality of work can suffer and your other efforts will be wasted.

2. Take Care of Your Customers

Customer service counts for freelancers, too. Focus on providing timely and clear communication, and always be professional. In many cases, the service provided is actually what satisfies the client more so than the work itself.

3. Under Promise, Over Deliver

It’s a bit of a cliche, but it is very effective in allowing you to keep your clients satisfied. Don’t promise them anything that isn’t likely to happen, and give yourself the chance to out-do their expectations. With this strategy they should never be disappointed.

4. Ask for Referrals

Sometimes you just have to ask for what you want. Many clients will be willing to refer you to friends or colleagues, but they may not even think about it unless you bring it up. Remind customers that referrals are a big part of your business, and ask them if they know of anyone that could benefit from your services. If you have done an exceptional job for them, chances are they will make an effort to help you in this way.

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Ways to Get More Customer Referrals for Your Freelance Business
In the world of freelance, customer referrals are everything. The amount of customer referrals will often determine how successful one’s business can really be. As word spreads quickly, having customers refer others to you and your services is a wonderful way of gaining new business and making more money. There are a few distinct ways to get more customer referrals for your business.

Give 100% Effort All the Time

One of the best ways to help ensure that customers will refer your business to friends and family members is to do the best job possible every single time. Nobody wants to refer a less than satisfactory freelancer to those who they know and love. If you put 100% into all of your work you are sure to get customer referrals out of it as well as the satisfaction in knowing that your work is top notch.

Ask How Things Went or How a Sick Family Member Is

Instead of asking directly for a referral, just be friendly and keep in touch. Ask how the ad you designed is doing with converting their clients to sales. Ask if your customer’s mother is out of the hospital yet. If you are an accountant, check to see if your customer has been remembering to save their receipts. And although it seems strange, do this without any sales pitch. You are calling to show that you care, not that are looking for new business.

Ask Customers to Refer You to Others

Another way to get customer referrals is to ask for them. If you do a good job in your freelancing position, there is no shame in asking others to spread the word for you. This will benefit not only you as a business owner but those who utilize your services as well as they are getting great work which was recommended by someone they know.

Know a Gem When You See One

Some customers should be treated even more special than others. There are certain customers that can generate buzz around your business. If you think that a specific client could generate a lot of new projects coming in, then cater to their every need. Your hard work will pay off and new customers will come rushing in.

Offer Discounts for Referrals

If it is within your budget to do so, offer discounts to those who refer your company to others. For example, offer the referring customer 10% off the next job order if they refer someone to you and that individual uses your services. Offering discounts is a great incentive for many to refer companies to potential clients.

Is it a Business Card or a Coupon Code?

Instead of leaving all of that white space on the back of your business card, why not place a coupon for your services?

Customer of the Month

Award a “Customer of the Month” every month and see how excited each customer gets. Award a certificate or plaque that can be then hung in your customer’s place of business. The award can remind them of your services as well as become an attention getter for visitors of your client’s office.

Take a Silent Approach to Customer Referrals

If you aren’t comfortable asking for referrals, you can ask for a referral in writing. How? You can place “We appreciate referrals” on all of your printed and online materials. You might think that this won’t work but people see it and remember it, even if only subliminally. Either way, it doesn’t hurt to write this on all of your materials, does it?

Make Sure That Your Customers Are Getting Their Moneys Worth

If you want your customers to refer you to their friends and family then you need to make sure that your customers feel as if they are getting enough value from what they pay you. What are your customers getting for their money? Take the time to think this out and then every chance you get convey this value to your customers

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Source and Contributors:

• The Freelancer's Guide to Increasing Referral Business by Steven Snell http://freelanceswitch.com/finding/increasing-referral-business/#more-763
• Ways to Get More Customer Referrals for Your Freelance Business by Allfreelance.com
  http://www.allfreelance.com/freelancing_blog/2008/02/19/ways-to-get-more-customer-referrals-for-your-freelance-business/

How A Ninja Gets Paid

How Do You Invoice Your Clients?

Recent articles on invoicing at FWJ (which I linked to yesterday) and The Golden Pencil have gotten me thinking about general freelance invoicing practices. And the thing is, there are no general practices. We all seem to have a vastly different way of doing things. Some I’ve seen over the last few days (paraphrased, with my comments) include:

• I invoice using PayPal. But what if the client doesn’t use PayPal?
• I use the client’s template for every client. Oh my GOD, that is insane.
• I use my own template for some clients and the client’s template for others. How do you keep it straight?
• My clients have never requested an invoice. I’m sorry, WHAT?

My feeling on invoicing is (a) that it needs to happen and (b) that it needs to be consistent. The actual method you use for invoicing doesn’t really matter as long as your invoices are professional and include all of the necessary info, but you need to be invoicing and keeping records of your income no matter what. There must be a paper trail (or pixel trail, if you do everything electronically like I do) of your income, if for no other reason than to have a record to turn to if someone fails to pay.

I started out with MS Word for invoicing, but that got old fast because I hated having to go to a million different files to update payments and never having everything in a central location. I switched to QuickBooks Simple Start, and then upgraded to QuickBooks Pro when my client base expanded. I love QB because it lets me get to everything in one place and the invoices are highly customizable.

One theme I’ve been hearing lately is that each client has a custom invoice template they want their vendors to use. Are they kidding? Do they think the business world revolves around them? I have neither the time nor inclination to do some company’s accounting department’s job. If I give you the information you need, there is no good reason for you to requiring that I submit it in your template. That’s just an unreasonable request. You’re mandating how my business conducts its accounting. You can’t do that. And besides, I have to create a QuickBooks invoice for you anyway to keep my recordkeeping straight, so you’re making me do twice the work and not paying me for it. That doesn’t work for me.

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Freelancers Beware of Receiving Payments via Credit Card through PayPal

I’m a freelance web designer and I recently had an experience with a client using PayPal as a payment method which I think more freelancers need to be aware of.

Mistake #1: I didn’t research my client.

In February last year, a potential client emailed me and said he’d seen my site in a CSS design showcase and asked me to quote for a project he had. I spent a lot of time helping him through the jargon and helping him lay a good foundation for a successful web project by defining his ideas of what he wanted the site to achieve. After lots of the usual emails back and forth, he then abruptly emailed and said “This is on hold sorry”. He disappeared for a couple of months and then made contact again only after he said he’d “wasted 4 weeks with the last designer”. Now I know obviously this should have sent a few alarm bells ringing, and with hindsight being 20/20, I should have questioned and done a bit of research on this client before I made the decision to accept the job.

Mistake #2: I accepted credit card payments via PayPal.

As the client was in New York and I was in Brisbane, Australia, I thought I’d better be cautious let him know up front that I’ll require payment at regular intervals. First, a small deposit up-front, then only at key stages when work has been completed and approved. I chose PayPal as the payment method for as an easy and secure way of transferring the funds internationally.

I’d had the option to accept credit card payments in PayPal, which didn’t bother me at the time as the transaction was quick and I saw the funds instantly. However, what I didn’t know, and I found out the hard way was that I really wasn’t protected by PayPal and that the client can easily reverse the transaction.

The project was running relatively smoothly. The client was a bit of a strange one, flipping from being unreasonable and rude to ecstatic with my design concepts and actually asked me to marry him, multiple times. I was being paid, so I could tolerate the rudeness and I remained goal focused to get the project finished.

It got to the end of the project and I’d completed everything I had quoted on and I was working per hour for some extra content page customisation when he asked me to copy a competitor’s page into his site. I suggested that I need non-copyrighted content and I’ll design the page around that. He took it as insulting and began to threaten me, saying “you’re not the only designer on the face of the earth” and that he’ll hire someone else. At that point, I’d had enough; I had finished everything he initially contracted me to do so I made the decision to drop him as a client and wished him luck in finding a new designer. I was behind a few hours in payment but cut my losses and installed the full templated site on his server, handed over all the layered Photoshop files and left it at that.

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Source and Contributors:

• How Do You Invoice Your Clients? by Kristen King http://www.inkthinkerblog.com/2008/03/12/how-do-you-invoice-your-clients/
• Freelancers Beware of Receiving Payments via Credit Card through PayPal by Cara Williams http://freelanceswitch.com/the-business-of-freelancing/freelancers-beware-of-receiving-payments-via-credit-card-through-paypal/
  

Ninja Writing Skills

5 Tips For Marketing Your Freelance Writing Business

A constant problem in the life of every freelance writer is the requirement to promote your writing services while allowing enough time to actually provide them. Time management is tricky enough when working from home, and it’s very easy to become swamped in marketing activities, thereby taking away valuable writing time from your busy schedule.

So how can you free up more writing time without letting your business disappear into obscurity? And is it possible to keep new business coming in, without infringing on the copy production line? This article illustrates five easy-to-implement marketing methods that will help you strike that all important balance.

1. Create Standard Templates

It sounds rather obvious, but creating templates for frequently used documents can not only provide huge time savings, but also enhance your company’s professional profile.

For example, press releases all contain the same basic information: who, what, where, why, and when. A template can have the “who” and “why” completed in advance, and sometimes even the “where”, before you sit down to write the release.

Personal introduction letters also work well with templates. If you use strong sales techniques to promote yourself, include those in the letter, so you only have the recipient’s personal details to complete before posting it.

And it doesn’t stop there. This approach can be used for queries, marketing material, and even emails; all of which can be transformed into templates. Any document you need to send regularly can be transformed into a template to speed things up.

It may take you a little while to get the templates up and running, and you may eventually need variations on the same theme, but once you have them it takes only a small amount of work to adapt them as your business needs grow.

2. Look For People With Something To Offer You

When was the last time you scanned your local or evening newspaper with your marketing hat on? Or read a copy of a trade magazine without knowing anything about it? By training your eye to spot opportunities from a variety of sources no matter where you are, you will start to see more and more places where the savvy freelance writer can generate work opportunities.

You might be sitting in the dentist’s waiting room reading a magazine or newspaper, or maybe you are on a train, in a motorway service station, browsing the shops – anywhere there might be an advert or somebody with a story to tell is a potential opportunity.

Look for stories or adverts where local businesses are seen to be expanding, have won an award, or where a key member of staff has changed. New businesses to the area might have a feature story, or perhaps a local event is looking for input or sponsorship.

Take notes of names and addresses, then write short letters of introduction (from a template) that mentions the story and how your services can benefit them. Throw in a couple of business cards and send it off. It’s a method that might just generate the type of interest you are looking for, and will certainly go a long way to creating a memorable impression.

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The Three Dumbest Mistakes to Avoid in Freelance Writing

The three dumbest mistakes in freelance writing are easy to avoid, as long as you know what they are. Do you know what they are? Read on to find out.

There are two types of freelance writer. Let's call them Type E (for enthusiastic) and Type B (for blah.) The first type is making a great income, loves his writing, and gets great satisfaction from it. He's enthused! He can see a long career ahead of him, where he makes a great six figure income because of the huge demand for competent writers.

The second type of freelance writer, Type B for "blah" is a nervous soul. He's not sure why he's writing, whether he should be writing at all... he spends a lot of time depressed, and wondering whether he's wasting his time writing. Not that he does much writing, he's too busy questioning himself.

The three dumbest mistakes to avoid in freelance writing

1. Not writing enough Most, if not all, challenges you face as a freelance writer are solved when you write enough.

But how much is enough?

That depends on how much time you have to write. If you can only spare 15 minutes a day to write, a page is enough. If you can spare an hour, four pages is enough.

If you have an hour to write, and haven't written four pages, you're making the first dumb mistake in freelance writing.

2. Not sending out your writing

Freelance writers write and sell. If you're letting your half-completed novel languish on your hard drive, ask yourself why. Is writing a hobby for you? If it is, and you don't want to sell your novel, that's fine. Enjoy yourself.

However, if you want to sell your writing, selling is part of your everyday life as a writer. Sell something every day, or you're making the second dumb mistake to avoid in freelance writing.

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Start Freelance Writing Today

Say you’d like to start freelance writing, to stop dreaming about it and just do it. You head for bookstore and sit down with a pile of books about freelance writing. Pretty soon, you’re overwhelmed. Query letters, mastheads, SASEs? The list of things you’re told you need to learn about before you start freelance writing grows with every page you turn. You begin to wonder, “Isn’t there an easier way to start freelance writing?” The books in your lap don’t suggest an easier way.

I’m going to tell you how to start freelance writing today. I’m going to suggest things that many of those intimidating books say you should never do if you’re “serious” about wanting to start writing. I won’t promise that you’ll make a fortune, or even a modest living, anytime soon. But you can start freelance writing in virtually risk-free ways that allow you to test the waters without investing huge amounts of time or money. And you can start writing sooner if you skip those lengthy advice books (you can read them later if you need to).

1) Start Freelance Writing: Clarify Your Goals
Why do you want to start writing? Are you hoping to make some extra money? Are you simply looking for appreciative readers? Are you considering freelance writing as a potential career that will eventually replace your current job?

If you want to start writing, you’ll need to be honest with yourself about what you hope freelance writing can do for you. Identifying your motivations as you start freelance writing will help lead you in the right direction.

2) Start Freelance Writing: Keep It Simple
Books, websites, articles?the amount of information about getting your start in writing is staggering. With your goal in mind, you can start freelance writing without wading through all of that material. Make the process easy at first, and you’ll be less likely to get discouraged.

Say your goal is to make extra money. Start writing by submitting articles to content websites, such as AssociatedContent.com and Helium.com. Content sites provide buyers with articles which draw Internet visitors. The articles generally need to be “keyword dense,” which means that you’ll need to repeat the same word or phrase frequently throughout the article. Most people who start writing learn about keyword density quickly by viewing other articles and observing how keywords are woven into the text without weighing it down.

Often, selling articles to a content site means giving up all rights to the material?that is, handing over the copyright. How does this help you start freelance writing as a career? It probably won’t, but it’ll provide you with a small, steady stream of income. Many sites such as GotWebMojo.com allow you to start writing as soon as you complete a brief online sign-up form. Be sure to read the terms carefully, so that you understand how and when you’ll be paid, what rights (if any) you’ll retain, and other important information.

More Tips..

Source and Contributors

• 5 Tips for Marketing Your Freelance Writing Business by Colin Galbraith http://freelanceswitch.com/finding/5-tips-for-marketing-your-freelance-writing-business/
• The Three Dumbest Mistakes to Avoid in Freelance Writing by Angela Booth http://copywriter.typepad.com/copywriter/2008/03/the-three-dumbe.html
• Start Freelance Writing Today by J.D. Carr http://www.netuser.cc/2008/03/06/start-freelance-writing-today/