Project Bidding Sites for Web Designers

If you are a freelance web designer chances are you have heard of project bidding sites like elance and getacoder. Before you use these sites you need to make sure you understand a few things otherwise you will get ripped off and left in the dark. There are no better ways to learn than actually dive in and try the sites yourself to get the experiences. The following tips will hopefully be useful to you as a london web designer who just started using these type of sites to find work.

Only do projects you know for sure you can do. Let’s say you bid on a project to develop an e-commerce website but have no experience setting up shopping carts or interfacing to credit card merchant services. While every other aspect of the project may go smoothly, you are bound to hit a roadblock when it comes time to implement the shopping cart. Since you are web developer, you know how to research and figure the problem out but all this takes time and the result can be a canceled project, no payment, and a poor review for all other buyers to see.

Be aware of the bidding site fees. Most of these sites take a fee from you when the buyer awards you the bid (even before you get paid for the project). A few only take the fee when you get paid. But the bottom line is that the fee should be calculated into your bid.

Don’t be a consistently low bidder. You’ll quickly get work but you will also become overwhelmed in the same manner. Although, with the number of other bidders you will be competing with, sometimes a low bid is what it takes to get awarded a job—especially if you are new on the site. This is also called penetration pricing and eventually you’ll have to start bidding at a fair price in order to be profitable.

Use freelance bidding sites to get you started. But have a plan to gradually move away from them and start dealing face-to-face with clients directly. It’s easier to build trust and strong customer relations when you can see the person you are dealing with. Communication is far easier in this way too. Not to mention that you will not have to compete with people who are offering web design services for peanuts.

10 tips of effective bloggers news and guide to make yourself a better blogger

There are tens of thousands of blogs out there, many of which will never make it past the initial stages of early bloghood. Sometimes this is just due to bad luck, harsh competition, and poor planning, but equally as likely is that the decline of these blogs is due to their owners’ poor management or inability to effectively maintain the site and communicate with their followers. To help ensure that you keep your blog active and popular, here are a few tips to make yourself a better blogger.

1. Go in with a Game Plan

So many bloggers begin with ideas of grandeur, but soon find that they have no real structure or organization for pushing their ideas forward. If you want to be a better blogger, go into blog ownership with a game plan. Lay out what you want to accomplish with your blog, where you want it to go, and what you want it to become, and then do it.

2. Follow the Golden Rule of Blogging

The Golden Rule of blogging is to “treat the visitors to your blog as you would want to be treated.” It’s as simple as that. Being respectful to your visitors, replying to their posts in a timely fashion, and making their visit as easy and effective as possible are important aspects to winning loyal followers. Unless your site is devoted to being rude and disrespectful, or acting this way is a part of your site’s mantra, it is important to remember the old adage, “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”

3. Communicate Properly

A large part of enforcing the Golden Rule is by understanding how to effectively communicate on your blog. Sure, you’re busy and you may not always have time to respond to every comment or question immediately, but by making your best effort to respond constructively to as many visitors as possible, you can help keep your site visits high and your word of mouth popularity spreading.

4. Look Ahead

With the blogosphere constantly changing, it’s important to keep your eyes on the road. Just keeping pace with the competition probably won’t win you that lion’s share of visitors for which you might be hoping. Being constantly on the lookout for the latest and greatest when it comes to the subject matter of your blog can help keep you at the forefront of your blog topic.

5. Don’t Lose Sight of the Goal

It can be difficult when you get into the meat of your blogging activities not to get lost in the monotony of posts, replies, and updating of information. It is important to keep your larger goals in mind, and not become stranded in the swampy bog of your blog’s menial, everyday operations.

6. Provide Reliable Information

Try to make a habit of posting only the best information related to your blog topic. By staying current and posting reliable information, you will hopefully build a loyal group of followers and the quality of your blog will bring people back time and again.

7. Be Devoted to Your Topic

While you don’t necessarily have to love your blog topic, it can certainly help to have a strong interest in the subjects upon which you write. By being devoted to your topic, you can increase the likelihood that your subject matter remains consistent as well as get more enjoyment out of spending time working on your blog.

8. Present Information Effectively

Clear, concise writing, with a proper balance of information and graphics, and an easy to navigate structure can help keep your blog popular. There is hardly a bigger turn off for those visiting your blog than to be lost in a jumble of text and poorly placed links and graphics.

9. Develop a Routine

While not every blogger needs a set schedule when it comes to updating and maintaining his or her blog or blogs, at times, having a routine can help keep you on track. Having some structure to your blogging activities can be especially helpful if you are maintaining more than one blog.

10. Persevere

Being a successful blogger probably won’t always be an easy path to travel. It will take time and effort to create your blog and build a following. Making it a habit to understand this and persevere through the hard times might just be what it takes to raise your blog above the competition.

Your Effective Habits

What are some of the habits you adhere to in order to make your blogging effective and successful?

Professional web designers

I'm working on my very own links page, but until it is done, here are two great sites to check out:

Matt Deasy and Peter MacDonald have launched a new link site, a basic directory for web designers and topics related to web design. The site is called Bulletproof Links and it has got a good start with lots of useful links already. Visitors can add links by filling in a simple form. Simple, but very useful.

Andrew "dez" Fernandez has a great categorized web design link archive, which I have found useful many times. In fact, I like the site so much that I wrote to dez and asked him to add a link to my templates page – which he has agreed to do. That made me like the page even more! This is a must-have bookmark for anyone interested in web design. If you have comments about an this post please share with us, who is the best professional design now