Selling God, spiritual beliefs, blessings and superstitions is the original big business and like all organizations, religions use visual devices for branding themselves.  The marketing techniques may have evolved along with technology, yet one thing amongst most religions has stayed incredibly consistent: their branding.

Photo by pearbiter.

"Umm God ... so aah ... which logo do you want to go with?"

To me, that’s very interesting. I mean think about it; unlike prolific brand marks of our times like the Nike swoosh or the Apple apple, some of these religious symbols have been in circulation for centuries if not thousands of years.  Lets take a look at some of these brand marks … those belonging to religions big and small, old and new.

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Cripes.  Have you tried to register a domain name lately?  If you have, you’ll now that typing in anything remotely recognizable in one or two word combination is more than likely going to return results something like: “This domain is already registered.”

Photo by darkpatator.

You can still find a decent domain name ... without going crazy.

Then get red in the face as you repeat this search process a hundred times attempting to find a name that isn’t complete gibberish and/or 5 words long. Next time you’re in the market for a domain name, check out this crop of domain name generators and search tools that that will make your life way easier.

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Looming stock market crashes. Government bailouts. Rate cuts. Recessions. Depressions.  These are all words gladly being thrown around by the mainstream media of late. And we all know the mainstream press loves nothing more than selling us doom by the truck load.

Photo by lefthand.

Recession got you bummed? Fear not, there is much you can do.

I’m no economist, but it seems only natural that markets should correct themselves (level off and perhaps retract) after consecutive years of positive domestic and global growth. In any case, the situation is what it is. So what’s a freelancer to do amidst leaner and tougher economic times? The answer is: Be even more valuable to your clients.

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One of the best and arguably easiest ways to generate good faith with your clients is via the customer service you provide.  I’m an advocate of providing killer customer service wherever possible for many reasons.  A large part of that killer service is how fast you get back to your clients.

Photo by marinacvinhal.

"I got the answers I needed and my boss loves me."

Yep, speed is important!  The old cliche is that “time is money” and when your clients consistently get super fast responses to their queries, your stock with them invariably goes up. It’s also important to understand that as a freelancer one of your greatest strengths is your mobility. Studios and development teams aren’t generally able to respond as quickly as you are.  So get guerrilla and leverage that competitive advantage to the max!

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At the time of writing this, job giant SimlpyHired.com claims to have over 5.8 million jobs in their database. According to their web design and development job data, the salary range for a typical position in the US web industry is $55k to $74k. This spans general web design and development through to specialist niches such as user interface design.

Job data by Simply Hired

Average salaries in web design and development for September, 2008.

What surprised me the most was that flash design and development jobs have a lower average than general web design and development positions. I’d always assumed that the niche skill set of working with Flash paid better, not worse.

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I must admit, I’m picky when it comes to joining social networks.  It seems like new networks are popping up weekly and my inbox contains invitations to join them almost as frequently. Generally, I’m not interested in the overhead required in managing a profile on yet another site, so more often than not: I pass.  The one social network I couldn’t pass on though, is LinkedIn.

It was a couple of years ago that I first joined LinkedIn and it’s been good to me. For those of you unaware, LinkedIn is a social network focusing on work and career with a reported membership of 25 million people strong.  Think of it as a place where you can build social network which revolves around your professional life. Now, LinkedIn is great for worker bees of all kinds but of particular value for us freelancers. Here’s why:

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I believe a fit freelancer is a more profitable freelancer. From a fitness point of view, I dig the idea of having a job that allows me to work outdoors and do physical work.  That way I could enjoy being outside, keep fit and make a good living. As it turns out, I’m worth a lot more behind a computer and for the most part, love being there.

Photo by ericmcgregor.

Keep some dumbbells laying around the office and sneak a set in now and then.

The downside of being a nerd is having my body atrophy when I don’t push myself to stay active. I mean, we all know that keeping in shape is a great idea (for a so many reasons) but I think it’s especially true for us desk jockeys who are in long-term peril of turning somewhat chair shaped.

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Customer service.  It sounds like something that only employees of large companies have to worry themselves with.  The fact is though, us freelancers provide customer service every single time we interact with our clients.  Lets take a look at customer service,  how it effects our businesses and how you can shine like a freakin’ rock star in the eyes of your clients.

Photo by king edward.

Keep your clients coming back with killer customer service.

Differentiation

More than anything else, customer service will make or break your business and set you apart from your competition.  Yep, even more than your design work.  Many clients aren’t sure about what constitutes poor design work but you can be sure most of them know what poor customer services feels like. The good news is this: it’s way easier to consistently provide rock star customer service than it is to provide rock star design.

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I remember one of my jobs as a young teen was packing shelves at a local supermarket. Needless to say, there was nothing about this gig I liked aside from the fact that four of my friends worked the same shift. I dragged my heels at this job.

Photo by srbiosvert.

Mr. Happy Brick never works a day in his life.

The shelves I packed took longer than they should have and they were far from pretty. On the flip side there was Khalid, a fifty something year old fella who liked packing shelves. And because he enjoyed it, he’d rock up to work full of gusto and ready to pack the best damn shelf you ever saw.

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When it comes to freelancing, reliability is massively important commodity.  This is doubly true for remote freelancing since people never get a chance to meet each other in person.  Clients who know they can rely on you are happy clients that keep coming back. As a remote freelancer I’ve been both a service provider and a buyer of services. If you play this game long enough, you’ll work with some stand up designers and developers and you’ll work with some freakin’ awful ones.

Photo by joeshlabotnik.

Ideally, your clients should always look something like this.

Wingnuts

One guy,  lets call him Wingnut, vanished on me like a fart in the wind on the tail end of a project. He was working on the front-end design for a site and two weeks into it he disappears. Trying to call him or email him yielded no reply so I start making alternative arrangements to get the job done.  Meanwhile, he is updating his blog and obviously not dead.

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Let me set the scene here.  About five years ago I was in London, living in Wembley and working from home (in my undies as usual) and I picked up new client on Elance.  It was a very small project for less than a couple hundred bucks.  The client was in the US and looking for some quick banners to meet a late deadline.  I low balled my bid knowing I could turn it around fast and I needed the cash for some bills.  One thing lead to another and I got the gig.

Photo by Powerdruns.

Smooth out the ups and downs of freelancing by selling your time in advance.

I completed this little project which turned out to be the catalyst for a great working relationship and over the next five years, this client would spend over a $100k with me, all from a small two hundred dollar project.

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Clients are clients and they will change their minds. As a remote freelancer, I always wondered what the best way would be to handle getting approval from clients.  I mean, getting our clients to sign off at certain stages of a project is very important in moving the project towards completion and protecting ourselves from revision hell.

Photo by tambako.

"Sure I'll change the size of that logo for the seventh time ... right after I eat your face!"

So how does a guy like me (who works from home mostly in his underpants) get approval from a client? For starters, lets make it clear that I hate fax machines with a passion.  “That” fax machine scene from Office Space is so spot on (yeah, you know what I’m on about).  Snail mail is just too freakin’ slow and not even on the radar as an option.  So in order to protect myself and my client and keep things moving towards completion,  I insist clients sign off at key milestones of their project using a simple and fast technique via email called a Production Notice.

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