On that note, I have a friend who owns a hair salon. She pays over $40 a month for her hosting, the use of a site tool and her domain name. Not only is the web site limited in its design, by nature of this particular site tool, but should she choose to move it, there will be several complications. First of all, the hosting company is technically the owner of her domain name and will not easily let it be transferred. Secondly, because the web site is created with the site tool, she will not be able to move it to another hosting company without losing certain functionality.

In those situations where my clients are most definitely not receiving the better end of the deal, my first bit of advice is always… “We need to find you another host.” We can take the information from the web site created with the site building tool and redesign it, but keep the site on a platform that allows the client or designer complete control. In the case of my friend, I can help bring her monthly bill from $40 a month down to about $10 a month, and that includes the cost of registering or renewing a domain name.

When choosing a hosting company for your client, there are several things you need to keep in mind.

Does the hosting company include a control panel with the hosting package?

Most hosting companies out there will include a control panel with the purchase of a website. However, I have run into several situations where a client had a previously existing hosting account, and there was no control panel access. In this situation, I usually encourage my client to move to another hosting company.

Why do you need a control panel?
A control panel allows you to have easy one-click access to certain web site tools. Some of the more helpful tools would be:

With the use of a control panel, you have complete control over the above factors. If your client needs help setting up email accounts or mailing lists, you have the control to do this without having to jump through the hoops of the hosting company’s technical support department. This brings me to my next question.

Does the hosting company have a good technical support department?

When working with designing a website, there are many reasons we might have to contact the technical support department. Do your research and answer the following questions before you choose your hosting company.

Remember that you may not always be the contact person between your client and the web hosting company. As a favor to your client, make sure that they are hosted with a company that will be easy to work with.

Does the hosting company offer fair and competitive packages?

Just because a hosting company brags about cheap web hosting, this does not mean it is qualityweb hosting. They may be seriously limiting the number of email addresses you can add, or giving you a lot of space and just a little bandwidth, or vice versa.

Research and compare hosting packages. Is the package price competitive? What all does it include? Make sure that the package includes a good amount of bandwidth (transfer) and space. How many email accounts do they allow? Do they include mailing lists? Ability to add FTP users? Is there an easy database creation tool? Are there extensions for PHP, CGI, ASP, etc? If not, some of your scripts will not work when uploaded to the server.

Does the hosting company offer the ability to host multiple domains under your account, i.e. host unlimited domains? One of the perks of being able to host unlimited domains is that if you wish to set yourself up as a reseller, you have that option, and then you can create your own packages, host multiple domains and charge your clients a monthly fee. If you do this, just remember the rules of being a good hosting company, because at that point, that’s exactly how you are representing yourself.

Does the hosting company offer a backup service?

Make sure your hosting company offers some sort of backup service. This is very helpful if an unintended change has been made, and there was no manual backup made prior to the change. Within minutes you can have a copy of the file back on the server, and the web site functioning properly again.

Finally? Research, research, research!

We are blessed to be in a day and age where gobs of information is at our fingertips. All we have to do is navigate to Google and run a quick search to find the answers to virtually any question we can imagine. If ever in doubt, Google it! Social media and real-time search has exponentially expanded the type of information that can be recovered from a Google search. It is easier than ever to find user opinions on virtually any topic. So, before you make a choice on which hosting company to present to your client… do the research! Just be careful about which reviews you choose to believe. If a hosting company receives a poor review, and the reviewer is from another hosting company, the information is most likely very biased.

Good luck with finding your hosting company. If you have had any good/bad experiences with any host in particular, please share in your comments with the community. Thanks! @mhillaert

FIND a PARTNER!

Partnership is the art of coming together with another person who has complementary skills, things you might be able to do but not as well as they can. The effect of working together with them is a feeling of freedom to do what you do well, and enjoy, and letting them take over the things you would rather not have to do.

Most of the successful businesses, and web design is no exception, are built from good strong partnerships.

A couple elements are very important to build in a partnership:

1. Trust

First and foremost, without trust, the rest won’t work. You need to partner with someone you trust. Nobody is guaranteed to work out, but if you trust them, you will be able to keep your mind at rest and focus on what you need to do. Go with your gut to pick someone you will trust.

2. Unselfishness

In a good partnership, each partner lets the other go with what they do well and gives them the freedom to do it. Also be unselfish with the profits of the business. Partnership usually involves ownership of the business, be unselfish when defining the terms of the partnership. Give and you will receive in abundance.

3. Patience

Everybody has their quirks, especially at the beginning of a partnership you might find out the quirks of your parner. They might be rather annoying sometimes, but as long as they don’t break the trust, be patient and allow them to be who they are.

Finding a partner might take some time, but it will be well worth it when you find a good fit.

When I decided to pursue web design full time a few months ago, I decided that to be the best, I needed to learn from the best. The hard part was – where are “the best”? How do I find them? And how can I learn from them?

Through trial and error I’ve come up with an effective strategy for making a name for myself among other designers in the “community.” These are what have worked for me – you’ll want to experiment and try different things out to determine what works for you.

Not a big writer? Maybe a blog isn’t up your alley. Like to teach others? Try creating some tutorials. The key is to put yourself out there.

So here are my recommendations for getting connected with other designers.

1. Get involved on Twitter.

Okay, so what’s the big deal with Twitter? I had no idea three months ago – I heard it all over the news but hadn’t experienced it. Good thing for us designers is that most other designers, like us, are sitting at their computers all day. So Twitter works really well as a means to get connected. Here’s what I did to launch myself into the Twittersphere.

Follow other noted designers on Twitter.

I read their profiles and visit their sites. Follow those that practice in the area you do. You can find many different lists of designers to follow out there, so start with one and go from there.

Don’t set your account to “auto-follow.”

This is just my personal preference, but I only want quality content to come through my feed. So I screen people who follow me before I follow them. This strategy is also used by some of the most popular people on Twitter. It helps me better follow the conversations and dialogue that I want to engage in on Twitter – instead of just generating an RSS feed of resources (although that is a great bonus!).

Learn other tips from the experts.

Since I won’t pretend to know the best Twitter techniques, I suggest you read this post by Grace Smith on Using Twitter for Inspiration.

2. Do your research.

To effectively engage with other designers, you need to know how to design. Knowledge about the medium, the tools and the jargon of the trade all enhance your ability to really get the most out of interactions with other designers.

• If you are coming from print design like me, I suggest you read up on the principles of web design – they are vastly different!

• Keep track of good resources and references. I prefer Delicious so that I can access my links from anywhere, but other bookmarking services would work just the same.

• Share good content with others so they can benefit as well. I do this most often via Twitter (see the circle beginning to form?).

• Take the time to find and complete tutorials that are outside your comfort zone. Many times just reading through a tutorial can give you tips that will make your next design pop. I recommend two different sites on development tutorials and design tutorials, but there are many others out there.

3. Put yourself out there.

So you’ve been slowly getting into the Twitter world and have done a bit of research and feel like you’re getting your feet under you. Now it’s time start building your reputation among other designers.

• If you feel up to it or need a place to release your wisdom with more than 140 characters, start your own site/blog. Not only is this necessary to gain clients, but it also creates link for folks to associate with you – this is the start of your “brand.”

• Once you’ve populated your blog/site with some interesting stuff, list it on some design directories and Twitter directories.

• Engage other designers in relevant dialogue. Ask for advice on client questions, seek collaboration on projects and provide your own feedback to others’ inquiries.

• If possible, attend conferences or other face-to-face meetings with designers in your area. As great as technology is, it can’t replace a good ol’ cup of coffee and creative personal discussion. Danny Outlaw has a great list of conferences on his Outlaw Design blog, and MeetUp is a great resource to connect with other local professionals.

I mean you still have to do that redesign of your website that you’ve been wanting to do for a while. And you have to get a new computer, and maybe a couple nice items of furniture so you can be more productive.

And of course, there’s all the web design work you have to do.

But wait, as fun as all of this might be, what’s going to happen to all of that if you are not bringing in money.

Yes, cashflow. It’s all for nothing.

But don’t get down, just make a decision to make marketing, especially when you are just getting started, your #1 job.

Why?

Because it’s what is going to bring in money, and keep your lights on. With more cashflow, you’ll even have more freedom to do some of the things you want. But without cashflow, you really don’t have a business.

For many of us, this mindset of marketing is the last thing we want to hear. I mean we are designers, not sales and marketing professionals. The really fun stuff is the design work we do.

So how can we get into marketing mode and see that as more important, for the time being, than all that other stuff?

Something that works for me is making sure to have a separate bank account for my design business. That way, with all the bills I have to pay for the business, I’m always aware of the need to fill it with more money. Then it does not sound so crass. It’s just the reality that without more business, I’m not going to be able to pay the bills.

Really hate marketing? Well just think of this, once you really have a business going, you can hire someone to do the marketing for you. If you are not there yet, then you have something to look forward to.

The best book I ever read about marketing isn’t written by some college professor, it’s written by someone who has grown many different business to up to $300 million in revenues. Personally, I like to listen to people who have already done it :)

Get the book on Amazon here:

http://www.amazon.com/marketing

Well I don’t really care what anyone says about it, the fact is, you can easily find clients using Twitter, and a freelance web design business is a perfect fit for this.

Here’s how you can do it: Search for words you consider a good fit for someone who is looking for web design. For example, two searches I like are “get website” and “need website”. If someone is saying on Twitter “I need a website”, you will find it.

Then all you do is follow that person, and send them an @reply saying you can help them with whatever it is they are asking, and if they want to talk more, just DM or @reply back.

I’ve been amazed how easy it is, and how few people are doing this to find freelance clients.

Most people ARE doing something like this: “Hey I’m a web designer if you want a website go here …”. They are doing this as an update on their own profile. So the only people to see it have to follow them first.

NOT going to work.

Find the people who are saying they need help, follow them and offer your help. You’ll be amazed at the results you get from Twitter since it’s still fairly new and trust runs pretty high among followers on Twitter.

There, I just shared with you something I really didn’t want to tell anyone, but I told you because you are a subscriber :)

Well yes … and no.

In the very early stages when you are trying to get things off the ground, you will be inclined to take jobs that are less to your liking and expertise. And as long as you can handle it well for the client, that’s ok.

But as time goes on, you need to define yourself so people know what you do really well.

A couple weeks ago, I said that specializing in one particular CMS of your choice was a good way to get really good at coding and theme building. Well why don’t you brand your web design business in the same way.

Wordpress theme specialty? Then be a wordpress web designer. Joomla your sweet spot? Why not be a Joomla web designer.

Then, you will not have the whole world beating down your door, but you are more likely to get jobs from those who are looking for someone who has that specialty.

Oh, and last week I missed the newsletter because I was on vacation in the resort state … of Indiana :) It was awesome, my sister was there with her husband and kids, my mom was there, and my wife and I brought our 5 kids. We stayed at my brothers house and just hung around and let the kids play, and had some nice dinners, watched movies. It was great!

I think what made it such a great vacation was that it was simple. We just enjoyed each other. We didn’t spend a ton of money, or do anything extraordinary, just talked, played games, and kept it really simple.

A good lesson for all of us to learn when times are leaner is that you don’t really need a lot to be happy. Of course, the point of being in business is to make money to support yourself and have what you and your family need.

But make sure to take advantage of leaner times to learn what really makes you happy: spending time with your family and friends. It’s people, not things, that ultimately need to be the object of our life.

So relax a little, and until things pick up, find happiness in the little things in life.

The calendar tool works extremely well, and has some syncing programs that you can use to keep it synced up with Outlook, an exchange server, Mac calendar, lots of different ones.

I use both a blackberry and an iphone, for different uses, and I keep everything synced up between them and with my computer, using Google Calendar.

If you haven’t tried it, this might just be your time!

Learn more about Google calendar here:

Google Calendar

After all, they have the sublime gift of education. They’ve been beaten up by their even-more-arrogant teachers for too long not to deserve to take that out on you.

But the fact is, it does not take 10 years in school to be a good web designer. All it takes is a little confidence, hopefully a little natural talent, and eyes and ears open to the world.

The best web designer is not the one who has some ridiculous genius plan to put together for their clients, but the one who can really listen to the client and try to solve their biggest problems, down to the details. When you are just starting, it’s going to take some effort. But you’ll get the hang of it before too long.

Learning the graphic design and coding (if that’s your cup of tea) can take time, but don’t let that stop you from getting new clients. It’s not the Michelangelo or Da Vinci who makes the client happy, it’s the down-to-earth person who hears what they are saying and tries to solve their problem.

Can you listen to a client and spend the time it will take to make them happy? I’ll bet you can.

And that’s going to do a lot more than an extensive education.

Only thing is they say that you can only use it 3 times free when you have more than 1800 followers. Well I have over 14,000 and i’m still using it free …

so use it FREE while you can!

http://huitter.com/mutuality/