[Join my FREE Live Webinar] 8 Steps to Getting Fully Booked as a Freelancer

Join Brad Hussey and I in a FREE live webinar where you’ll learn what it takes to plan, launch and grow a successful freelance business.

Plus, you’ll discover how to get better clients, bigger paydays and abundant freedom.

When is it? 

1:00pm MST on November 7, 2018  (convert to your timezone here)

The training will go for 2 to 2.5 hours.

Register & Claim Your FREE Bonus!

Save your seat & get Brad’s “Revenue Roadmap” free!

→ Click here to register your spot

This interactive Roadmap tool will formulate your own unique plan & strategy, and get a customized business model with action steps to achieve your revenue goals.

What exactly will be discussed?

In this free live training, you’ll learn what it takes to plan, launch and grow a successful freelance business:

1. How to start today (with the tools and skills you have this moment)
2. What your client actually needs (not what they want)
3. How to be World-Class in one thing (and stop sucking at everything)
4. The BBQ Method (for lasting client work)
5. A stupid simple pricing strategy (to increase your rates and make more money doing the exact same thing)
6. How to “build a bridge” (for income stability and hyper growth)
7. The E.D.A. Formula (for scaling your freelance business 2x, 3x and more)
8. The secret to keeping the fire lit under your a** (for everlasting passion for what you do)

→ Learn more

About Brad Hussey

In 2012, Brad Hussey abandoned a $40,000 per year dream job to launch his solo freelance business as a web developer.

A few months before he planned to quit, Brad doubled down on freelancing on the side. Ever since then, he’s been supporting his family with his business. He’s also created courses that have helped more than 300,000 web developers improve their craft, and launch their freelance businesses.

Today he teaches everything he’s learned, from all the successes and all the mistakes. It took years to get his freelance business off the ground and stabilized, but it shouldn’t have. With this experience he created a roadmap that he’s giving you. If he were to start all over again from scratch… This is how he would do it.

That’s why he create Freelancing Freedom and why I am sharing this with you today!

Register & Claim Your FREE Bonus!

→ Click here to register your spot

Save your seat & get Brad’s “Revenue Roadmap” free!

Brilliant Landing Pages: Best Practices, Tips & Inspiration

This article was contributed by Michelle Deery.

Your landing pages are one of the most important parts of your website. That’s because they are essential in driving conversions. Getting them wrong will mean your efforts are in vain. Optimizing them should, therefore, be one of the crucial pillars of your sales and marketing strategies.

Remember, the sole purpose of a landing page is to convert web visitors into leads and eventually sales. Therefore, the design and content of each landing page needs to be carefully considered.

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it sounds. There is an art to optimizing your landing pages and reducing bounce rates.

What is Bounce Rate?

The term ‘bounce rate’ refers to the percentage of website visitors that decide to leave your site before viewing a second web page.

The higher the rate, the more visitors who are simply clicking away from your site. You can find your bounce rates in your analytics.

Landing page examples and tips

When designing brilliant landing pages, there are a few basic rules to follow. Here are some of the most important ones, as well as some examples of brilliant landing pages, and tools you can use for creating them.

1. Match expectation and experience

Particularly when visitors arrive on your website coming from a PPC ad, you need to make sure your landing page is actually offering what you promised in your ad copy.

Having left your marker in the ad copy you need to follow through in the landing page messaging. Mismatching messaging is a quick reason for visitors to immediately click away.

2. Make your value proposition crystal clear

• How does your offer satisfy the needs of your audience?
• Does is address their specific pain points or current needs?

You need to spell that out as clearly as possible or else risk losing their trade. 

3. Have a clear & bold CTA 

Making sure your visitors know what you expect them to do is key. Far too many landing pages make the mistake of forgetting it’s all about their call to action. If your visitors don’t immediately get a sense of what you can offer them and what you want them to do, they’ll leave.

Time is short so make sure your call to action is very clear and bold.

A mistake which people make surprisingly often is to bury the main call to action too far down on the landing page. By the time website visitors get to this section you might already have lost their attention and therefore a precious opportunity.

Additionally, the wording of your call to action can make a substantial difference. Try to be as descriptive as possible and do not shy away from longer CTAs.

For example, if you offer a guide on the benefits of cycling, you could say “Download our guide to on the benefits of cycling” rather than a generic “Download Now”.

4. Your form is intrusive

You don’t want to get the reputation of being a ‘formzilla’. What this means is a business who has an intrusive, extensive form to fill in before giving visitors the offer.

Here’s an example of a form that’s simply too long:

You should only ask for the information you need. Each optional field you add decreases your odds of converting visitors and increases the chances of a bounce. Opt for something simple and easy, like this:

5. Make it simple, don’t distract

Landing pages are built for the specific purpose of achieving a conversion, so in this case tunnel vision is a good thing – do not distract visitors with any redundant information and omit your website menu.

For example, this landing page has far too much going on. 

Instead, when it comes to landing pages, less is more. Check out these two examples to compare:

And Wistia, although the button could have more contrast, such as orange. 

6. Page loading time matters

As more and more web traffic is coming from mobile devices, fast page loading times is becoming a make or break factor in landing page performance. You can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool for practical recommendations on how to improve your website’s load speed.

Your visitors expect your pages to load within 2 seconds or less. Anything slower quickly increases the chances of them abandoning your site.

See here for how to speed up your website.

7.  Test, Test, Test

You should rigorously test all of these elements and thus continuously improve the performance of your landing page and reduce your bounce rate.

There are a number of landing page testing tools on the market, the most popular ones include:

• HubSpot’s landing pages and website pages: available to HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise customers
• Visual Website Optimizer (VWO): pricier but with a much wider feature set compared to Optimizely
• HotJar – See how your visitors really use your site. Free trail included.

When testing your landing pages, make sure that you allow a sufficient amount of time for enough data to accrue so that your results are actually statistically significant. It is only too easy to underestimate this time under the daily pressure to deliver results.

8. Use a landing page builder

You could also use a page builder to build professional-looking landing pages such as Elementor. A landing page builder can provide templates to make the design process incredibly easy.  

Using a page builder for your landing pages essentially allows you to fully design your web pages and content quickly, without coding. The result? A high-end design, optimized for all devices.

What makes a good landing page? 

Here are the key factors that make a good landing page and reduce bounce rates:

1. Match expectation and landing page experience
2. Spell out your value proposition
3. Make sure your CTA is prominent
4. Don’t ask for too much needless information
5. Omit any unnecessary distractions
6. Optimise your page for speed
7. Test, test, test!
8. Use a page builder to simplify your design

If you improve your landing pages you’ll see a significant improvement to your conversion rate and a noticeable growth spurt for your business.

—

About the author: Michelle Deery is part of the superhero team at Heroic Search in Tulsa. She specializes in writing about eCommerce and content marketing. See what she is up to on Twitter @MichWriting. Submarine image by Walid Beno. Top header image by DMI T on Shutterstock.

How to Successfully Outsource Development Work

This article was contributed by Daniel Boterhoven.

As more and more businesses make the move into the online domain, there is an increasing demand for cost effective web and mobile app development services. A quality developer must spend hundreds if not thousands of hours honing in their skills and this often means they are in short supply. This is why it is natural that the cost of hiring local coders is outside the budget of many businesses and so outsourcing becomes the best option.

But like any project, as soon as you have delegated responsibility of it to a third party, you are immediately dependent on their competency, punctuality and ongoing support.

In my role as the tech lead of a software consultancy that outsources, I’ve learnt some invaluable lessons on running these types of projects. Although there will always be a level of risk when outsourcing anything, I find the following strategy to be the most reliable in mitigating the risk for any non-tech project owner.

But first, why outsource?

I think it’s worthwhile to first understand the reasons why businesses outsource development work to begin with.

1. It’s usually a more cost-effective option. In a lot of developed countries, the cost of hiring local developers would mean a business will need to pay between three and five times what they would compared to hiring a remote worker.
2. There is a far greater talent pool to choose from. Relative to the skilled developers available in the local community, internationally there are more options and a much greater variety.
3. Most businesses don’t have any knowledge of what web or mobile app development entails, and so handing the responsibility over to a third party frees the team up from having to manage this themselves.
4. Lastly, with the increased prevalence of online freelancer platforms, it’s relatively easy to find developers with seemingly good ratings and reviews.

So, given that a business can easily find cheaper developers, in a greater talent pool all without having to tie up their team with the nitty gritty of the project implementation, who wouldn’t want to outsource?

What can go wrong

I think the reason that causes many outsourced projects to fail is the delegation of the responsibility. For a project to thrive you must be pro-active, persistent and you must take ownership.  When you hand full and unabetted control of the project to just one party who may not have been vetted properly, you are going out on a whim and not covering your bases.

Outsourced projects can often go off the rails due to ineffective or patchy communication, gaps in the understanding of the project scope and badly vetted service providers who don’t have the ability to get the work done. A report by The Standish Group states that 31.1% of software projects do not even make it to completion.

If and when the project does go off the rails, you will usually be left with an incomplete or poorly architected solution that does not do the job you need it to. It will probably be difficult to maintain and there won’t be many other developers who are keen to take over without starting from scratch.

A path to outsourcing success

If you’re going to outsource, my belief is that there are two fundamental rules you should adhere to. The first and most important is that you will need to take the time to properly vet your team and also be prepared to manage them throughout the process. For the process to be successful you do need to keep tabs on progress and act if necessary.

The second rule is that you should hedge your bets as much as possible and try and avoid handing over all the power to just one party. With these rules in mind, here is how I see usually see the most successful outsourced projects play out.

Document what you want in detail

For any developer to implement your solution successfully you will both need to understand what is needed. I see many project owners who are yet to understand the project specification themselves, ask an outsourced developer to start coding.

I think it’s important to first write at least a one-page document describing what’s needed. In addition to this one-pager, it’s just as important to:

• Include some basic sketches of any layouts and user interfaces.
• Ask for feedback and ideas from colleges and/or friends.
• Consider what other systems and third-party platforms your solution might interact with.

All this should happen before you even make contact with a developer. Like when hiring any freelancer, it pays to be prepared. By doing so you will refine your understanding of what’s needed first, and the developer will immediately have a clearer picture of what you’re looking for.

Spend time finding quality candidates

It’s great to see so many effective online platforms that connect us to talented international freelancers. However, it’s important that you search these thoroughly and weigh up the cost/quality balance properly.

You might get lucky, but it’s probably better to pay for the developer with a higher rate and better reviews than the cheaper one with patchy work history. I’m not saying the ratings and reviews tell the truth, but they are definitely useful for curating your shortlisting.

In my opinion platforms such as Upwork and Freelancer usually serve their purpose well. However, depending on your budget, platforms such as Crew, Gigster, CodementorX and even TopTal can offer higher level candidates.

Figure 1. Upwork candidate review 

At the end of the candidate search phase you should have a carefully compiled shortlist of potential candidates. There is however still a way to go before making your first hire.

Vet your team thoroughly

Review your shortlist several times and try and narrow it down to a select few. Once you’re comfortable with it you can begin the interview process. I will usually start the interview process off with a chat over Skype or Zoom. First impressions matter and you will soon get an idea of weather you will be able to work with someone – irrespective of the skill level.

For the candidates that you’re happy with, it’s time to validate their skills. Platforms such as TestDome or Codility offer non-tech minded people the ability to run technical interviews online. Asking your candidates to sit these tests will give you both confidence in their abilities and will screen out any developer whose skills are not up to scratch.

It’s important to note that it takes time to sit these tests and so paying your candidates for their effort will both compensate them appropriately and show good will.

On the completion of these test you will be able to review the competency level of each candidate and make an intelligent decision on your first hire – your lead developer.

Figure 2 TestDome candidate results https://ift.tt/2qg9OJZ

Small and large projects

There are typically two types of projects, the smaller ones which only require one developer and the larger ones where you may need a team. Both types will require your lead developer to spend some initial time designing the architecture of the solution, breaking down the implementation into smaller chunks and defining the order that the tasks should be worked on.

After this there are two pathways…

Smaller projects

For smaller projects, you can delegate the implementation of the solution to your lead developer. Although I am an advocate of not putting all your eggs in one basket, the overheads of managing more than one developer for smaller projects will be too great to make spreading the responsibility worthwhile.

Given that you have vetted this developer properly, you have done a lot to mitigate the risk of something going wrong anyway. You will probably have even set yourself up for better chances of success than if you hired a poorly vetted local developer.

Larger projects

In larger projects that require additional developers, the process will be significantly different. The first step will be identifying the other candidates to bring on board.

Although vetting is important and these new candidates should go through a similar process, having your independent lead developer on board will help ensure any inadequately skilled or unreliable team members are soon identified.

In this scenario I opt to have the lead developer focus on managing the other developers and less on the low-level coding. I will pay the lead developer for one or two hours work a day at a higher rate. By doing so, the lead can focus on the project at a higher level, can keep better track of schedules and they can keep you up-to-date with the roadblocks or developments when they come along.

Given that the lead developer is independent to the rest of the team you can be relatively confident that the solution is being built properly and with no conflicts of interest.

Keeping on top of progress

Resourcing and starting the project is about equally as important as keeping on top of the progress and making sure everything is running smoothly.

I always aim for a brief daily catch up in the mornings (or afternoons depending on time zones) where each developer will have one minute to report on three things – what they worked on yesterday, what they will work on today and if there is any issue affecting their progress.

As with any project involving a remote team it’s important to use the right tools for the job. For task tracking, I prefer Trello as it’s easy to use and does its job of keeping the team in sync.

Conclusion

Outsourcing is here to stay and with advances in technology will get easier as time goes by. Allocating enough time to both setting up and maintaining your project means you will be able to leverage the benefits of a capable and more cost-effective labour force than you might have access to locally. Not only that but once you have built a relationship with your team in your first project, you will have built a trusting relationship that could span many projects.

So, if you’re going to go down the outsourced development route, do a little initial groundwork and don’t become complacent. It is much more difficult to recover from an outsource development project gone wrong than it is to get it right in the first place.

 

Company of One: Why Staying Small is the Next Big Thing for Business

JUST Creative is a Company of One.

And it has been since day one.

And since 2014, running this company has been my full time job.

I work my own hours, earn a sustainable income and pursue more meaningful pleasures in life, such as traveling to 80+ countries.

And this is because I’ve kept things small.

Introducing ‘Company of One’ by Paul Jarvis

Paul Jarvis’ new book, Company of One, suggests that a better—and smarter—solution for achieving a richer & more fulfilling career is simply to remain small.

And Company of One explains how to do this, including how to generate cash flow on an ongoing basis, how to set up your own shop, set desired revenues, deal with crises, how to keep your clients happy… and all on your own.

So if you’re after some real inspiration & motivation, with insights from someone who actually talks-the-talk, I suggest you grab a copy of Company of One.

Pre-Order Company of One (& get some super-awesome bonuses)

Company of One is available on January 15, 2019, but is available for pre-order today.

» Click here to pre-order & then claim your bonuses here.

On a related note, you can find more of my recommended books here.

16 Versatile & Professional Font Families – 98% Off!

This is a unique chance to own some of the most versatile, popular font families in the world for 98% off the regular price.

This unbeatable collection includes best-selling families from some of the best font foundries.

Discover stunningly elegant serifs, work-horse sans-serifs, display fonts, retro fonts and many more!

Give your font library a complete upgrade and have a dramatically positive impact upon your regular design projects.

» View Supreme Quality Font Bundle (98% Off)

Offer ends October 30, so don’t miss out.

This bundle includes:

Full extended license
Use these resources in commercial work available for sale.

Unlimited free support
If you need any help working with your new resources, the DesignCuts team are there to help.

» View Supreme Quality Font Bundle (98% Off)

 

12 Things Young Designers Need to Know

This article was contributed by Atiq Rehman.

You’re ready to start your design career and to turn your passion into your livelihood.

You’ve learned the software, practiced and studied. But turning your passion into a long-term, successful career, takes more than ambition and talent.

Balancing creativity with career planning and business management is a crucial art for graphic designers – and one that can take time to master. While some things you can only learn through experience, there is no reason why you shouldn’t benefit from expert advice.

Here are 12 excellent tips to help you jumpstart your career.

Six tips to help maximize your creativity

Fun things first! Let’s have a look at some of the best creativity-related practices for junior designers.

1. Master (and we mean master!) Photoshop

You will use a plethora of different tools in your design process, and every designer has their favorite go-to apps. But there’s one program you must know like the palm of your hand if you want to succeed – Adobe Photoshop. This digital imaging program is so powerful and versatile that you not only can perform most of your work with it, but you will most likely be asked to do so.

If you’re not comfortable with Photoshop, self-taught or learned on another platform, you should make a point of getting up to speed through practice, and online courses, workshops or video tutorials. Do everything it takes to stay up-to-date and improve your Photoshop skills continually.

2. Seek inspiration (not imitation)

While of course you can be inspired by the world around you, as a professional designer there are tried and true methods to stay inspired. There are many online resources with powerful and insightful coverage of the creative world. Adobe Create magazine, Medium platform, and 99designs blog are just a few great sources for inspiration. The Internet is full of creative resources awaiting to discovered by avid young people like yourself.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but in graphic design that only leads to unoriginal and borderline plagiarised work. It can be difficult for young designers to be inspired by other’s work without inadvertently copycatting. Instead of copying the result, analyze the piece or style that caught your attention and identify the factors that make it so appealing to you. The key is not to do exactly what others did, but to do your own thing in a similar fashion.

3. Be aware of trends, but be you

In our tech-driven world, visual content evolves at increasing speed, making the designer’s job as exciting as it is demanding. To prevail in this business, you need to stay current. Using your library of inspiration sources to stay up to date with visual trends is a wise, creative move.

However, don’t sacrifice your design style merely to follow the latest trends. Your individuality as an artist and your integrity as a designer is what will make you unique in a pool of young designers. The secret is in adapting (not only adopting) trends that complement your personal style – and your client’s needs –  in an individual, signature way.

4. Keep it simple

When you’re fresh out of design school or in your first days of freelancing, it is normal to be excited to show off your skills and want to create mind-blowing visuals. And you can totally do that without throwing every technique you’ve learned and every idea you’ve come up with into one single design.

Trust your instinct and the word of experienced designers that say the strongest designs are those with a clear and coherent concept, defined subject, and only one or few techniques efficiently executed. In other words: do, don’t overdo. Keep it simple.

5. Always aspire to achieve visual harmony

To accomplish the great designs you need (and want), you must keep visual harmony as your north. Your project not only needs to be concise and neatly designed, but you should also want it to provoke a pleasant experience for the viewers.

How do you achieve that? It’s a lot simpler than you’d think – with “simple” being the keyword. For example, work with your color palette choosing complementary or low contrast tones, pick for no more than two typefaces, and make sure the font styles complement each other fluidly.

The most important thing is to utilize content hierarchy: don’t overshadow crucial copy with noisy backgrounds or crazy fonts, don’t wash out your main subject with multiple accessory graphics, etc. Identifying the relevance of each element in your design and working with them according to that importance helps you ensure you’re respecting the hierarchy.

6. Say yes to stock media resources

Stock media is a real lifesaver for creative work: the sooner you embrace it, the better. Royalty-free stock media including photos, vector illustrations, templates, and more can be the perfect addition to your graphic designs.

Stock graphics are an excellent resource for inspiration and creativity. For example, did you know some of the most viral memes are actually repurposed stock photos?

There are more concrete benefits too: stock media files are available immediately, speeding your turnaround times. You can customize them as much as you wish, to give them your original touch. Plus they are high resolution, suitable for any professional use, and the Royalty Free license grants you, your respecting usage rights. Add the fact their cost fits most budgets, and it’s a great deal!

Six business tips for new freelancers

We examined how to maximize your creativity, but what about your business? Learning business skills can be intimidating. Nevertheless, if you’re going to be freelancing full-time, or even part-time, you need to know your way around the business side of graphic design.

Check out the following smart business tips to make sure your new venture runs smoothly.

1. Profile yourself from the start

A strong USP (unique selling proposition) is a key factor to a successful freelance career. It’s important to think about what you can do, what you want to do, and how you’re going to do it in a personalized way that means a unique value for your clients. Identifying your USP is no easy task, but once you define your brand, you’ll be on the right track. In fact, you’ll have a better understanding of how to market yourself to your potential client base.

2. Communicate, communicate, communicate

Most of the time you will be working to bring your client’s vision to life and to design something that meets (hopefully exceeds) their expectations and needs. Communication will be as important as design skills, and you can’t count on every client to be a good communicator, so you’ll need to be one yourself.

From briefs, feedback rounds and approval, all the way to working methodology (deadlines, file delivery, scheduling, invoicing, etc.) do your very best to express your ideas and your terms in the clearest way possible. Get specific confirmation and approval from the client at all times.

Keeping track of these tasks and moving parts is going to be a real headache, especially if you have multiple projects going on at once. Consider opting for a project management solution which can help you keep everything in check (while helping you communicate better both internally and with the client). Wrike and Asana are two of the most popular tools you could use – BeeWits has an excellent Wrike vs Asana comparison here.

3. Contracts are your friends

Always backup your commissions with a contract. This is easier than ever to do today with many websites and apps providing contracts ready to fill in, send, sign and store at your fingertips. You can find many examples of essential contract templates for freelancers online, and there are also sites providing PDF contract templates. There is no excuse to not to use a contract, but there are plenty of risks you take by not doing so.

4. Organization is crucial

There’s a popular stereotype that creative people are messy and have things out of place at all times. Don’t become the stereotype – disorganization will only complicate your life and slow down your budding freelance career.

Embrace organization for your workflow. From a neatly arranged desktop to logical files storage, plan your workflow stages. Having things under control actually gives you more room to go nuts in the creative process. Plus, you’ll be working like the pros do.

5. Provide excellent customer service

A big part of freelancing involves dealing with clients or prospective clients directly. If you’re a born people person then great. But what if you’re not? Well, you’ll have to work on it.

Being good at managing clients is not only about being kind, meeting deadlines and pleasing them at all times. It’s a very subtle art to know how to walk them away from crazy ideas, to identify when it’s beneficial to give a little extra to a recurrent client and when it would lead to an abusive partnership. It’s important to stand your ground with someone who refuses to pay for your time.

A lot of this is learned through experience, and everybody handles clients differently. But you must know from the start, that this is not an aspect of your business you can overlook if you want to make it big as a designer.

6. Don’t be shy to explore business opportunities

While it’s true practice makes the master and building a portfolio, a client base and your brand can take time, nothing says you have to wait to be a big fish to into new and bigger ponds.

There are a few easy ways to grow your business exposure even as a junior designer. Namely, blogging and networking with other designers, related brands and products, prospective clients, etc. Make sure you have fresh and original ideas to bring onto the table and reach out to those who you think could cross-benefit from connecting and/or collaborating with you.

Be a beginner, work like a pro

If you follow these tips and the advice of experienced designers, you will be able to do what many didn’t or couldn’t – start off with a professional perspective from the start.

Good luck, and happy designing!