Starting a career as a freelancer can, not be filled with ups and to mention a number of pros and cons of doing so. Here is a guide that covers some of these major problems and how to come over them that was originally posted on Computer Arts.

Read More Here: http://www.computerarts.co.uk

Traffic to your website is a good thing. However, if you don’t have a clear call to action that you want your visitors to take when they arrive at your site, you are letting a potentially large revenue building opportunity slip through your fingers.

As a business owner - you should have at least one of the following actions in mind:

• Directly purchasing a product online from your site
• Contacting you electronically (either via email or a web form)
• Contacting you by telephone
• Registering for a newsletter or online community
• Physically walking to your store/shop and making a purchase

What you need to ask yourself is, “Which of these do I need my customers to do?”. Remember that potential customers may not be fully ready to buy, so you need to make sure there are ways for them to either get in touch with you or even just join your newsletter and let the process of getting to know your company and build trust over time to ultimately convert into a paying customer.

Once you’ve determined what this is, work with your web designer and copywriter to build both your website design and website sales copy with that purpose in mind.

The very first branding activity a business owner usually does is to get a logo for his company. For that, he searches for any suitable designer who can design a perfect logo for him. Internet has made it easy to find any suitable designer, but the problem is that how to evaluate and compare among available alternatives.

People usually hire a freelance logo designer or an online logo design company. There are several advantages and disadvantages of hiring any of them, but better option is to hire one that has more advantages than disadvantages. Thus, we will see the advantages and disadvantages of hiring a freelance logo designer or an online design company, which certainly helps you to choose a suitable designer for your business.

COST
• Freelance designers are very cost effective
• Online logo design companies are also very cost effective according to the package you select.

EXPERTISE
• Usually, in case of freelancers, you find amateurs who don’t have enough expertise in graphic designing. However, professional logo designers are also available but they are very few.
• Online logo design companies hire professional and expert designers, who already have reasonable background in logo and graphic designing.

CREDIBILITY
• Freelance designers are mostly home based people. There are chances that they may disappear in between your logo design project. Moreover, you can’t take legal action against them if you come under the trademark infringement because they don’t provide you the address of their physical location.
• Online logo design companies are registered companies and provide you their physical address when you visit their website. Therefore they can’t runaway in between the project. You can find them anytime even after your project has been finished.

CREATIVITY
• If you have chosen to work with any freelance designer, just keep in mind that only one designer will be working on your project; therefore you can’t get enough creativity and freshness with single mind.
• Online design companies have many designers who work together with your single project; therefore you can find high level of creativity in their designs.

NUMBER OF CONCEPTS
• Freelance designers provide you several numbers of initial concepts.
• They also provide you several numbers of initial design concepts depending on the package you select.

TURNAROUND TIME
• They provide you minimum turnaround time as compared to other design companies.
• Online logo design companies provide minimum as well as fixed turnaround time, and deliver your work at the promised time.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT
• There is no customer support in case of freelancers.
• 24/7 customer support services are provided by the online design companies through every possible channel.

Author bio:
This is guest post from Ben Johnson of Logoinn, custom logo design service provider based in UK.

Since a lot of our clients are start-ups, I thought I’d share the following that I saw recently online.

Venture capitalist and e-commerce pioneer Paul Graham gives 13 pointers on starting a business, including “get ramen profitable”:

“Ramen profitable” means a start-up makes just enough to pay the founders’ living expenses. This is a means of hacking the investment process as once you cross over into ramen profitable, it completely changes your relationship with investors and it’s also great for moral.

If you want to see his other tips…see http://paulgraham.com/13sentances.html

One of my clients sent me a note last week after the completion of his web site project that said, “thanks for the great website, I got lucky”.

While definitely a complement, it speaks to the relative lack of trust out there in consumers buying products and services exclusively online. So with that, what are you doing to prove that your organization (and website) is credible and trustworthy in the eyes of your potential clients?

Some of the basics every business website should look to have are: 

• Testimonials from past and current clients. 
• Show some examples of your work.  If it’s an art print, see if a few of your customers would send you a picture of your work hanging in their home.
• Detailed information from a customers perspective on the products and services you offer with good quality picture(s) to provide additional visual information if applicable,
• Answers to frequently asked questions. This not only helps prove that you’ve done this before in the client’s eyes, but it’s also one less question you have to answer in your sales process.
• Have a contact us page that not only provides options on how to contact you but also sets expectation on when they should expect a response.
• Having third party verifications can help as well, like having an accreditation by the better business bureau, if you selling directly on your website a security verification service like hacker safe may make sense, or showing your affiliation with organizations within your niche - like we do with the artist community with both the PPA and WPPI.

Even with all of these “signs of trustworthiness”, you have to then back them up with being responsive and helpful to your potential customers when they do contact you and ultimately fulfill their order in a timely manner when they purchase your products and services…but that’s the easy part, right?

It is quite common for us to need to make a repetitive change to a large number of photos. This can be very time consuming and mind numbing task. I ran into a video the other day by Brian Getting of Practical eCommerce that I thought I’d share that shows how to automate repetitive processing tasks in Photoshop.

http://bannerrep.com/videos/tutorial_PS4/batch_processing.mov

Historically, much of the Flash-based content on the web has been unavailable in search results due to search engines inability to extract content, such as text and links, from Flash (SWF) files. This situation has been frustrating for web developers and artists alike who have tried to come up with workarounds to help get search engines to index and rank their Flash pages.

That seems to have changed as a recent post on the Google Webmaster blog says that Googlebot can now extract textual content and links so Google can better crawl, index, and rank the web site.

This is a significant change in direction as even Google’s own help documentation has warned against the use of Flash-only sites:

“In general, search engines are text based. This means that in order to be crawled and indexed, your content needs to be in text format. This doesn’t mean that you can’t include images, Flash files, videos, and other rich media content on your site; it just means that any content you embed in these files should also be available in text format or it won’t be accessible to search engines.”

Google had in the past suggested using Flash sparingly or using a method such as Scalable Inman Flash Replacement (sIFR) to provide an HTML source that can be rendered as either Flash or non-Flash.

So now that both Yahoo! and Google can read Flash files, how much will this change impact search relevance? Neither Adobe nor Google could provide numbers about how many more pages Google will now be able to crawl and index and how much this has impacted search results.

So does this mean it’s finally OK to build my artist web site entirely with Flash?

I’d still discourage having an all Flash website…especially considering Flash content isn’t made up of primarily words. It’s made up of images, video, and animation, and none of that will be surfaced in search results with this advancement. Google’s new Flash algorithms extract text and links only, so everything else is still a black box.

Because of this, you are still missing out on seach engine optimization methods and limitations in building a rich Flash website:

• No Meta Data
• No capacity to distinguish text formatting (so no h1, no bold, or strong, or italics, no bullet points, none of it.)
• You have to create your flash file in a way that results in having a separate URL associated with every major piece of content in the Flash file.
• You can only have one page Title if the entire site is in Flash - thus it becomes extremely difficult to optimize and target to various parts of your 50 page site to their audience if the site is built entirely in Flash when you only have ONE page title.

It’s not that we don’t like Flash. Flash has the potential to showcase a product or service’s benefits in ways that static pictures and text can’t quite match. But if what you create is cool, but the content fails to attract attention, interest, build desire, and call your visitors to action, then you are wasting your time and their time; after all you are looking for leads, subscriptions, and sales, not just traffic.

In a recent test by FutureNow with one of their clients, they were able to reduce the homepage abandonment by 28.57% by substituting a flash element, with a static image. This change reduced load and wait time, it listed product benefits immediately, and the client  didn’t have to hope people would be patient enough to see the right part of the Flash animation. It also helped boost sales, since before the test so many people left before they got past the home page.

So what’s a good example usage of Flash on a website?

Take a look at this page from the  Leo Diamond website. It is not the prettiest web site out there, but the Flash tools provide visitors with a better feel for diamond carat size and color than either text or static pictures could and because of this, the site converts extremely well due to this interactive diamond tool.

So what things should I consider before deciding to use Flash on my web site?

• What will this allow me to convey that text and static images wouldn’t?
• Am I actually conveying benefits or just adding sparkle and glitz?
• Does it address the visitor’s true concerns?
• Is there a way to make this more interactive and not just a push-presentation?
• If I can’t make it interactive, what can I do to hook the viewer right from the start, so they don’t skip the presentation? (You ARE going to provide a “skip” option, right?)
• What pathways am I providing to the flash viewer when they are done with the interactive tool or presentation?
• Do your calls to action continue to build on this momentum?

If you can answer those questions, it might be smart to use Flash sparingly on your website - but remember to make sure you measure the impact on your bottom line first.

Hat tip to Erik Deckers for making me aware of this:

DoubleShot Studio recently announced the launch of ArtPerk.com, a new website for artists seeking to locate display opportunities and gallery openings. ArtPerk lists opportunities throughout the nation and offers unique features to help artists find show opportunities in a quick, user-friendly way.

Artists seeking shows to enter now have the ability to search for opportunities by media, by location and other search parameters. In addition, users can save their searches and receive daily or weekly e-mails with those search results as reminders.

The site is free for artists to search and for galleries and venues to post. Galleries can create listings for a fee if they’d like front page placement and other advantages.

Check it out, if you are looking for shows and display opportunities for your work.

I recently noticed that there seems to be a growing trend for professional artists to have “relaxing” music played while visitors view their website.  I think this resurgence of having music on your website, comes from people believing that everyone has a boardband connection, which of course is not true. This is similar to what happened with personal web sites 10 - 15 years ago when it was a novelty to show your friends that you could put your favorite song on your website for everyone to enjoy - assuming everyone had the same taste in music and would look at how cool your flaming logo is while they wait for your music to download.

While I understand what you are trying to accomplish by “setting the mood” for viewing your imagery, let me give you some food for thought on how to use it and other gotchas you need to consider before implementing this on your own website.

First, if you are going to have music anywhere on your website, the last thing you want to do is to have it automatically play on the opening page of their website. It will delay the loading of the page, which if they are not on a fast connection, could cause them to leave your website before they ever get to see what you are all about.

If you are going to play music on your website, give them the option to stop the music without taking away from the functionality.  For example if you have an online slideshow that has music to it, they should be able to view this slideshow without music. The last thing you want to do is to scare away a potential client because they don’t share your same taste in music or are viewing your site on a dial-up connection - again, catering to your visitors.

The other thing people forget is the legal aspect of playing music on their website. Just because I believe that a particular song from Aerosmith that I have a legal personal MP3 music file on my IPOD would create the correct mood for a photo gallery of mine does not necessarily mean I can use that same file and use it on my website. While I am not a legal expert on copyright law so you should check with your attorney regarding your situation before proceeding with putting music on your website, my understanding is you would be using that music file in a commercial application, which was not granted when you purchased it - thus you would need to get those expressed rights to avoid an unpleasent conversation with RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) should they become aware of your unlicensed usage.

So how do you stay legal, I saw a recent write-up from the Professional Photographers of America (PPA) who recommend either aquire the proper usage rights by aquiring a synchronization and master use licenses which will allow you to legally used the copyrighted music in this manner. To obtain the synchronization license, required to record music as accompaniment to a slideshow or other presentation - you must contact the music publishing company that owns the rights to the composition which is usually found on the disc or CD insert.  To obtain the master use license - permitting you to make recordings of an existing CD or other music format - you’ll need to contact the owner of the actual recording, which is almost always the record label. This information is also usually on the disc or CD insert and the fees for master use are negociated individually.

Of course, if you want to avoid all of that, you can use royalty free music which provides you with a non-exclusing license to copy and synchronize your work. Cost and quality of the music varies so be sure to investigate and read the license agreement before you purchase. There are a large number of music companies that offer this and can be found by searching “royalty free music” in Google.

I was catching up on email and had the following persuasive element used by cafepress.com brought to my attention today. 

This is an awesome example for how to address concerns clothes buyers might have who are worried about both how a shirt might fit and how thick or thin a shirt is that they are buying. As someone who is ‘right on the cusp” between sizes, subtle changes can mean the difference between sizing up or sizing down. And whether an item tends to run large or run small or be true-to-size is incredibly helpful. Taking the time to think about how to convey such information is an indication of how they think about their customers and I’m sure it pays off in higher conversion rates and less product returns.