I read an awesome article this morning that really made me happy to be a freelancer:
A guide on how freelancers can compete against large design studios
Customer service is so absolutely important in the freelancing business. I’d rather lose time and money than have a single unhappy customer any day.
A few years ago I started offering web design services to those in need of a web site. Ever since, It’s been a constant learning experience. When I advanced from website coding to directly interacting with clients, I was taking a pretty big step. It was hard enough trying to understand this crazy markup language, and now I had to learn how to interact with clients? Sheesh. Thanks to trial and error, I’ve come to understand a few things about establishing and maintaining the best possible relationship with my clients.
After my friend had his hard drive crash, and he lost a lot of important data, I realized I’ve been protecting myself from something like this without even noticing. If my computer crashed right now and I lost everything on my hard drive, I wouldn’t lose anything important. Not because I’m paranoid and have a tape-system backup in my basement, but because I take advantage of free & portable web technologies that simplify my life. If you don’t use them now, check them out. Who knows, you might find something useful.
So you’ve got a site, and you’ve got articles! Now what? You need traffic! You know - those people out there in the world who are willing to take time to read what you have to say. Thankfully, we have social bookmarking sites that allow users to post their favorites stories in hopes that other people will read them. There are a lot of sites though. How in the world do you figure out which sites to submit your stories to? This is where Socialmarker comes in handy.