Tag Archive: Advice


We creative people are familiar with criticism. We get it almost every day from clients, bosses and other people who “know better.” They criticize our work, decisions and ideas about design, development, writing and other creative endeavors.

Typically, when we’re being criticized, we feel uncomfortable. We feel a concrete wall rising around us, blood filling our eyes and steam emanating from our head. Okay, maybe it’s not exactly like that, but it’s close. Am I right?

Criticism, like everything else in the universe, has its own energy, and it’s palpable; being criticized is unpleasant, and the negative vibes flow.

How can we go with the flow and change the negative feelings into positive results? We’ll talk about that in this article.

Read the rest of this post on SixRevisions.com

Recently, we talked about how to verify your store’s site with Google Webmaster Tools and why it’s important to do so.

Now let’s talk about how to start using the Webmaster Tools. The very first thing you should do is to upload your sitemap.

What are sitemaps and why are they important?

A search engine sitemap is an XML file, normally called sitemap.xml, that contains a list of all the pages on your site. This file normally sits at the top of your directory in your server and points the search engines to your site.

Most of the time, search engines can easily find your pages on their own, but sometimes they have problems crawling dynamic content or pages that aren’t linked together and need help. Google uses the data in your site map as sort of a road map, to ensure that they find everything you want them to find.

Read the rest of this post on corecommerce.com

The registration process should entail simplicity, great usability and a high-level of accessibility. With numerous sites wanting to focus on how attractive and eye-catching their sign-up forms are, they seem to “forget” one principle; how the user interacts with the registration form.

Below we’ve included a showcase of inspiration that solely focuses on one simple yet entirely effective characteristic, enhancing the registration and check out process using steps-left.

Enhancing Your Registration Process

Their purpose is mainly to guide and inform the user as to what’s to come in following steps.

Incorporating steps-left into the registration process has been around for quite some time. Their purpose is mainly to guide and inform the user as to what’s to come in following steps. It’s a clever way to make the process much easier, and in return you’ll yield higher conversion rates. A few years ago there were a number of websites who where already incorporating this method into their sign-up forms. The only problem with these were that most of them allowed you to choose which step you wanted to complete at your leisure. This meant you could skip in-between steps which caused the user to become confused and discouraged.

Read the rest of this post on SpyreStudios.com

Several months ago, I wrote up a six month plan to become a freelancer. Even though I thought that this plan was pretty rock solid I still got several commenters who mentioned they wouldn’t start freelancing.

Why? Not because they loved their 9-5 jobs or because they thought the idea of running their own business was a bad one–but because they were scared. Several people asked the same questions over and over:

  • “How much savings did you have?”
  • “How did you pay your bills?”
  • “Weren’t you scared to leave your guaranteed paycheck?”

Thousands of people who have the potential to make it on their own don’t and they don’t for one reason–fear.

Read the rest of this post on FreelanceFolder.com

Lets skip past the topic of “should a freelancer have a blog” for a moment because we all know the answer (yes). I believe the real question we should be asking is ‘how can I get more out of my blogging for my business?’ – and the answer is simple; better blogging equals better business. But why?

There are a few reasons why blogging is good for your business, but there are even more reasons (if we dig deep enough) that shows why better blogging equals better business for freelancers. I want to look over a few of those reasons in today’s article. Feel free to leave your thoughts at the end of the article – I’d love to get your input on the topic at hand.

Read the rest of the post on GuerrillaFreelancing.com

It’s a lousy truth, but if you want referrals, you have to ask for them. No matter how great your work is, no matter how wonderful you are, most clients aren’t thinking about referring you to anyone.

In this post, we’ll share the story of one talented designer who failed to get a referral. We’ll also tell you an easy way to get your clients to give you referrals.

Read rest of the post on FreelancerFolder.com

This is a really good post, and I wanted to share it with my readers. Enjoy!

Presented, in no particular order, for your reading pleasure: my top 6 list of programming top 10 lists. To keep this entry concise, I’ve only quoted a brief summary of each item. If any of these sound interesting to you, I encourage you to click through and read the original author’s thoughts in more detail.

Enjoy the rest of the post on codinghorror.com

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