I came across this wonderful video where Steve Jobs is delivering his commencement speech to the graduates of Stanford University in 2005. In this talk he gives out three pieces stunningly simple yet great advice by telling three stories from his life and this stories are about getting fired from Apple in 1985, life & death. Don’t miss it!

For you who do not know Steve Jobs, he was born on February 24, 1955, he is the co-founder and actual CEO of Apple Inc. He was the founder of NeXT Inc. and the former CEO of Pixar Animation Studios.

Surfing the web today I came across this great video-slide speech of David Hansson from 37Signals, who is behind great services like Basecamp and Backpack and who has created the Ruby framework Ruby on Rails. This video accompanied by a slide-show presentation and is very inspirational for people that are considering going into business (like me). I loved it and I strongly suggest you watch it too, my friends.

In the coming weeks and months WPlancer.com will be transforming itself. From its humble beginnings as a Professional WordPress Freelancer’s showcase, the site will become the singular source of information on WordPress Freelancing on the Web. I have joined Baki (aka Banago) as a co-author and will be bringing you articles on how find your niche in the wonderful independent world of Freelancing.

Some things that you can look forward to:

Setting up shop as a Freelancer – How to have your own humble beginnings!

• Finding your niche in the world. You might have expertise on a certain subject or a special talent that is hard to find. We’ll show you how to take advantage of that as a Freelancer.
• Technical How-to’s. Even though WordPress is becoming an increasingly powerful CMS (Content Management System) it can also be quite technical. With articles and step-by-step tutorials we will be able to walk you through even the toughest of tasks.
• WordPress Themes. Our team will also be bringing you customizable themes for you to work with so you don’t always have to start from scratch as well as Premium themes ready to deploy for that time-pressed client.
• Much much more! We are open for suggestions and always welcome constructive criticism to make this the best WordPress Freelancing resource on the web.

To start things off though, we would like to tell you the simplest way to get started with WordPress is: JUST GET STARTED! The easiest way to begin your career as a freelancer is to just begin. By that we mean, get yourself a project, ANYTHING! Find yourself a friend in dire need of a decent website, offer to help him or her for a small fee (or even free of charge!) and then set him up with WordPress and a suitable theme and Ey Presto! You’re a Freelancer!

If you can’t find a friend with that sort of need then just create a need. Create your own WordPress site. Now there’s no need to go crazy and rush out and by the most expensive hosting and a professionally designed theme! Just set yourself up and get familiarized with the system if you aren’t already. Start writing about your specific niche and circulate your site around your interest groups. When someone asks who did your site, proudly proclaim that you did it yourself and that you’d be happy to do theirs.

It is actually quite simple to become a WordPress Freelancer, or any Freelancer for that matter! You just have to get started and get yourself noticed. Are you going to be able to charge hundreds of dollars per hour right away? No. But you will definitely get yourself on the path towards your goal, whether that is to be a full-time pro Freelancer or just some extra cash on the side.

Thanks for reading and we look forward to seeing you here!

Paul Boag has posted recently at Smashing Magazine a great article about corporate website problems entitled 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites. Actually the whole article is great.  Yet point number 8 got most of my attention and empathy – it deals with corporate website design. If you are a freelance web designer, like me, you have propably gone through that situation.  I have gone several times through that and I have  a very recent case of mine in which I had to recode the site five times because the partners of my client couldn’t make up thier mind. I have brought that section below for you:

8. Design By Committee Brings Death

The ultimate symbol of a large organization’s approach to website management is the committee. A committee is often formed to tackle the website because internal politics demand that everybody has a say and all considerations be taken into account. To say that all committees are a bad idea is naive, and to suggest that a large corporate website could be developed without consultation is fanciful. However, when it comes to design, committees are often the kiss of death.

Design by committee leads to design on the fly

Design is subjective. The way we respond to a design can be influenced by culture, gender, age, childhood experience and even physical conditions (such as color blindness). What one person considers great design could be hated by another. This is why it is so important that design decisions be informed by user testing rather than personal experience. Unfortunately, this approach is rarely taken when a committee is involved in design decisions.

Instead, designing by committee becomes about compromise. Because committee members have different opinions about the design, they look for ways to find common ground. One person hates the blue color scheme, while another loves it. This leads to designing on the fly, with the committee instructing the designer to “try a different blue” in the hopes of finding middle ground. Unfortunately, this leads only to bland design that neither appeals to nor excites anyone.

I hope you loved this realistic piece of writing about corporate web design. To enjoy the whole article read more at Smashing Magazine.

I came across this great video of  Warren Greshes talking very motivationally about selling skills. I wanted to share this with you and I’m sure you’re going to love it the same way I did. Watch the video, you won’t regret it. To learn more about Warren Greshes, just read below this video.

Warren Greshes is one of the Most Riveting Motivational Speakers in the Business. It’s been said about Warren Greshes that his presentations elevate a keynote speech to a form of performance art. Sharpened on the grindstone of New York’s cut-throat garment industry, where he spent 10 years as a national sales manager, his street-smart sales instinct combine with an electrifying style for a session you won’t soon forget.

As an expert in the area of sales motivation and personal and professional development, Warren has addressed corporate and association audiences all over the world. His corporate clients include: Bridgestone/Firestone, Hewlett Packard, Monsanto and Coca Cola. Warren has also spoken in front of some of the largest and most prestigious organizations in the world, including The Million Dollar Round Table, the National Association of Realtors and Sales and Marketing Executives International. International audiences find that his practical “real world” solutions and views on the global economy are right on the money.

His positive and pragmatic message has given thousands the power to overcome obstacles and “conquer the world.” His unique, action-oriented style and customized messages consistently earn him high praise from his clients. Warren hosts a weekly radio show, “Success Talk:  So, What’s Stopping You?” heard throughout the world on the World Talk Radio Network. In addition, he has produced audio and video programs in the areas of sales, success and customer service, including the award-winning “Supercharged Selling: The Power to be the Best,” and in early 2006 John Wiley & Sons Publishers will release his first book, “The Best Damn Sales Book Ever: 16 Rock-Solid Rules to Achieving Success!” Warren has served on the board of directors of the National Speakers Association, and in 1998 was awarded their highest designation when he was inducted into the Speakers’ Hall of Fame.

As a freelancer you have always to write a sales proposal or at least emails that are a sales proposal in nature. What do you mention on your proposal? How do you explain your product or service to your prospect? How do you present yourself to your prospect? These are crucial questions that Miles Burke has answered on a blog post at SitePoint Blogs. I love that article and I am going to read that time and again for sure. The most significant thing I learned reading that article was this:

Sell benefits, not products. You may have a great content management system, email gateway, or other product, but talk about the benefits of these, not the product features.

Also, another great point to mention is this:

Conclude the proposal with a call to action. Don’t just end it with a price for the job. State what the terms are, and make it easy for the prospect to action the starting process. For example: “Send this page back, signed and dated, and we can commence immediately” is far better than a dollar figure on the last line.

Go to SitePoint and read full article. If you love it too, please let me know through a comment on my blog. Thanks ang good reading!

My freelancing adventure came naturally through after I finished university and I did not like at all to become a teacher, I did not find a proper translation job, I had more than one of dilettante web designing experience and I went mad about web designing. Here I am now, not even thinking of doing anything else than freelance web designing. I have gone through several web design project by now and during this time I have had more than a couple of nightmares that has made my life as a freelancer more difficult that it really is.

First Nightmare: By this time I had designed several website at the local market and I had been payed in cash. I didn’t find jobs enough to satisfy my needs for money and work; an website in not yet mandatory for being an successful business in my country. I decided to work abroad and I fond it thrilling. I applied. I was accepted. My fist job was a XHTML/CSS layout fix and we agreed upon that I would be payed $20 for that. It took me about two hours to finish that and I was happy to be payed for that for being the firs job abroad.

I finished the job and I sent to my contractor my PayPal account email. And off course I received the money. No, I am joking, I didn’t and I haven’t yet. No, I was not scammed, it was PayPal, it did not provide money receiving service to Albania, my country. This is not the worst news, the worst is the fact that I did not grasp this immediately, but about 1 month later. During this month, I called PayPal and waited in the line for 10 minutes after I could speak the the first human talking-machine of whom I could not understand a word. Then they made me speak with a more moderate English speaking person. They tried to help me a lot and pissed me off a lot too as they told me to click on links and buttons on my PayPal account which did not exist at all there.

Every time I made a change into my Paypal account, I asked my Australian contractor to make a try to send me the $20. More was I interested to make sure that my PayPal account worked, than I was interested in the money itself. And every time he tried, and I thank him a lot for that, he could not do it. This situation went on until one day when I decided to upgrade to Business package at PayPal. I did it and, as always, I asked my contractor to make another try. He did and copy-pasted to me the following code: “Currently PayPal accounts in Albania are only able to send payments. This recipient is not eligible to receive funds.” I sent another email to PayPal with the above statement in it and at last they said to me that I could not receive money in Albania with PayPal. This as a really painful relief for me.

Second Nightmare: During the time I had been fighting to make PayPal work, I was considering other payment methods rather than bank transfer, as it was too slow and to expensive comparing to PayPal. I made several searches and concluded that I would be using MoneyBookers. I registered even there and I really liked the way it worked, but I had to receive a snail mail letter with a code in it in order to fully activate my account. This was a bad news for me as my house has no address, I mean, it is somewhere, but it has no official location because this is how my country is, full of new buildings everywhere and which have no address because they are built privately without having an legal permission in advance.

Being it this situation, I decided to receive the letter at my university’s address where I have received several letters during my studding there. They said that the letter will be arriving within 2-3 days and this was fear enough for me. But the other bad news is that I am now in the second month of waiting and no letter has yet arrived, this is at least what my fellow students say to me, as they check if it has arrived or not regularly. I am still hoping it is on its way …

Third Nightmare: People in my think I am jobless. Well, I keep saying them I do web design, but they keep asking “Who do you work for?” or “Who is your employer?“. They think that having a jobs means being employed by someone or having a shop and stay all day inside it, no matter what you earn. This has been a problem even with my parents, as they expecting me to have a regular job after graduating, but when they saw I earned something, they realized that I was serious about it. Others still do not grasp what I do as the culture of freelancing is completely unknown in Albania, especially the web freelancing because internet is not that widespread yet.

These are my obstacles in my freelance career that many of you do not have or even imagine to have. Let’s say I am a little less fortunate at this point. This was my story, thanks you for reading it.

PS: Please keep in mind that I suffered these problems at the time I began freelancing in web desing and development abroad. Right now I have overcomed most of these problems and things are going fine.

Every blogger has to promote their blog to get into the market and reach their goals. Blog promotion might seem a little scary, but it is not that difficult to promote your blog. Find below ten promotion strategies that will work for you to make your blog well-known and profitable.

1. Write fresh, qualitative and unique content to make visitors read, comment and refer to your articles. Not only will worth-reading content keep visitors coming back, but it will make others come at your blog through referring links. Good articles will rise the authority of your blog and will make you a well-known author.

2. Post at regular bases to keep the interest of the visitors active and make them come back to get more form your blog. This will find it worthy to subscribe by email or get the RSS feed of your blog to stay tuned. And the most they subscribe and come back to your blog, the greater will your blog grow and so will your fame and revenue.

3. Interact with your visitors through fanatically responding to their comments. They will translate this into a welcome and will feel comfortable at your blog. Once you give them pleasure and make them feel important, you will have them come back, if not for your posts, for your good company. This is a good way to make keyboard (the time of pen is done) friends; remember. friends are there in good and bad times.

4. Comment in other blogs of the same niche regularly and try to say as much worthy comments as you can. This will make you an authoritative commenter out there and curiosity will push more and more people to visit your blog through the link under your commenting name. This will bring you a good number of visitors, including the blog owners. The same as you do with your commenters, don’t you? As a matter of fact this is a social give-and-take relationship.

5. Run a contest at your blog and give away some money, free ad space or something else valuable for bloggers. Make this in exchange to a blog post in their blog about the contest you are running or ask them to subscribe to RSS feeds or by email to your blog or both. This will boost your traffic and bring a lot of people at your blog. Remember, do not run a blog contest yet unless you have a good number of articles that visitors can browse through the content and not be the contest post the only post that they read.

6. Get your blog reviewed by someone who has a niche blog and offers blog reviews. Make sure you ask this to someone who has a well-known blog and gets a lot of traffic. Don’t forget that generally you get what you give, so prepare for different prices in different authority blogs. This will bring to your blog a lot of traffic and brand your blog a little bit out there.

7. Submit your blog into directories to have some extra traffic time and again by people interested in your niche. This is a good away to get traffic and it it mostly free, even though there are some payable directories. Choose what you think is best for you and submit.

8. Blogrolling, link and banner exchanging is another great way to get traffic. While blogrolling might be a natural result of your good content and/or the good friendship you have with other bloggers, you can always ask blog owners in whose blogs you have an interest for link exchanging or banner exchanging. I would consider this a very good way of promotion and branding. Also there are several sites out there that offer banner exchange so prepare some banners for your blog and go hunt there for niche blogs.

9. Use your blog URL in your signatures such as forum signatures and email ones. After you do that go posting in your preferred forums and reply to emails even to say thanks – thanking is virtue. This will be helpful.

10. Make use of relevant keywords and description Meta tags. Go to your template files in which case 99% you will be using WordPress so go directly to header.php file and edit the META keyword and META description with the right info about your blog. This will help you get indexed in search engines. Also, when posting a new post, make sure to chose the most piquant keywords of the post and submit them to the tags field just below the post text area. The tags will be individually indexed by Google, isn’t this a great news.

Now move you lazy guy, get to work to implement these strategies and boost your traffic, your income and your authority out there. Good luck and do not even think to NOT give me a feedback of what you read here; this would be the implementation of strategy number 4, right?