The Device APIs and Policy Working Group has published a Working Draft of Battery Status Event Specification. This specification defines a new DOM event type that provides information about the battery status of the hosting device. Learn more about the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity.
News From WEBZULLIE.COM
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The Web Performance Working Group published three drafts today:
Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity. |
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Going into business as a web designer is tough. You may often see people glorify the life of a freelancer as a utopian life of beach trips, Apple products and lots of money. The truth is, when starting out, it isn’t anything like that and takes years to accomplish that kind of success. I’ve been freelancing for about five years now and have gotten really serious about it in the past couple months and the part that I find the MOST challenging is the pricing. How do you know what to charge? Hourly or flat rate? What are the market prices? Once you find the answers to these questions, many things will begin to fall into place. I have noticed, however, there are two HUGE myths floating around the design business in regards to setting prices. The two myths are essentially the same, just with two different view points and arguments. What are they you ask?
The designer that prices cheaply says:“Making my prices so low will attract more customers! And in turn I’ll be making a ton of money!” Promotion and Strategy Get Customers
This one is super easy to fall into, especially for the newbies. The biggest issue with this viewpoint is the idea of attracting more customers. First, getting customers depends on your marketing and promotional strategy. You may have affordable prices, but if no one knows about them, no one is coming to see you. Make sure you have an all around solid strategy to get and keep customers interested in you. Take advantage of the many social networks online as well as blogs to keep your name in the search engines. Buy some advertising and create great work so potential customers will come straight to you. Using pricing as your primary marketing strategy is very hit and miss. You MUST be cautious of setting your prices cheap in order to get people in the door (for example, an introductory price). Sometimes when you do this and then try to increase your prices, you leave your customers wanting that cheaper price you started with and you can sometimes dig an unprofitable hole for yourself. Clients can get extremely irritated and you may gain the perception of being ‘sketchy’. If this is your strategy, make it known that prices may increase, and to what they will increase to. You don’t want your clients thinking you’re out to get them! You Attract What You Are
Second, when your prices are cheap, you generally attract cheap people. And in what I’ve seen, you can attract people so cheap, your cheap prices are too high for them. Not only that, you attract people who have cheaper morals (such as not paying on time, never paying, squeezing the most out of you) and I’m not sure they are worth all that hassle. Dealing with a cheap client can be a total and complete waste of time as well as a big ball of stress and frustration. While (I believe) there is no such thing as the perfect client, the last thing you want in this business is the penny-pinching client. Affordable vs. CheapYour time and dedication is worth more than the pennies you may be charging. Your niche may be affordable graphic design, but affordable (a $250 logo) and cheap (a $50 logo) are two different things! Do your market research and figure out what is best and what is not because in the end, pricing cheaply really ends up going down hill.
The designer that does not price cheaply says:“Those other designers are so low, they are ruining the market! How will I keep my customers?” Pay Attention to Your Client Base
To this designer, I want to be clear: mind your own business. The point here is that you are serving a completely different clientele than the cheaper designer; one of which has little to no issue with spending money and another that does. What kind of sense does it make to get all up in arms about what some other designer is doing? The issue is that many believe the cheaper designers are ruining the market and making it harder to charge so much, but the truth is there are people out there who don’t mind paying the prices. Especially if it translates into quality that is reliable, dependable and consistent. Perhaps you may have to add some more services, like a free consultation or increase the amount of revisions, but don’t fall into the pricing war. Far too many huge companies start off with higher prices and try to lower their prices and they end up tanking. The little guy will always win because he may have a plan to keep up with his prices–you don’t. That’s not your competition and you don’t have to keep up with the cheaper designer. Look into what your peers are doing and try to compete with that. Customer Service is Key
Keeping your customers is a service issue. I worked for a high-end fashion retailer a while ago and the truth is the stuff we sold and the stuff lower-end competitors sold was pretty much the same. And it wasn’t a secret–many customers knew there wasn’t a huge difference but when you talked to them and asked them why they return and why they purchase from us, it was always because they liked our customer service and the extended warranties and they didn’t mind paying for quality (as a combination of product and service). Avoid it All: Communicate!
Whether you are the lower priced designer or the higher priced designer, when you get a customer, make sure they know and understand what they are (and are not) paying for. I use a flat-rate, base price system, and when I start to up-sell and add-on services, I make sure I spell it out on my invoices and to the customer. We have to remember that most of our customers are not designers and don’t realistically understand the work we do, so we have to spell it out. And once you start communicating WHY your prices are what they are versus WHAT your prices are, you should have an easier time getting and keeping customers. Try not to fall into either of these myths by focusing on creating GREAT work and providing EXCELLENT customer service–no matter the price! Having trouble thinking of prices?Try some of the calculators and guides below. They can help you find decent going rates for your line of work. FreelanceSwitch Hourly Rate Calculator Pay Me Please: A Freelance Web Designer’s Guide to Billing and Pricing How Much to Charge for Design Work? |
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WordPress is mainly used for blogging, but you can actually use WordPress for other purposes. This is the beauty of WordPress, it is so flexible that it has several alternative uses, even for people who aren’t that technical. It is easy to customize and presents your content in a very appealing manner with thousands of themes and plugins available for use. In this article I will briefly point seven alternate uses of WordPress aside from using it as a blogging platform. There are only seven examples but that doesn’t mean you can’t use it for other purposes. So, I hope you will enjoy this article and share your thoughts!
1. Online Shop
Just couple your WordPress with a specialized theme for online shops and a simple e-commerce plugin and you’re all set. It’s that simple actually. All you need is a basic understanding of how websites work and in less than 10 minutes you can already set up your website (provided you already have a host). From small to medium online shops this is actually better than hiring a developer to start it from scratch. With today’s economy, everyone should be thinking about getting the best for less. And that means using WordPress to set up an online shop. Security is always an issue, especially for 3rd-party plugins. There are decent free plugins that offer some support, but if you’re big-time serious, whip that wallet out and purchase a good plugin with full support. That way, you can’t be wronged. 2. Gallery or Image Viewer
(Plugging: massive CSS gallery collection underway, be sure to check back!) This is best for designers and photographers who wish to have their own website instead of using ready made portfolio websites. This might be tricky for many, since we all know that designers and other creatives really want to add their personal touch to everything they do, such as the website design. Designing a theme is quite the task, but it pays off. Most CSS galleries use WordPress too. Before WordPress was around yet (and other popular CMS’), everyone who wanted to have a website of their own needed to have at least an intermediate understanding of web development and designing, or know someone who did. Now there are CMS’ like WordPress that eliminate the mandatory coding. That is a very good news for people. To add to that, making WordPress a gallery or an image viewer has become a common thing today because of the countless free and premium plugins and themes developed for this purpose. 3. Static Website and Brochure SiteFor people who are in a hurry to get something online as soon as possible without learning how to code and design, WordPress is the man. For promotion of a business, institution, idea, and anything that tells people what you are and what you do. Several restaurants have websites that are powered by WordPress, same goes for institutions and other propaganda movements. Websites like these doesn’t really need interaction from users, information is enough. Expansion is also easy, from static to dynamic. No sweat, sonny. 4. Membership Site
There are websites that offer tutorials and several useful articles, like 1stwebdesigner. Then there are websites with a different and more focused side, membership sites. For a price their subscribers can get premium benefits; usually focused and more in-depth than the usual tutorials, resources, and extreme information that you can only learn from an expert. People who create a membership site, whether they are individuals or a group of people, are already established in their field and have a massive following. If you are thinking of creating one, there are free and premium plugins ready for this, no more coding necessary. It’s really that easy, in fact, almost any feature that you can think of has already been made. All you need to do is know where to look. Providing premium e-books, tutorials, web seminars, and other premium services you can think of. Then there’s another side to this. Creating a membership website for close circles of friends or family. Clubs, organizations, friends and families can use Facebook’s Groups, but the features are quite limited. Using WordPress to help connect close groups of people is also a great idea, especially when the group has a large membership. 5. Collaboration ToolWell, there are actually 70+ collaboration tools running out there today, but what I mean with WordPress as a collaboration tool is using it as a discussion board open for the public. An open, and engaged, community of like-minded individuals. During my last year in the university, my team and I used WordPress to openly discuss ideas with our professor in IT. Other teams are free to criticize and read just about anything we posted there. Here is one great article about a mathematician’s WordPress blog (can be done with other platforms too, but I’m citing this just to give you an idea). If you have time, you can read the second and third paragraphs. Already late for work? The gist is, Timothy Gowers (the mathematician in question) thought of posting his ideas and problems on his blog. Days later, people got involved. 6. Job Board and ForumWell, it’s really far from its real purpose but you can actually use WordPress to create a forum and a job board. There are several plugins that you can use, and I’m not listing them here to force you to pay WordPress.org a visit and do the searching there. Or just use Google. So, why WordPress again for this? Because it’s easy to use andvery flexible. Anyone can create a forum or a job board in an instant. 7. Link Repository and News AggregatorI particularly like websites that link to other websites. Heh, that’s not even a clear description. What I mean is websites that categorize links so that readers of a certain niche are updated. It may work like a feed reader, but personally I find this one better. Take for example Smashing Network, that’s what I mean. A website that is focused on doing that. I don’t know about you, but I really like websites like that. Although it may not be a WordPress site, one website I visit daily is eScienceNews. The website claims that it’s updates are fully automatic. Who updates it and how? Artificial Intelligence. Well, now you get the idea of what I mean. Maybe there are other definition of what link repository is, feel free to comment in. So, What Else?As you can see, almost anything that you can think of is possible with WordPress. All you need to have is a little background of how websites work and what features you’d like it to have and good research skills to find specific plugins. A web developer friend of mine told me “why start from scratch when there are good CMS’ available to expedite the process?” when I asked him “how long will it take for me to develop a website similar to icanhascheezburger.com?” You may now start accusing me of leaving out other uses for WordPress. I intentionally left them out, I’ve thought of about 20 and read as many as 40. I don’t want this to be an over-saturated article so you can just post your suggestions and thoughts below. C’mon! |
