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here are some Freelance tips for budding designers from Painter Creativity
(http://www.paintercreativity.com/articles/top-10-lies.html)

 
You are GOING to be dealing with people who are unlike yourself. Their motivations are their own and their attitudes are probably different than yours. There are going to be demands, problems, issues and all the hassles that go with practically ANY work/job/money situation. Too many times I see the sad example of someone walking in to a situation with noble intentions and then getting royally screwed, because what they see as an opportunity and a labor of love, the other party sees as something else entirely, not at all romantic or idealized, but raw and simple.

 
 
Top 10 Lies told to Naive Artists and Designers

 
4 On looking at sketches or concepts: “Well, we aren’t sure if we want to use you yet, but leave your material here so I can talk to my partner/investor/wife/clergy.”

 
You can be sure that 15 minutes after you leave he will be on the phone to other designers, now with concepts in hand, asking for price quotes. When you call back you will be informed that your prices were too high and Joe Blow Design/Illustration will be doing the job. Why shouldn’t they be cheaper? You just gave them hours of free consulting work! Until you have a deal, LEAVE NOTHING CREATIVE at the clients office.

 
read the rest of the tips here

 
 
 

How to Convince a Client They Don’t Need a Splash Page

 
Search engines will spider the splash page instead of the real content
Search engines look at the text on a page to determine what the page is all about. If your page is entirely in flash or some other kind of multimedia, chances are the search engines won’t be able to spider any text on it. This will result in both you not ranking for the terms you want and the spidered page having a description next to it in the search results that says something like “Click to Enter.” Examples include: accuplacer.com johnellis.com reachmediatv.com. A search at Google for “Click to Enter” or “Skip Intro” reveals many sites that have non-descriptive text associated with them due to their use of splash pages. These results aren’t likely to get clicks.

 
Client: “So use a flash intro but stuff text in the meta keywords tag”
Search engines stopped caring about meta keyword tags a long time ago–it’s all about what’s actually on the page now.
 

Client: “So use a flash intro but hide keywords in the page”
Search engines can figure this out and you can get banned for it.
From Google’s Webmaster Guidelines:

 
Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”

 
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5 Things You Shouldn’t Spend Money On When Starting a Business

 
When starting a business, here are 5 things you shouldn’t spend a lot of money on:

 
1. Fancy shmancy marketing materials. Brochures, pamphlets, and other uber-glossy, 4-color ultra high-end print materials are too expensive when first starting out. Go the blogging route for a bit of marketing muscle and exposure. Do a little homework on SEO and targeted advertising through Google Adwords before spending on printed marketing materials. If business cards are a must (and they typically are) try an online service like Great FX Business Cards where you can design your cards online.

 
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