Small Business Management Made Easy with WorkingPoint

If you stumble on the web, there is very good chance you will fall on a streaming music site or an invoicing app. There are simply too many of those sites online; I’ve wondered if they just buy a script and just change the CSS and logo.Contrary to music sites… read more

Inspiration: Fashion-Centric Vector Illustrators

Most people turn to Photoshop if the project they’re working on needs high-level editing on details such as facial features, lighting and shadows. However, if you’re looking to create detailed, scalable illustrations, Adobe Illustrator offers a superb selection of vector-based tools, such as the Pen and Pathfinder. For this reason,… read more

The exquisite and hellish artwork of Peter Diamond

Peter Diamond is  a Canadian illustrator living and working in Vienna, Austria. You can easily recognize the japanese art influences, some sort of punk art and even mythology. I discovered him and I felt in love with the devils on his blog. If you have seen some anime, like Fullmetal… read more

Movie Posters Inspiration: Blaxploitation

Blaxploitation is a film genre that emerged in the United States in the early 1970s when many exploitation films were made that targeted an audience of urban black people; the word itself is a portmanteau of the words “black” and “exploitation.” Blaxploitation films were the first to feature soundtracks of… read more

13 Essential Mac and App Related Reads

While Mac.AppStorm is naturally going to be your first (and most awesomest) stop when reading Mac and App news, there are plenty of other great blogs out there. Today we wanted to give a shout out to a few other essential Mac and App reads to add your RSS reader… read more

Give Us Your Portfolio Tips & Win a Carbonmade Whoo! Account

Your portfolio is one of the most important promotional tools you have, no matter what kind of freelance work you do. It’s one of the the first things that a client will look at before choosing you for the job. You’ve got to make it good.

Three tips from Carbonmade’s co-founder… read more

Freelance Freedom #153

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10 Ways to Lose a Client

Providing quality service and retaining clients is critical to the success of any freelancer or design agency. In this post we’ll look at ten common causes for clients leaving designers. The intent is to provide some clear examples of things that should be avoided if you want to keep your… read more

How Freelancers are Using Social Media for Real Results

The Real Results series is supported by Gist, an online service that helps you build stronger relationships. By connecting your inbox to the web, you get business-critical information about key people and companies. See how it works here.

Networking is the bread and butter of a freelance career. Because… read more

Ask the Expert – Design Discussion with Chuck Anderson of NoPattern

Chuck Anderson and the Design Process
Hi Chuck, first of all, I just wanted to thank you for doing this interview. I absolutely love your designs. Let’s get started. Can you give us a little background of your training in design? How did you get started with it all?

Thank you, I… read more

How to Calibrate Color for the Web

When is orange more like red? Web designers, even picky ones, sometimes ignore color shift across monitors.
How is a web designer to manage color when the screens of their users could be any size or color or could be viewed under any lighting conditions?

Unlike fixing HTML errors, which… read more

Best of the Week #116

It’s time for our best news of this week. We have a lot of graphic and web design, a bit of architecture, ads, tech news, awesome reads and other crazy stuff! So take a look at the links we’ve selected for your inspiration and to keep you updated about what’s… read more

Interview with Jesse Hora Dot Com

Jesse Hora Dot Com is an illustrator and art director living in Chicago, IL. He has a true love for typography and lettering, a playful comedic voice, and a stark, stripped down vector style, which has caught the eye of Kanye West, and helped numerous high end clients. Jesse puts… read more

Effective Ways to Promote Your Business Offline

Promotion of a business is as important as the business itself, there is a huge marketing industry whose business is to advertise and promote different businesses, commodities and services. Pepsi spends 80% of its revenues on promotion of its products. There are many examples where the cost of manufacturing a… read more

Comics of the Week #22

Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD.

The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers.

These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile… read more

6 Gmail Add-Ons I Can’t Live Without

6 Gmail Add-Ons I Can’t Live Without

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Don’t Confuse Your Client’s Goals with Your Own

I read a series of great articles by Jaan Orvet and Andreas Carlson (“Strategy Basics: It’s Really About Having A Plan” and its follow-up, “Strategy Basics: Getting Your Clients Ducks In A Row“) on Carsonified’s Blog called “Think Vitamin” and on the importance of having a sound plan for… read more

Knuckle Down and Back Up

By Melissa Scroggins

Have you put off backing up your work? Too complicated, right? Like many, backing up your work becomes a chore that is put off and put off and finally, put out of mind. When you realize you need a backup, it’s probably too late. A glitch occurs in… read more

Design Inspiration: Showcase of Beautiful Typography and Text Effects

Every once in a while we showcase various works of typography and text effects for your design inspiration. In today’s post we have 30 items to feature, covering a wide variety in types and styles of design.

You may also be interested in our previous showcases:

Typography Inspiration Showcase
30 Examples of Inspirational… read more

Earth Day: How Are You Contributing?

It’s Earth Day and people everywhere are taking action, no matter how small, to contribute or change the way they consume to reduce their impact on our environment. Thanks to the internet, there are fantastic ideas gushing from all over the globe to help you find one or more ways… read more

Showcase Of Web Design In Netherlands

The Netherlands, also known as the “Low Countries,” is a small, crowded, muddy piece of land through which a few big important rivers fortunately run. In this country, you can find coffee shops, wooden shoes, tulips, windmills and a lot of water.

And everything is rather small! Well, at least most… read more

Coping with Client Fallout

I recently had a project that did not end well. In a nutshell, the client refused to work with me to revise his copy and simply insisted he didn’t like it. He didn’t even give me the chance to improve upon it. Without his effort, I was left to retort… read more

Understanding and the Meaning of Color Within Design

Color is the perceivable characteristic of light; light is energy, so color is a form of energy. In 1666 sir Isaac Newton discovered that sunlight is a mixture of colors by noticing that when a ray of light passes through a prism it is dispersed into its seven constituent colors:… read more

Creating and Applying Natural Textures

Textures make a website feel tangible.

They give content a relationship to the physical world, a sense of place and a reality that people can relate to.

Unfortunately, simulating physical textures isn’t as simple as shooting a photo or running a few Photoshop filters.

One has to blend random … read more

Introducing Afterdepth

Afterdepth, the moniker of Alexandre Fumeron, is a freelance graphic & motion designer as well as photographer. I found his new identity which totally convinced me to write about him.

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He will be pretty happy when you visit his webseite at www.afterdepth.com/

About the author

Aloa is the moniker of the… read more

Why I Believe in Pricing Work Based on Value

For freelancers, the question of how to price your services is always up for debate. Should you charge by the hour or per project? What should your hourly rate be? What type of payment terms should you require? The answers to these questions will vary based… read more

12 Tips for Avoiding Burnout as a Freelancer

Freelancing is attractive to a lot of people because of the opportunity to work on your own and to set your own hours. However, in reality most full-time freelancers face a lot of stress and experience burnout in their work on a regular basis. In this post we’ll look at… read more

Easy Time Tracking and Invoicing with FreshBooks

There’s quite a few invoicing apps out there, many of which do a fantastic job. One of my favorites though, and the one I actually use personally is FreshBooks. It’s arguably the best time tracking and invoicing web app available, certainly making billing far less painful.

Several Freelancers I’ve spoke with… read more

Ask FreelanceSwitch #9

In this issue of Ask FreelanceSwitch, Travis King and Thursday Bram look at dealing with the hidden project approver and how to make connections.

Ask FreelanceSwitch is a new regular column here that allows us to help beginners get a grip on freelancing. If you have a question about freelancing that… read more

Inspiration: Amazing 3D Typography

Three-dimensional typography is something we’ve seen a lot of recently, and it doesn’t seem to be dying down, either. This post showcases a huge collection of 3D typography, and we have no doubt whatsoever that it is going inspire!

So, how is this magnificent typography produced? There are actually a handful… read more

This Weeks Twitter Design News Roundup N.33

This is our weekly Twitter Design News Round-Up, a collection of fresh design related resources, freebies and good reading articles that we have shared via Twitter and Facebook in the past week.

If would like to be kept up to date with loads of fresh design news and resources, you can… read more

Stylish Re-Envisioned Movie Posters

Posters of famous and classic movies are very popular on the internet, however I’ve been noticing more and more designers doing reinterpretations of these posters, most of them are simply awesome I could say that much better than the original ones because they sort of manage to convey the ideas… read more

How to Deal With Negative Criticism

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you have been subject to criticism for any damn work and couldn’t arouse your critic’s attention on a rather special project of yours? In business and in general as well you need to be open to criticism and need to know… read more

Freelance Freedom #152

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20 Reasons You Shouldn’t Be a Freelancer

We’ve all read countless articles on the reasons you should consider freelancing.

They often make it out like anyone still working in the corporate world is just a schmuck with no ambition. But the truth is, there are plenty of reasons not to start freelancing.

Below are twenty such… read more

Freelance Omen! 9 Ways Not To Get Hired

Freelance Omen! 9 Ways Not To Get Hired

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40+ Essential iPhone Apps for Freelance Web Designers

For one reason or another, a lot of freelancer designer use iPhone for their daily work. As a full-time freelancer and part-time geek, I also like to manage my daily activities with applications on iPhone too. iPhone based applications have many advantages over software that you have to download and… read more

Interview with Tony Soh

To many in the vector community Tony Soh needs little introduction. Tony runs an excellent vector blog called Vector Diary and is an all-around great illustrative designer. In addition to this, he also wrote the first tutorial for us here at Vectortuts+ and regularly contributes to various creative blogs… read more

10 Useful Design News Sites (That Actually Matter)

10 Useful Design News Sites (That Actually Matter)

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Sites of the Week #98

For this Sites of the Week we have selected some great sites such as Navflow and Vtravelled. Also we’re featuring the Brizk’s portfolio and much, much more! As usual we would love to hear from you, keep sending your suggestions to us and we will be more than happy to… read more

Get Business Buzzing with a Buzz Piece

Photo by JSmith Photo.

Most business models can attest to the power of a buzz piece. This marketing tool provides valuable information for prospective clients, the ability to transform readers into customers and a ton of exposure. So if you don’t have one, you should absolutely consider it.

Here’s what you… read more

Congratulations To The Winners Of WordPress Theme And jQuery Template By FlashMint

Thanks to all of the participants of contest in which Win A Copy Of WordPress Theme Or jQuery Template By FlashMint. We ran the MySql random query and selected these 16 commenter to give them WordPress Theme And jQuery Template By FlashMint.

FlashMint is a leading and incomparable Flash Templates… read more

35+ Rockstar Mac Software Developers and Their Apps

Every time I find an application that I really like, I immediately check out the other applications from the same developer. You’ll find that more often than not, there is a theme (visual or practical) that ties all their applications together in such a way that if you like one… read more

Setting Your Standards as a Freelancer: A Few Suggestions

Having standards is important when you’re trying to find and work with clients on your own. It’s surprisingly tempting not to stick to your standards: a quick project that you wouldn’t normally take can look pretty appealing if you’re having a slow month. But sticking to your guns can be… read more

The recession and the Web design industry

By Andy Warpole

In the autumn of 2008, at least for a few weeks, it looked as if the very walls of capitalism were going to fall on to the heads of its participants. The once mighty Lehman Brothers, an American corporate monolith since the 19th century, imploded overnight on September… read more

15 Tips for Freelancers: What to Do in Slow Days and Dry Times

15 Tips for Freelancers: What to Do in Slow Days and Dry Times

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Roughly Speaking: Character Design Sketching Approaches

Character design comes in many styles, but they all start with the rough sketch. Often overlooked in online tutorials, technique and process videos, they are the foundation to creating quality characters. The following is an overview of rough sketches from some fantastic character design artists, with many different styles and… read more

Sorting Through Information on Freelancing

The number of blogs and websites offering up information on freelancing has exploded over the past couple of years. In a way, this is a good thing: the more information freelancers have access to, the better decisions we can make and the more money we can earn. But in other… read more

Creative & Stylish Photos by Ryan Schude

Ryan Schude was born in the greater Chicagoland area in 1979. Ryan received his undergraduate degree in Business Administration from St. Mary’s College in Northern California before heading to the San Francisco Art Institute for photography. After shooting freelance for a bit and then working full time as a photo… read more

Beautiful Illustrations by Pablo Bisoglio

Pablo Bisoglio is a visual artist and illustrator based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has illustrated numerous works for a range of international publishers and magazines, including: Wired (USA) Ford Magazine (Argentina), Young Creative Network (UK), Fortune-Time inc. (USA), Grupo de Revistas La Nacion (Argentina) Panasonic (UK), Roger (UK), Teachersmag… read more

Design Makeover: High-flying Redesign

Client:
Good Bird Magazine! www.goodbirdinc.com

BEFORE
I don’t have a huge number of subscribers, but the ones I do have are really into their birds.

Good Bird Magazine! is just one part of Good Bird Inc., a source of information for owners of parrots and similar birds. The complete product line includes DVDs,… read more

40 Amazing Web Apps for Freelancers

40 Amazing Web Apps for Freelancers

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11 Ways To Earn More Money Freelancing

It’s no secret that times are tough all over, even for those who work in the Web design industry. Maybe you’ve found full-time work as a web designer, but in this economy it’s just as likely that you’re piecing together several part-time or contract gigs just to stay afloat.

Whatever your… read more

Social Proof, and How You Can Get Some

You’ll hear this term casually dropped on several sites that cover copywriting, but few experts ever go into detail to explain social proof. They mostly say, “Make sure you back up your claims with social proof,” and then move on to discuss something else.

Meanwhile, you’re sitting there thinking, “Great. And… read more

Baseball Teams Logo Inspiration

We have been posting about logos and logo inspiration articles of all sorts. Paulo Gabriel has provideded us with a great selection of styles so I decided to select some baseball logos to enrich the that list. What I really like about Baseball logos is that they are a great… read more

This Weeks Twitter Design News Roundup N.32

This is our weekly Twitter Design News Round-Up, a collection of fresh design related resources, freebies and good reading articles that we have shared via Twitter and Facebook in the past week.

If would like to be kept up to date with loads of fresh design news and resources, you can… read more

Meeting Your Client for the First Time

You are There

You have both turned up to the meeting for the sole purpose of getting more information about each other. You are there specifically to get more information on the client you’re potentially working for. You are also there to learn more about the specifics of a project… read more

Creative Sessions – A New Set of Educational Posts Every Month

We’re very passionate about teaching creative skills here at Tuts+, so over the last year we’ve been planning a new stream of educational content focused on the "Why?" instead of the "How". Today we’re unveiling the newest addition to the Tuts+ family: Creative Sessions.

Every month we’ll be running a two… read more

Freelance Freedom #151

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Wallpaper of the Week #95 – Justin Maller

The wallpaper of this week is a beautiful image created by Justin Maller, a freelance illustrator and art director based in Melbourne, Australia. He has been creating digital art for over eight years, and has produced professionally in both a private and studio based capacity for the last three.

For more… read more

What Do You Know About These Famous Logos?

What Do You Know About These Famous Logos?

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Best of the Week #114

It’s time for our best news of this week. We have a lot of graphic and web design, a bit of architecture, ads, tech news, awesome reads and other crazy stuff! So take a look at the links we’ve selected for your inspiration and to keep you updated about what’s… read more

Invoice Bubble Makes Invoicing Easy and Affordable

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Invoice Bubble

Quick Pitch: Invoice Bubble… read more

Indepth look at my freelance logo design process – Part 1

Indepth look at my freelance logo design process – Part 1

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Lessons from Hollywood: On Getting Projects Green-Lit & Spec Work

For over a year now I’ve been working with a well-known producer/writer/director as his Internet marketing manager on two movies; one in development and the other now in pre-production. It is an interesting experience that has taught me loads about what not to do as a freelancer as well… read more

Dealing With Clients Who Refuse To Pay

As a designer, you will eventually have to face a couple of unfortunate truths in your career. Number one: just because you wear a bathrobe for most of your “business” hours does not actually make it business attire. Number two: at some point in your freelance career, you will encounter… read more

The Lost Element of Quality

The Lost Element of Quality

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You’re Failing as a Web Developer — and Here’s Why

There is endless content available in the world of web design blogging telling us how to do things right, and how to succeed at our chosen profession.

That’s obviously a good thing, and it will certainly continue that way. But once in a while we need reminders on… read more

60 Fascinating AppStorm Reader Setups

After featuring our huge roundup of stylish Mac setups last week, we then asked you to submit your own setup for inclusion in another post. We’ve gathered 60 of your setups over the past week, and found out about some great new gadgets and software in the process.

Without further ado,… read more

Turning Your Knowledge into Products

One of the big downsides of the freelance world is that when you’re not doing billable work, your income goes to zero. So, there’s a lot of talk about creating income streams that aren’t dependent on your selling your time.

Turning your knowledge into a product – or a product line… read more

Vintage Illustrations by Kareem Rizk

Kareem Rizk is a Melbourne based Australian artist who graduated from Monash University in 2004 with a Bachelor in Graphic Design. This course encouraged a rich influence of mixed media techniques which has always been evident in his work.

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Rizk’s initial ambition was to forge a career as a Graphic Designer…. read more

Clean Prints by Paul Fox Design

As someone who has recently developed a strong liking for print design, I have become infatuated with Paul Fox’s work. Namely his color palette, clean lines, and simple compositions.

I wish I could tell you more about him–is it a growing trend to supply as little information about yourself as possible… read more

Beautiful Artworks by Evgeny Kiselev

Evgeny Kiselev is a freelancer illustrator and graphic designer from Saint Petersburg, Russia, his works were published in magazines such as Computer arts (U.K.), IDN (Hong Kong), ROJO (Spain), Grafik magazine (U.K.), Beautiful Decay (U.S.A.), E-tapes (France), Chewonthis magazine (U.S.A.), I.O. Magazine (Germany), X-Funs (Taiwan), New web pick, Artzmania e-zine,… read more

Making Web Video That Sells: eBook Review

With the ever expanding growth of high speed internet connections, video is cropping up on most major websites more and more. Whether you are informing potential purchasers with a screencast or hoping to direct the next viral experience, video is something that most designers and developers should have at least… read more

Create a Fun Vector Frog Logo in Illustrator

Create a Fun Vector Frog Logo in Illustrator

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Mashable’s Weekly Web Development and Social Media Job Listings

If you’re seeking a job in social media, we’d like to help out. For starters, Mashable’s Job Lists section gathers together all of our resource lists, how-tos and expert guides to help you get hired. In particular, you might want to see our articles on How to… read more

Stop Reading “Clients from Hell”

This is an excellent article that I really enjoyed! A lot of times, we are quick to talk negatively about a client without really understanding where they are coming from. I think all designers, especially freelancers should read this post.

Related posts:Why I Can’t Stop Blogging About Design
The Bare Bones That Every… read more

Getting paid as a freelance web designer

Getting paid as a freelance web designer

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Designer Spotlight: Vlad Kolarov

Vlad Kolarov is a cartoonist, humorous illustrator, designer, and animator living in Canada. Born in Rousse, Bulgaria, he became one of the “Wind of Change” generation cartoonists after the collapse of communism in his native country. Hired by the largest Bulgarian newspaper publisher, 168 Chasa Ltd (168 Hours Ltd), Vlad… read more

Keeping In Touch with Prospective Clients

A lot of your success as a freelancer will depend on your persistence.

It takes many forms – your persistence in learning and improving your skills, the persistence that’s involved in bringing a long, difficult project to completion, and the topic of this article, persistence in keeping in touch with the… read more

Preparing Photoshop Files for Web Developers

By Brian Rhinehart

Whether you’re a freelance web designer or part of a team at an agency, handing off Photoshop files to a client, developer, development team or even another designer is part of the process of building websites.

Whereas the development process is generally more structured, by contrast, the design process… read more

Architect Day: Gigon / Guyer

Annette Gigon and Mike Guyer, for more than 20 years, make a solid and elegant architecture. They gained notoriety by qualifying the urban landscapes of Switzerland, a country where good architecture can be seen easily. Gigon / Guyer are certainly a great source of inspiration for architects and enthusiasts.

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Photos from… read more

10 Steps to a Stronger Professional Network

Networking is a critical part of building a successful freelance business. A strong network can lead to more referral business, better recognition within the industry, new opportunities, and much more. Although it isn’t the type of work that directly produces income for a freelance designer, networking… read more

Freelance Freedom #150

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What I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Freelancing

I’ve been freelancing as a brand identity artist for about a year now and there are some things I have learned along the way. I researched a lot of articles about freelancing but all of them tended to say the same things, like don’t quit your day job until… read more

Pros and Cons of Freelancing: A Passion or a Profession?

Pros and Cons of Freelancing: A Passion or a Profession?

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Top Articles On The Web Design Billboard In March’10

A perfect layout, A Good Design and Nice Resource can produce a creative output. Layout, textures, typography and patterns are used more often than one may think but the outcome of different combination can result verity of excellent designs. Professionalism is built upon knowledge and experience. However, When it comes… read more

Freelancers, Where Does the Brand Stop and You Start?

Freelancers, Where Does the Brand Stop and You Start?

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Ten Tips to Improve your Freelance Portfolio

Ten Tips to Improve your Freelance Portfolio

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75+ Truly Useful Tutorials & Colorful Resources For Designers To Discover The Best Of The Web In March

We are always in search of great free resources, tips, tricks, etc. for our readers. Every day we work hard to find new resources and inspiration for designers like you. Today, we have another great post, “Discover the Best of the Web” on SmashingApps. In this, we made a list… read more

Want Crowdsourced Design Without the Spec Work? Try Brandstack

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Brandstack

Quick Pitch: Brandstack is a graphic design… read more

15 Great Ways to Find Web Design and Development Work

This series is supported by Rackspace, the better way to do hosting. Learn more about Rackspace’s hosting solutions here.

For web designers and developers looking to take on new projects, the Internet offers a great number of online resources that can help them find work. Though the competition… read more

Sites of the Week #96 – Slicing Giveaway

For this Sites of the Week, we have a special edition with a giveaway from DiamondHTML, a great slicing service that you could prove! Also we have selected some great sites such as Super User Studio and Bounty Bev. As usual we would love to hear from you, keep sending… read more

Making the Most of a Critique

For many freelancers, asking for a critique is easy. Getting useful information out of that critique is not nearly so easy. But critiques can be useful whether you’re looking for some outside input when you’re putting together marketing materials for yourself, getting a second opinion on a project for a… read more

Ask FreelanceSwitch #8

In this issue of Ask FreelanceSwitch, Travis King and Thursday Bram look at when to take a client to court and how to set your rate for the first time.

Ask FreelanceSwitch is a new regular column here that allows us to help beginners get a grip on freelancing. If you… read more

Guide to Localizing Your Design Business

One of the benefits of working as a freelance designer is that you can work with clients all around the world. Location isn’t the same type of barrier that it is with most traditional businesses. However, because of the possibility to work with clients in just about… read more

Mashable’s Weekly Job Board Listings in Social Media

If you’re seeking a job in social media, we’d like to help out. For starters, Mashable’s Job Lists section gathers together all of our resource lists, how-tos and expert guides to help you get hired. In particular, you might want to see our articles on How… read more

4 People You Should Ask For Website Feedback

Most people know that good feedback is essential to designing and developing quality websites.

But what constitutes “feedback” can be ambiguous: for some, it is little more than a hasty spell-check; for others, it is akin to submitting and defending a PhD dissertation.

While there is no one-size-fits-all solution… read more

Working With Other Freelancers to Expand Your Business

Working With Other Freelancers to Expand Your Business

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How to Improve Your Online Social Life?

Man is a social animal and he can’t exist in isolation, we make friends and find common interest groups and socialize with people or society or things of our interest. Internet has provided us a great bridge and even a greater platform on which the social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter,… read more