Chris @ AeroDesigns

Word of mouth is great when you're established, but is obviously much harder to come by when you're just starting (or re-starting) out. Organic SEO is a good medium-term strategy, but takes a while again for it to get going. PPC is good for getting local business, however most PPC keywords in our industry are saturated. Lead generation is a good one, as you invest some money and usually get leads within days - however in my opinion the best approach would be to combine all of them. Work on your website (build keyword-rich content), invest an amount in PPC and organic link building (or even better create some 'linkbait') and make your clients happy to get the word of mouth going. That way you're not putting all your eggs in one basket, and it allows you to see which techniques work for you.

Sounds like a good idea to save 'reinventing the wheel', however when I used phpBB I had quite a few security and spam issues, and it seemed like it needed a variety of patches and tweaks to secure it properly. There's a full list of the major PHP forum software (with comparison details) available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of..._software_(PHP) Hope that helps

If you don't know the client at all I would first try all other means of accepting the payment, first cheque, then Paypal then as a last resort you could offer them the BACS. You could create a Paypal form on your website that would look a lot more professional than simply sending them a "Money Request" from within the Paypal system. If you haven't had any previous relationship with the potential customer I would try Googling their name and see if anything major comes up. I know anybody PC or privacy-fixated might frown upon this biassed method, but trust me, sometimes you definitely want to know what has been said about a dodgy character (speaking from experience of one of my bad clients - I searched for their name once things had gone pear-shaped and wished I had done this first!).

Hi Karly, Personally, I just try and get a detailed specification from them and try and design 1 mock-up layout to that specification. If they want any changes making though then they can have as many as they want completed before 'signing off' the final version. It also depends on the level of service, obviously if you're offering discount web design, then it would be cost prohibitive to create four or five mock-ups - it depends on the business model of the web design agency I suppose.