Chosen

Mock them all you want but they have a great post on... plagiarism

I wouldnt turn them down - I'd refer them to someone else I knew could do the work. I brand myself as an individual freelancer, so I only take on work that I can do personally. I don't find the idea of white-labelling someone else's work something that I'm ethically comfortable with. If someone else is doing the work, let them take the credit.

Fell free to hire where you want. The more people that hire Indian outsourcers the more clients come crying to me to fix their sites after they've inevitably had them buggered hard.
I get a huge amount of work from clients who outsourced only to find the quality of the work was horrific or the sites just didn't work.
 
 
Damn right you do.
Greed will burn you out. You can only do so much work at a time before your work becomes so thinly spread that you're turning out masses and masses of manure. Ever heard of quality over quantity.
 
 
 
Then it's not something you should even be considering.
You seem to be confusing 'Outsourcing' and 'cheap' to be the same thing.
I take on a lot of outsource work, which i do with as much care and professionalism as if it was my own site. I'm not cheap though.
 
 
Then , yes, you do need to fill those gaps, but you are thinking the wrong way about it, especially if you'd like the business to be a success.

Currently building a light site using GetSimple and I can't recommend it highly enough. It's got all of the essential features of larger CMS' like Wordpress without all the faffing around. Give it a shot, it's great.
 
If your interested here's the WIP/

Thought I'd drop by and say hi!
 
6 months ago I was employed by an awesome company in London as a web developer. I'm pretty lucky since I don't have a degree in anything!
 
I know there are a lot of young people who are in the situation I was so I thought it'd be nice to give some advise if anyone needs it. So I think this will help:
 
Keep proving your skills
 
If you're not getting any interviews keep redoing your portfolio, using a range of different technologies. Even if you're not a web designer try to make your work visually pleasing because it's what recruitment agencies first notice - that was one of the biggest keys I had.
 
What a web developer should know
 
This doesn't of course apply to all companies, but many will be looking for skills in:


Photoshop
Enough to be able to work with creative to turn into websites
 
HTML+CSS
Programming alone isn't useful without knowing HTML properly. Knowledge of HTML5 is a definite must since it shows you're ahead of the curve.
 
A programming language
In my case; PHP and Javascript. Almost every company I interviewed at asked if I had experience with the Facebook and Twitter API, so make sure you get to grips with those. Many of them also use frameworks and Codeigniter seems to be the most popular.
 
I also advise having a list of things you'd like to learn because it'll show how enthusiastic you are. Web developers aren't expected to know everything after all.
 
Show logical thinking when planning and carrying out projects
 
This was one of the hardest questions I had: which procedures do you prefer when building a website. Without being in the business, how do you know?
 
At my company a wireframe is drawn up which shows the user flow. The wireframe is then interpreted by the web designer/ graphic designer. The web developer then cuts the PSD file up and builds the website. If the website is especially complicated then we usually hold a brainstorming meeting to help plan the back-end construction. When the website is completed, or near complete, it's tested for bugs and has copy checked and changed if needed.
 
There are lots of other things that will help you get a job, but I found that these are the most important.

No one looks past page one but no one goes from page XX to page 1 in a single move for keywords worth targeting. It does not happen to my knowledge. It's a steppingstone to page 1.
 
Google will not punish me - I am doing nothing wrong for the client.
 
My own micro blog network may possibly be hit over time if the algorithm changes, but it's the same for everyone. Adapt or be eaten.
 
 
 
Its SEO. The whole essence of SEO is to exploit your idea of the google algorithm for your own gain. If you are doing SEO you are not letting the net be natural and you are spoofing something...
 
Duplicate content is a waste of time. Google is so on point with this now you have to be stupid to think it will do you good. It is simply ignored while the original content is not punished and it is left untouched.
 
You all may think "OMG robbing ****, £500 a month for SEO"
 
lets do some numbers.
 
You own a psychologists practice.
 
You charge £100 a session to help people with whatever it is they need help with and the average client stays on for 6 sessions. Each and every client is worth £600 to you.
 
You are based on London, the total searches for the keywords "psychologists London" "psychologist in London" and "psychologist London" is lets say 800 a month.
 
If you are number 1 for these terms you can expect at least 56% of all these clicks to be on your website. Cornell university did this study. They actually found it to be nearer 70% for local terms like these as well so that's a conservative number.
 
56% of 800 searches a month = 418 people.
 
You do not search for terms like this by accident. These people want the services you have on offer.
 
If you can only convert 2% of these 418 people that's over 8 people worth 4800 every single month to you.
 
If we cut it down further to 1%, 1 in 100 people looking for what you offer. that is still £2400 a month in sales from SEO.
 
This model does not work for all businesses. For example SEO on a chip shop would be pointless you would not see the value but good SEO should pay for itself over and over and over every single month.
 
It is worth every penny of £500 a month if you have a high enough customer value to make the numbers work.

I charge £500 to set up and £300 every month after that.
 
The £500 is to alter the site - make sure every page has all the tags it needs and in the correct places. Make sure link structure is good. Make sure we have G analytics's and G web master tools and other tools set up to monitor process.
 
This also gets the competition looked at and analysed and a clear battle plan along with notes of all changes are delivered to the client.
 
Month after month £75 of that £300 is outsourced to content writers. I get 4 well written articles. The person I use is a professional and I get an excellent price as I did a deal with him to deliver plenty of work his way.
 
A large proportion of the original £500 is spent on domains and I aim to create my own blog network sort of in his niche - these are all built by me and all link to him from different hosts so nothing looks fishy. I build 10-25 of these per client.
 
If I am ranking for a london hotel I will target london attractions and london shops and london directories and build them and point them towards the client. Maybe hotels in other places could be good. You don't target them directly but you do sort of around their area.
 
These are the links I give him. However the quality content is also linked to by real people and it grows and grows.
 
I then spend my time building these sites and writing stuff myself for them. The other articles are posted to their own website and are linked into my sites.
 
I use some of the £300 each month to grow and grow this little network. I buy $1 .info domains and set up auto blogs and point them towards my network. I do buy links to them, I do all the greyhat stuff because through my sites there is no way I can harm the clients site.
 
I tried this with my own portfolio. I got a new domain, set it up and got myself deliberately sandboxed. No effect at all on my site.
 
I only started selling SEO mid December. I've 3 clients so far.
 
I took one from page 12 to page 4. He is happy with this.
 
I took one from page 6 to page 3. He is also happy.
 
I took one from not being indexed to page 12. She got de-indexed by her last SEO guy. I did this for free to just see if I could do it. She is paying from next month on.
 
Thats my formula. I see myself going into this rather than web design tbh. I enjoy it more.
 
It is no easy money done my way but my structure means I will be making it easier and easier hopefully.
 
My clients get a monthly report - they get to see every link I build, every post, everything. Nothing is hidden.
 
The network is my own meaning as time goes on ect I will get more and more 'powerful' and I will be able to rank people easier.
 
cheers

Hello,
 
Been a while since I have posted on here so I thought i would pop back and request some feedback.
I have just finished designing the home page for a small business website, for a cleaning company (the name is not yet confirmed as the company is new) so please excuse the logo.
 
The website is still in the design phase so I only have a PNG for you guys.
 
 
 
 
All feedback is welcome.
 
Thanks

http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/design-tutorials/design-and-code-a-slick-website-from-scratch-%e2%80%93-part-i/
http://net.tutsplus.com/category/tutorials/design-tutorials/
 
http://www.thenewboston.com
 
I believe this is worth a mention.
 
/Edit: What I was trying to say is follow tutorials. There's a lot of resources out there. Additional resources *cough* http://www.graphixshare.com/