BaldNut

I have a few different types of businesses and have experienced this throughout all of them The typical tactic is say "Yes that does sound interesting please explain how it works" I then put my phone on my desk and continue working and having a conversation with other people in the office They sometimes will phone back 10 minutes later and say "I just phoned you etc etc" i say "oh yeah sorry about that, I am really interested please tell me again" And do the same again, they never phone a 3rd time Best thing I ever done was this: I used to own and Gym in stockton on tees, (cleveland) and a company phoned me about 6 or 7 times trying to sell me TV's with advertising on to go in my reception area. I told them everytime i was not interested and also told them to stop phoning but they would still phone every few days. SO i told them i was interested and would like a demo. They sent a guy from manchester with all of the kit to demo. he came into reception so i went to greet him, and told him i was just finishing a meeting and to wait for me. I left him in reception for over an hour, then came out and told him I wasnt interested and I didnt want a demo, He was puzzled and explained that he had driven all the way from manchester (170 mile) I said, well maybe now you wont phone me any more, try updating your database! The manager phoned to complain about his salesman wasted trip, and he got a lashing off me on the phone also

May seem like a lot of cash but to be honest its not a lot for what you get, it has saved me hours in regards to organising contracts and design briefs etc really worth while investment, as is the SEO kit. I use IBP and Arelis software for SEO but the business kit gives you loads of extra info and templates for pitching your services contracts etc. I have two copies of the SEO business kit to be honest as I bought one for a friend as it was cheaper for shipping then he never paid me so maybe ill ebay it.

Ok, First things first if you do not already own a copy of the sitepoint web design business kit I would recommend you invest in one, also the SEO business kit. this has lots of useful advice in running many web related businesses and also lots of contracts and print outs for use as pre-made contracts and design briefs etc. 2 Hour free consultation? I think anyone who has the authority to say yes or no on the decision to use you for their web development should realise the value of your time so if you are not going to push the sale and ask for the job at the end of the 2 hours you will become very disillusioned. You absolutely must ask for the job at the end of the pitch, and yes make it a pitch, advertise it as a free 2 hour consultation which it is but hell get them excited, motivated and signed up there and then. Never pitch to anyone who is not the decision maker else you have just wasted 2 hours of your time. Never offer a website without pushing SEO services in with the deal, as a company we now refuse to take a web design client unless they also sign for 12 months SEO which is worth an average of £400 per month on top of the cost of their site. Bigest question to ask the client: Why do you want a website? if it is to increase the company turnover how much do they feel they can increase their turnover by? this should give you an indication of how much the site is worth to the company. We built an ecommerce site for one of our clients which now takes £25k per week, we then built and optimised the 2nd site for the client 8 months ago which is currently taking £4k per week and are now just starting on their 3rd site, all selling same products and the goal is to saturate the top ten of all the major search engines so no matter who you go to in the results it will be my clients site. (we are building him 10 sites next year selling same products) each site we have built him we have charged more, as we have also increased the costs of his SEO Clients will pay good money for websites providing they are returning on investment. why work for peanuts? you should clarify to yourself your minimum hourly rate and dont drop, in the UK that should be no less than £25ph MINIMUM so we generally bill out between £25 and £50 per hour depending on what kind of work we are doing, and have not looked back. Before seeing the client, do some research, look at his industry, look at relevant keywords and find out how many people are searching for the keywords of the company and stress to the client "Last month there were 35,000** searches for your main keywords etc" this is giving him an idea as to how important SEO is to his site, if you do not push SEO then your losing out on a fortune, and not only that your client is losing out on visitors and a successful website. But if you give them all this information and walk away, they will either try and do it in house or they will probably then phone another web developer and talk like they know what they are doing (because you just filled them full of info) and the other designer will get the job!! Good luck mate.

ditto, trouble is more different ideas you show them then the more they tend to confuse themselves of what they want.

The UFC 66 Website - Chuck Liddell v Tito Ortiz <-- Link This site is full flash site, please take a look i am not joking when i say it is the best website i have ever visited, im sure eskimo would be interested in taking a look as i know he is a keen flasher (not the kind that wears a mack and flashes his or her bits lol) It is essential to click on 'Feud' in middle top, then use the drag button at bottom middle to view that section, awesome. Also above each fighter view the interview, bio and analysis links LEt me know your thoughts. UFC have a mega budget, i would guess this is a $75,000 site.

IMHO www.lynda.com is the best place, i paid the $350 or whatever it was and have access to all the source code etc to download and follow the online tutorials, im currently using it to learn how to use php and MySql together. Worth every penny.

You wanna buy another two? I just collect books, and dont read em! PHP4 by Wrox Build your own Database driven website using php and mysql (sitepoint) Yes ben i do like sitepoint! To name abut a few unread books

Excellent resource, but they didnt tell you were the actual link to the image was, and i know nothing of java so couldnt suss it out. found this though which is self explanitory: <!-- THREE STEPS TO INSTALL LOGO BRANDING: 1. Insert the first code into the HEAD of your HTML document 2. Add the onLoad event handler to the BODY tag 3. the last code into the BODY of your HTML document --> <!-- STEP ONE: Put this code into the HEAD of your HTML document --> <head> <script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript"> <!-- Begin function setVariables() { imgwidth=235; // logo width, in pixels imgheight=19; // logo height, in pixels if (navigator.appName == "Netscape") { horz=".left"; vert=".top"; docStyle="document."; styleDoc=""; innerW="window.innerWidth"; innerH="window.innerHeight"; offsetX="window.pageXOffset"; offsetY="window.pageYOffset"; } else { horz=".pixelLeft"; vert=".pixelTop"; docStyle=""; styleDoc=".style"; innerW="document.body.clientWidth"; innerH="document.body.clientHeight"; offsetX="document.body.scrollLeft"; offsetY="document.body.scrollTop"; } } function checkLocation() { objectXY="branding"; var availableX=eval(innerW); var availableY=eval(innerH); var currentX=eval(offsetX); var currentY=eval(offsetY); x=availableX-(imgwidth+30)+currentX; y=availableY-(imgheight+20)+currentY; evalMove(); setTimeout("checkLocation()",10); } function evalMove() { eval(docStyle + objectXY + styleDoc + horz + "=" + x); eval(docStyle + objectXY + styleDoc + vert + "=" + y); } // End --> </script> </head> <!-- STEP TWO: Add this onLoad event handler to the BODY tag --> <body onload="setVariables(); checkLocation();"> <!-- STEP THREE: Put this code into the BODY of your HTML document --> <div id="branding" style="position:absolute; visibility:show; left:235px; top:-50px; z-index:2"> <table width="10" bgcolor="#ffffff"><td> <a href="http://www.rbarclay.co.uk/specials/" onmouseover="window.status='Click here for current specials';return true" onmouseout="window.status=';return true"><img alt="" src="http://www.rbarclay.co.uk/logo.jpg" border="0"/></a></td> </table> </div> </body>

how do you do the floating image so as you scroll up or down a page the image follows you?

how about a forum named "How do you do that!" cause i don't know were to post the "how do i questions?"

Did not know these tools were even available. great link matey Will be installing asap!

Yes it is a CS2 one but might work with earlier versions, it is very easy just like working with any other kind of extention once installed. or CS even, think i was replying to an online gaming forum with CS2 lol ICOFormat_1.6f9_win.zip

Do you mean on hover/mouse over?

Seems its an IE thing, basically if they add your site to favourites it should display in IE else it won't until IE7 Well, at least the FF users will see it better than seeing the joomla logo.

Just installed photoshop plugin for this Been re-working a joomla site i built for a client and changed the favourite icon to match his logo. Not to hard to do, but it won't show in internet explorer just firefix? any ideas? http://express-processing.co.uk/ Rob

Hi Guys, just found you on google and thought be nice to be first post!! This site will be ideal for someone like me with a little knowledge in programming and design, will hopefully give everyone something to do when i keep getting stuck with problems!!