Hoosier Hunter

I have also found myself using Paypal almost exclusively. The trouble comes when clients lose their records or disagree on price.

What if they pay a lot less than your current clients though? Should you do work you don't want to just to stay loyal?

It's a lot cheaper than hiring a freelance photographer, too. LOL. I've gone that route and you don't always get what you want.

Nod I forgot about doing that, but you're right. And, if the graphic is well done, it looks great.

I am learning Dreamweaver, but it's kind of difficult. I use photoshop and Roxio photosuite regularly, but sometimes I play with Ulead.

Ah, a clever mix of flash and easy-to-navigate html is perfect for that sort of a project. I like flash a lot, but sometimes it can get a little too distracting. Flash for buttons and such is wonderful. It makes things look so much more modern.

Ah, if you ever get into the market for a new camera, I highly recommend the SP-350, but that's great that you've developed a system for your camera. Let me add that if it's coming in fuzzy, lighting it up often helps immensely.

Hello. When you're first freelancing, you often take on a handful of jobs you might not find exciting just to keep yourself working. Over time, you get a certain client list you like - clients who readily pay and you can trust them to keep the work coming in, but then you have a few older clients that might be unreliable for both work flow and pay. Do you guys keep those clients begrudgingly out of loyalty, or do you dump them? How do you dump them and maintain your integrity?

One of the best places to look for jobs is really active forums with classified sections. Look for forums where webmasters hang out. A lot of times people have small projects they need help on and you can get established with a client in a regular fashion.

Visualization is good. Sometimes you have to think beyond what the client wants though. Sometimes they will miss something that is really essential to pull off good usability.

Ah, to me the end of the project doesn't come until all of the seams are sewn up, money exchanges hands, and the client is happy. It's important to me to mark the end of a project with some sort of celebration, especially the long projects.

What Olympus model are you using? How high is your mp? My Olympus can get very close with crystal clear pictures, but I had to learn the camera, which was a big part of the challenge.

Do you feel that newsletters for frequent customers add to the usability of a site or make it more complex, then? I have been debating adding a newsletter to an ecommerce site I'm working on.

I think a lot of people have started going to froogle to comparison shop for items available on the various ecommerce sites, but truly a lot of people simply will not buy from a source outside the big names. I think it is a sense of security; the sites have a wider reputation and a heavier user base.

That sounds like it would really stand out. It's a way to get some attention to certain areas.

Do you think we should be watching teen fashion when designing a website geared toward teens then? I was thinking about that and discussing it earlier today with the guy who does the xgen sites. He mentioned that he watches fashion trends to design a site that meets the need of the teen demographic. Cool planning?

I should say that original content makes your site look original. But content also makes your site look more "original". . . case in point, consider the sites with zero content and ads. They are copies of themselves. If I see content on a site right off, I determine that someone likely worked on the site and it draws me to check it out a little. Of course, duplicate content and bad content looks very fake on a site, but any content makes me think it might be a more original site than - let's say a site that is exclusively same old, same old.

I totally agree about the intro thing. Sometimes the movies are quick and it is a nonissue, but I really hate to sit through over a minute loading up.

It should be said that dark backgrounds bring out light pictures much better and give an artsy feel. I think either way is fine but it depends on the subject matter of your site.

Aesthetically I prefer buttons, but yes Links are simpler. Perhaps you could link internally using keyphrases in your introductory page and use buttons on the side for easy navigation.

Ebay stores have kind of become a waste of resources. You can get one on Hibidder or Blujay or Ecrater for free. Hibidder is the only one that charges you if the item sells, and it is a very tiny amount. If you get a home page, you can point to all of your stores in one place and reach a broader range of customers.

Content makes your site look original and if you add it regularly, you don't look stagnant or stale.

I put Adsense on my personal blog just to see what would happen. I think my Adsense total is three bucks, which is not too much. Of course, my blog is not SEO'd, and it has a very small readership. It is an experimental thing for me, really.

They used to use them in SEO algorithims but some say that practice has been abandoned after a lot of abuse from irrelevant sites with popular keywords that had nothing to do with their content. However, Meta Tags are used by people who are searching for websites with relevance for them! You have to make sure the tags differ for each of your pages, and they will help people get an idea of what is on your site.