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You could look at http://www.kickstarter.com or other crowd funding ideas to build budget or you could look at http://microworkers.com/ where you can outsource parts of your projects and pay very little for each element.

If you want to build a website I would recommend going for a webhosting account where you can install website apps at the press of a button, a budget of something like £5.00 a month would be more than enough to start out with. Fasthosts, 1 and 1 and a few other UK companies will give you fairly cheap hosting. In terms of keywords and ranking I would look at the content on the pages and the URL for the page titles, be specific, relevant and interesting on all the pages. Google plus and local listings will also help list your site. Let me know if I can help further

Another aspect to this is check what the website is running on? Increasing the resources behind the website may well improve the speed. Also something I have noticed on chrome is that the design is not responsive and does not scale well.

I love the design, very minimalist is great. I think the black on white is great, but a little more colour to enhance areas would be great. Banner images with a big statement (I am a marketer) would go down really well e.g. http://www.vtesse.com/ I would love to make some suggestions on the SEO front and improving your page rank but that wasn't really your question. I would also maybe consider a speech bubble idea for the customer quotes and perhaps use some more images to break up the text. I would also like to see more pages in terms of pricing, FAQs, Downloads etc..... but that's the marketing side coming out!

Hi Alistair, Hopefully I can give a couple of pointers; In terms of content writing and what people especially online are looking for: Regular, interesting and opinionated pieces. Blog posts on multiple sites Demonstration of these posts and content being engaged with - i.e. it is sparking a response. Your own portfolio should then have snippets of content and links to it which would then allow prospective employers look at real-life examples of your content. I agree with Simon - you need a simple site, your content will speak for itself, and choosing a domain that is neutral Alistairscomments or viewsbyalistair or rossiniwriter etc... the catchier the better. Introduce social sharing of your content from your portfolio and so this can demonstrate your social media integration and engagement ability etc.... these are all skills that design and agencies are looking for. Good luck with your job!

Done!

Hi Adam, I hope I can be of help, having employed designers and developers over the past couple of years. What I look for in a CV as a potential employer is some design flair in the overall look. I agree with previous posts - your name although a statement is a little big and detracts when I am trying to scan. No need to put your DOB in anymore - it shouldn't matter what age you are. Nationality - this is only relevant if you have not got a covering letter which states you are able to work in the UK I find for jobs which require a person to commute via car putting you have transport and/or a UK drivers licence can be an added advantage. General pointers: Change related career history to Employment Details, I would add in the past three years of employment history and merge this all into one section, most employers know that you wont have much experience as a new graduate. Having been freelance in the past putting company director is pointless unless you have a team working with you. I would remove the '2 weeks' part of the first exact work placement - In fact I would remove work placement and reword it to Wordpress Project or something that makes it look like a project rather than a work placement - work placements always give me visions of someone making copious amounts of tea and you don't want it disregarded as a valid part of your CV. I would also put the companies you have experience with in context for the person reading the CV. For instance: FirstExact is an innovative and expanding marketing agency which develops complex digital strategies to boost their clients profit potential and online presence. Using my skills in WordPress I dealt with high-pressure on-demand tasks for clients, researching and building strategies and development of client websites. etc.... If you can put a couple of bullet points, 3-5 max about key skills on each job it will allow you to not have the personal skills area. Under Key Skills: I would break this up like in previous advice: Languages e.g HTML Applications e.g. Adobe creative suite (photoshop, illlustrator, InDesign and Dreamweaver) Platforms e.g. Windows Personal skills - this should speak for itself in the intro paragraph and in the employment section Top tip: If you are going to write I and me in the body of your experience don't talk in the third person in the first paragraph. Academic qualifications: Put all the qualifications for each institution together e.g. Norton Radstock College 2008 – 2011 ICT Professional Competence Level 3 Diploma C&G CLAIT Level 2 Generally make your text smaller Use indenting to make the text more digestible I personally would use line breaks to make the sections clear without having such big headings but this is a personal thing Also put a section for references with Name, Company, Email and Website so people can easily search for the types of companies you have worked for. If you are applying for a dev/design role in any way then I would also put a link to some example code. Hope this helps!

We have a mixture of freelancers and larger design companies spanning across our two businesses. We haven't seen a downturn but more individuals are taking out services; but whether the percentage of freelance design or freelance developers have increased - I am unsure of the stats on that.

I am one of the team at 4D Hosting and we just wanted to introduce ourselves, we want to give our technical, design and marketing expertise out to any people who need it. We would welcome questions about hosting or problems that you may be facing with your websites etc... 4D Hosting will not promote itself but we will use our own experience to help all of you to the best of our ability!