I recently sent a newsletter to the subscribers who had downloaded my free How to Market Yourself Online ebook asking a simple question: “What would you like me to write about for you?”. The answers that came back were many and varied but one I address here.

We’re all hungry for knowledge and sometimes the best way to soak up information is to read a good book. One of my subscribers asked me to list a few books that I’d found helpful in running a graphic design business. Here they are.

Tao Te Ching by Lao-tzu

I have read a bit about eastern religions and mysticism. I find that the general tone of many of these books helped me change my outlook on the world. But it is very difficult to pinpoint any one sacred text that’s helped in particular. However, I found many passages in this classic Chinese book written around the 6th century BC by the sage Lao Tzu to be deeply perceptive.

Always without desire we must be found,
If its deep mystery we would sound;
But if desire always within us be,
Its outer fringe is all that we shall see.

(From J. Legge’s translation)

The Richest Man in Babylon by George Samuel Clason

This short book dispenses financial advice through a collection of parables set in ancient Babylon. In each story there is a simple lesson to apply in daily living. For example, save a tenth of what you’ve earned every year.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

The title of this book intrigued me as I was interested in the possibility of changing habitual actions. Stephen Covey talks, amongst other things, of the necessity of being proactive – when something bad happens don’t cry over spilt milk, just clear it up, think of how you can stop it spilling again and move on.

The 4-hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss

Don’t judge this book by it’s cover – don’t even judge it by it’s title. Timothy Ferriss only christened this book so after tests that showed it would sell the most copies so named. And testing is something we should all do more of, says Timothy. He also advocates the elimination of tasks – and even clients – that do not contribute a noticeable benefit and, most interestingly, the automation your business so it can run without you.

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber

This book was recommended by Timothy Ferriss above. Michael E- Gerber encourages you to work on your business rather than in your business, concentrating on your business model rather than the technicalities.

How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

The granddaddy of all people-skills books. I read this book recently and realized I’d already read a lot of books that had referenced it. It’s fantastic for reminding you of the basics of dealing with people – smile, remember names, become genuinely interested in other people.

Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application by 37signals

Moving onto the world of web, 37signals advocate the stripping down of meetings, people and budgets to start work on projects early in order to scale later. This is not a technical book. Anyone working in the internet will find value here.

Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML & CSS, 2nd Edition by Ian Lloyd

Here’s a technical book I found it incredibly useful when starting to build websites. It assumes hardly any previous knowledge of HTML or CSS.

So, quite a mixed bag. But these are the books that have helped and inspired me over the years.

So, what about you? Would anyone like to add to this list?

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

If you have any sort of professional website I would advise you to include a testimonial page to promote your business. I think it’s always good to see if someone has been recommended and interesting to see by whom. It’s something that could separate you from the competition. Have a look at my client testimonials and let me know what you think! Here are a few things I picked up whilst doing it.

Choose the clients or customers

Gather a list of clients you have repeat business with. A successful business needs repeat customers so their opinions are the most useful – and they’re more likely to write a shining testimonial! Remember that some companies have a non-endorsement corporate policy. Of course we have to respect that.

Send the email

Word your email very carefully. It’s more usual for your clients to ask you for favors not the other way round. Here is a copy of the email I sent:

I am compiling a client testimonials page on my website so I’m sending this email to a few of my clients.

Client testimonials are only worth doing if they are believable and done well. I would therefore like to ask you for the following information and your permission to publish it on my site. If there is anything or all of the following that you would not like me to put on my site I will, of course, completely understand.

What I would like from you:
Your name
Your company’s name (or companies’ names!)
Your job title
Your photo – Again, as with everything else, I will completely understand if you would not be happy with this. The reason I ask is that I think a photo will add to the believability element. I will make them really, really small.
Your company’s website (or websites)
Your testimonial about me – if you’re too busy or don’t want to write one I can get something from an email you’ve sent me and get back to you so you can approve the use of the quote

What you will get in return:
A warm fuzzy feeling of having done someone a good turn
A link to your website

I can’t stress enough that I don’t want you to be compelled to do anything. I would completely understand if you didn’t want to take part.

If you decide to reply I will seek your final approval either immediately before or immediately after I publish the testimonial page.

What to ask for

Notice I asked for some extra information besides just the testimonial. There were many reasons for this. I asked my clients for their company name, link and job description as these will be of primary importance to the client. Some clients may not want the link back to their website due to their endorsement policy. Some clients, on the other hand, may be glad of the link and may want to specify keywords to be put in the name of their company.

Another reason to ask for all this extra information is realism. The more details you add to the testimonial the more “real” it looks. We’ve all seen cheap looking testimonials on e-commerce sites where AJ from New York says “fab product”! I think the testimonial is more believable with the client’s full name, job description, company, link and photo.

What you write

Some people may advise to keep the testimonials short and snappy. I elected to publish them almost verbatim. The reason for this again was the realism it evoked. Some clients had written about me in the 2nd person, some in the 3rd person. I resisted the temptation to make them consistent. And, afterall, these guys had taken time to do me a favor. The least I could do was to quote them properly!

But I also added another section that wasn’t received from the client. The description of the work I’d done was written by me as it is a great excuse to promote my skills. Although I was honest about the work I had done for these clients, I made sure it included as much variety as possible to show the world what I can do: website design, website development, hosting and maintenance; interactive PDFs; print advertising design; HTML emails; brochures, newsletters, flyers… here I go again!

What I learned

There’s another reason for doing this apart from crude self-publicity. It’s always important to listen to your clients. And even more important to listen to what your biggest clients think. I learnt a lot from this experience. Have a look at my testimonial from one of my clients Benoît Quémar, Vice President of Alenea:

Many graphic or web designers, unfortunately, only have a talent for pure design in a “visual” way but fail to understand the purpose of their work or are not really interested in the business behind the project. As a result, they require a lot of management before being able to deliver something that’s usable – at best. Whereas Rob has shown a true interest in everything we’ve done and his suggestions have always proven that he understood the “why” of everything, coming up with effective and creative designs and ideas on his own, saving us a lot of valuable time.

This, apart from being a great testimonial, also taught me a great deal about what this client, and maybe others, value. So doing a testimonial page can bring you pure gold in terms of useful information!

What do you think?

Have you got a testimonial page on your website? Or do you have testimonials spread out through your website? Can you add any tips to mine? What do you think of my testimonials?

And finally

Again, a big “Thank You” to all my clients for taking part.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

In a previous post about Tim Ferriss‘s best-seller the 4 Hour WorkWeek, I ranted on about Tim’s fantastic opinions on the 80/20 rule, Parkinson’s law and elimination of unnecessary actions.

I have now finished the book and continued with my entrepreneur self help guide binge with The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber. The book has a tag line of: Why most small businesses don’t work and what to do about it.

So what have I learnt from these micro-celebrities from the small business self help genre? Is there anything here that can improve my design and marketing business in these trying times?

Both books concentrate quite heavily on removing yourself from your business. The logic behind this is that if you can get others to do your work you are free to do something else or take on more work and therefore expand the business. I have tried to get other people to do what I do with mixed results.

Automation and the 4-Hour Workweek

Tim Ferriss promotes the use of virtual assistants from the third world to do administrative or clerical tasks. And even marketing, website development, technical services or buying your wife an anniversary gift. To be honest the prospect of this strikes fear into my heart. And I don’t think my wife would be too happy either!

I have heard horror stories of the language barrier causing tasks to take 2, 3, 4, 5 times longer than they would normally with Indian web development companies. I’ve made connections with many of these companies but I’ve yet to take the plunge.

And is it really as easy for a designer or a marketer to instruct a virtual assistant on how to deal with their clients as a lot of the work is based on relationships and built on inspiration?

Practice makes perfect. So I shall try to outsource more and more this year.

The E-Myth and small business development

Michael E Gerber, on the other hand, paints a great picture of why this automation is so necessary. He describes the personality of a small business owner as being split three ways – into the Entrepreneur, the Technician and the Manager. This was so familiar to me it was kind of scary.

• The Entrepreneur is the visionary in us. The dreamer. He thinks up the idea that got us here in the first place and his imagination needs to be nurtured in order to come up with more fantastic opportunities to move us along.
• The Manager is, of course, the pragmatist who is there to plan, to order and to predict.
• And last but not least there’s the Technician. The Technician is how we all started out. The Doer. The “if-you-want-something-doing-properly-you-have-to-do-it-yourself” guy. He’s the one with his head down doing the work. At least that’s what he thinks.

All businesses need a mixture of these three personalities. But in reality we are more like Technicians trying to get on with it whilst being bugged by another “great new idea” from the Entrepreneur and compartmentalized by the Manager who’s trying to establish order.

With these three inside my head all the time it’s a wonder I get any sleep!

But this is the reason, according to Michael E. Gerber, most business fail – because the Technician’s in charge. So automation and outsourcing is vitally important to your business as it frees up the dreamer in you to work on your business rather than in it.

So where do we go from here?

Well, my business has changed beyond all recognition from a few years ago when I started out. Back then I promoted myself as a freelance print designer whereas demand from this site pushed me to offer complete design and web marketing packages.

If I cut down on the time spent on the individual jobs by outsourcing and automation I can view my business more as a product and start tweaking it to make it better and better.

Maybe these books are teaching me to spend less time reading tweets and blog posts about the minutiae of the design business (as rewarding as they are) and more time on the larger picture and the future.

I shall be returning to these points later.

So what about you?

Have you read either of these small business Bibles? Have they or any of the issues discussed here caused you to act differently in your business? Let me know in the comments section of this post. And don’t forget to tweet or link to this post if you enjoyed it.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

The book I am reading at the moment is The 4 Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. I had heard about it from Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress the popular blogging software that powers this site.

I’m only halfway through the book but already I’ve been introduced to some interesting principles and have acted upon them.

Pakinson’s Law

C. Northcote Parkinson was a writer who arrived with this perceptive dictum from his experience in the British Civil Service.

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

This is something that I used to observe while working for design consultancies and advertising agencies in London. People, when given a day to do something, will spend the day doing it even though the task could be completed adequately in a few minutes.

I have often wondered why billions of people trudge into an office every day arriving at 9am and leaving at 5.30pm. Is 7.5 hours the time they need to do their jobs? Not an hour more or less any particular day?

So, yes, people spend countless hours and days indulged in essentially useless activity. I knew that. So tell me something I don’t know, Tim!

The Pareto principle – also known as the 80-20 rule

This principle is something I’d heard of before but maybe hadn’t realised it’s significance, here it is:

For many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes

Here are a few examples:

• In 1992 United Nations Development Program Report showed that the richest 20% of the world’s population controlled 82.7% of the world’s income.
• Microsoft noted that by fixing the top 20% of the most reported bugs, 80% percent of the errors and crashes would be eliminated.
• In business, 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients.

Is this true for me, I wonder? Certainly, 20% of my clients account for over 50% of my income, but I’m not sure it’s as much as 80%. However, thinking about it, I would say that about 20% of my working day is spent generating 80% of my income as I spend a lot of time doing other things, some of them I would consider important (writing blog posts), some of them not so important (reading the news, Wikipedia, Twittering). This brings me on to another of Timothy Ferriss’s bugbears.

Interrupt interruptions

So, it follows that one should cut down as much of this 80% unproductive time as much as possible to free yourself up to do other things you may find more enjoyable. There are a number of ways to do this.

Ferriss suggests turning off the audible alert for when you receive email (or “brain farts” as he likes to call them, I love that!). I have done this and this has definitely worked for me. I’ve hardly ever received an email that was so urgent that I had to stop everything and concentrate on it. The author actually recommends cutting down emailing to two times daily: the first mid-morning (not first thing, after you’ve completed your important first task of the day); and the second at 4pm before your close of business. I haven’t quite done this but I have grouped my emailing together more.

The author suggests further methods to cut down interruption: don’t answer your mobile if you don’t recognise the number; don’t watch or listen to the news; don’t surf the web; don’t do meetings. I agree with him that meetings are usually a useless activity but then I hardly ever have them myself and as for the other things – I’m trying to cut down my non-productive web surfing but I still always answer my mobile as it could be a great new client!

Looking to the future

Now that you have stopped interruptions and are working more productively you can find time for what Tim Ferriss calls a “muse project” which could be reselling a product on the internet or creating one yourself and selling that.

I have created many e-commerce sites for clients and have been involved in the marketing of products for many years so this is something I have wanted to do for a long time. I haven’t thought of a product yet but I’ve got a few ideas!

What is your experience?

Have you ever read this book and what is your opinion of it? What do you think of interrupting interruptions and working more productively? Will this book make a lot of people rich and happy as a result of it’s advice and procedures? Or will the only person making money as a result of this book be the author?

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Cloud computing is a term usually used to describe the proliferation of resources and services accessed through the internet. These resources (for example, Google maps; Google docs; Google Analytics; WordPress.com; online Adobe applications; your website host) in fact, any online service that happens “out there” – you don’t care where, as long as it works – is said to happen “in the cloud”.

Cloud commuting is not a term that has the same widespread understanding. For me the term cloud commuting means working from home.

Cloud computing has made cloud commuting possible with the availability of ever cheaper, faster and larger servers. Just think, whether you are reading at home or at work, how much of your digital life exists outside the computer you are using?

• Do you have a Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail email address?
• Do you have your words and pictures stored in a social networking site?
• Do you use a website (your own or somebody else’s) for work?

My guess is that the answers to these questions are yes. And, if so, this means you are already outsourcing some of your digital life. This also means that you, if you aren’t already, can work at least some of the time at home.

Outsourcing has suffered from a slight misrepresentation as a practice of companies laying off workers in the west replacing them with cheaper services from the east.

Cloud commuting for me means people from all over the world breaking free from the corporate machine and setting up shop in their homes, providing high quality professional services for clients whilst, importantly, employing others to provide services for them. As Amanda O’Donovan says:

The Cloud Commuter is highly skilled, eco-friendly, doesn’t take up valuable office space and won’t be asking for health benefits… Why take the risk of committing to a permanent headcount when you can drink from the talent pool whenever you want to?

Personally, I feel liberated by becoming a cloud commuter. For one thing I don’t miss the mornings struggling onto crowded trains with thousands of other real world commuters. And then at work, I felt that my input was hampered by the structure of the company – you couldn’t do something until it was agreed by someone else. I liked to get things done. I wasn’t big on water cooler discussions, team building exercises and endless meetings.

The benefit of cloud commuting

The environment – it’s a no-brainer: less meaningless car, bus, train journeys. It’s a good thing.

Productivity – the cloud commuter immediately wins up to 2 hours a day by cutting out this pointless journey. And, the cloud commuter can concentrate better on work. Ever tried PHP coding in a busy office? Don’t.

The family – the cloud commuter spends more time with loved ones; less time with “the boss”. The family will usually benefit. OK, I know that there’s a potential pitfall here where the cloud commuter could be 24/7 locked away in the home office, continually stressed as not able to separate work from home life but this hasn’t been my experience.

The community – instead of living the false “double life” of the real world commuter who suffers the daily routine of traveling to the phony community, cloud commuters spends their time in the most important community – the one they live in. This will provide nicer neighborhoods for people to live in rather than neighborhoods for people to sleep in.

The disadvantage of cloud commuting

There’s one, but it’s a big one: security. Moving all your work to the clouds does compromise the information. The extent of this problem depends on the sensitivity of the files that you store in the cloud. Security should be set on a case by case basis but I would urge all cloud commuters to employ all the usual procedures: run regular back ups of everything and keep them away from where you work, have secure email if necessary; run the latest upgrades of all the software you are using, and install and regularly update virus scanning software.

Cloud commuting and graphic design

To me, the business of graphic design and marketing lends itself perfectly to cloud commuting. We are often in the business of selling an idea not a physical product so we don’t actually have to be anywhere when we work. We just need to be near a computer with an internet connection.

Graphic designers work best when they are free to express themselves and unfettered by the corporate restraints of time, money and hierarchy.

Employ a cloud commuter to deliver a message, sell a product or re-design a website and you’ll have a enthusiastic, hard-working and experienced professional working for you – for a price that would compare very well to an agency’s for the same work!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

What are email blacklists?

Email blacklists are databases used by organizations to decide if the IP connecting to a certain mail server is a spammer someone known to send invalid messages. If you don’t know the IP address that you send you mail from (not necessarily your own IP address) contact your host or internet service provider.

They aim to improve mail security and most of them are community managed. If you (your mail server’s IP) are listed in any of these databases and you try to send an e-mail to a server that uses that particular database to filter spam, you will find out that you cannot send e-mails to that host.

One such system is SORBS which blacklisted my IP once. Due to the fact that SORBS is run by volunteers and requests money to remove blocks, I am not sure that many organizations use it in their spam prevention plans. Sometimes the issue that will create a blacklisting is very small, yet removing it becomes something very big.

Are you on an email blacklist?

There are several sites where you can enter the IP address that your mail is sent from to check if you are on a blacklist.

Most of the time, you can remove your IP from any blacklist by visiting their site and submitting a removal form. Such information may include proof that you have ceased any actions that got your IP blacklisted in the first place, or may not require anything but your mere interaction, to demonstrate that you are not a robot or a script. Or you can get your host to do this. However this can take about a week! What do you do in the meantime?

Get your host to route your mail through a different IP address

This will stop the problem in the short term while you negotiate the de-listing with the blacklisting company.

Use Gmail to send and receive mail from the blacklisted address

Whether or not you are on an email blacklist it’s good to have backup. I can’t think of anything better than Google Mail. Here you can store up to 7340 MB of emails!

Forward all your mail to your Gmail account

This is how I do this using cPanel. To forward email from cPanel to Gmail:

1. Log in to your cPanel administration page
2. Click on the top left icon “Email Accounts”
3. Click on the Access Webmail globe next to the email address you want to access
4. Enter password
5. Then when you get to the screen where you choose RoundCube, Squirrel Mail or Horde, click the “Forwarding” or “Forwarding options” and get a copy of all the mail you receive sent to your Gmail address.

How to add a custom “From:” address in Gmail:

1. Then in Gmail, click Settings > Accounts then click “Add another email address you own” and enter your other email address.
2. Google will then send you an email with a confirmation code to this other email address which you should enter in the window that has popped up from Gmail.

The benefit of doing this Gmail set up is that you can reply to emails sent to any other email address (as long as you click the “Reply from the same address the message was sent to” option) and make it look like the replies are being sent from the other address rather than Gmail. Also when composing a new mail in Gmail you have the option of which email address you want the email to be sent from in the dropdown menu next to the From:

Forwarding all mail to Gmail and adding custom “From:” addresses is by no means a fool-proof or fale-safe plan for email. However it’s incredibly useful to have copies of the mail that’s sent to your inbox and the ability to reply to that mail from the Gmail interface on a browser is a great way of nullifying the painful effects of a blacklisting!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

So what is the hourly rate for a graphic designer?

Ahh, there’s the question. If you’re fresh out of college, I would say (and don’t blame me if you can’t pay off your loans) around about £9-12 ($14.50-$20) an hour.

If you’ve got a few (3 to 6) years agency experience under your belt and a nice looking portfolio I would say you should ask for £18-£25 ($30-$40) per hour.

If you’ve been hard at it for years and have a few regular clients under your belt it starts to get more complicated. You may decide to keep to an hourly rate that maybe starts at £30 ($50) an hour or more but it is more likely at this stage that you will be quoting a flat rate for jobs.

Dollar prices correct at time article was posted (see below).

Charging a flat rate for design jobs

This is where the fun really begins.

Usually, I get asked how much I would charge for a brochure, a website, a poster, a flyer, a business card, a presentation, an HTML email, an advertisement, etc. In which case an amount is quoted and will be received regardless of how long the job takes to do or how much cost is incurred.

This is harder to work out than an hourly rate and after doing it for a few years you get very good at asking questions around the brief to spot potential pitfalls before they occur. Here are a few of the questions I ask:

• Is the text to be supplied? Do they have it now? Is it finalized? Do they need any help with it? Sometimes clients will provide very poorly worded or inaccurate text and will be grateful for any improvement offered but, if so, this should be factored into the price.
• How much text is there? This is a very good pointer to how big a job actually is. For example HTML emails can be relatively quick to do if there is little text and imagery, but they can be incredibly complex beasties with loads of text, links, product images and sections. Nail down the scale of the project before quoting.
• Are there any images to be supplied? Do they have excellent quality photography already or should a price for purchasing more be worked out?
• Do they have a logo? If the answer is yes and you’re doing a print job make sure they have the logo in vector format (an Illustrator EPS or AI file). If no, then they will only have the logo as a small web image which will be no good for print reproduction and somebody will have to re-make it. This is a pitfall that is always happening! Also a job with no logo will 9 times out of 10 need one and that means the cost of a new logo should go into the final price.

Here are a few caveats or qualifications that is always good to mention when quoting for a job.

• How many options? I always specify a certain number of options will be supplied for a brochure cover, website homepage or anything that I’m designing. This is the most important stage of the project and getting it right is crucial but it’s important not to let this process drag on indefinitely. If you don’t get it right after a few goes then the project can go stale anyway. So always have a caveat of a finite number of initial options.
• How many revisions/amends? After the last design option has been finalized and you’re ready to create whatever it is you’re doing, it is only fair that the client will want to make little changes to the text and layout. However, it is always good to put a number on these.
• The extent of the job. Specify exactly at what point the job will be finished. So, for example, if it is a print job, it finishes when print ready artwork has been provided to the printer or when the printed product is delivered to the client’s premises; if it is a web job, it finishes when the site is tested and live or when a certain file has been sent to the client. It is always necessary to agree this first with the client.

General points about graphic design prices

Above all, don’t get greedy. The forces of supply and demand are hard to work against. Charge the correct and honest amount. If you’ve been working for a while you should know what the going rate is. After a while you’ll get happy clients returning to you and others contacting you having received glowing recommendations!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

I have been asked to help publish a magazine by a hospital radio station.

Anyone who has had any sort of stay in a hospital will tell you that hospital radio with it’s music, news and entertainment is a welcome diversion at a difficult time.

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital

One of the bigger hospitals in London with 665 beds and 2,200 staff is the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. When you walk in the main entrance from Fulham Road it appears more like a mall than a hospital.

Designed, in fact, by architects Sheppard Robson who are better known for their shopping centers, it also has a large number of art installations (including large suspended fish, above) and live music can often be heard in it’s atrium. It neither looks, smells nor feels like a hospital.

This is the hospital radio that I shall be doing the magazine for. Radio Chelsea and Westminster does not get any money from the government. It thrives entirely on volunteers and donations … and money we can get from the magazine.

The volunteers don’t only run the radio station, they can be found on the wards chatting to patients (especially those who don’t have visitors) and asking for requests to be played on the radio that evening. Former patient, Colin Bell, recalls:

I asked for “I can’t give you anything” by the Stylistics and listened to the show that evening with baited breath. They played it and got the dedication right. I could not stop crying, it meant so much to me.

Colin is now a volunteer.

Designing, selling advertising space and publishing a magazine

I am really looking forward to this project. Over the coming months I shall be writing, designing, and editing the magazine.

There are several factors why this magazine is attractive to advertisers and sponsors:

• For a variety of reasons it pays to spend more on advertising and marketing in a recession.
• This magazine’s 5,000 copies are distributed throughout the hospital and are left there for a considerable time – the readership maybe as high as 150,000 – whereas other magazines have a shelf-life of a month or less.
• The Chelsea and Westminster Hospital sits right in the middle of one of the most affluent areas of London.

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital facts:
Every year there are 60,000 people admitted for treatment, 5,000 babies are born and more than 80,000 attend the Accident & Emergency department.

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital serves the local population living in Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster (that includes people like the Royal Family, the Prime Minister and Roman Abramovich!) Joking aside, if your business ever takes you to the West End of London, you may one day (God forbid) be grateful for the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

If you, or anyone you know, wishes to contribute to the magazine in any way please contact me.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

I would do catastrophically badly.

I am particularly bad at public speaking. But, even if I weren’t what would it matter if I said: “I am an excellent graphic designer and I have great marketing ideas when it comes to promoting businesses.”

Why would anyone believe me? This is why I am a great believer in the website being your permanent shop window.

It is much better (for me at least) to get your potential clients knocking at your door rather that the other way around. That is why I always eulogize about the benefits of writing constantly about what you do in order to advertise your services to the world.

How to create this in Photoshop

Re-sizing and putting perspective into type is easy in Photoshop. Here’s how I put the text onto the lectern picture.

First of all, create the text you want with the Type tool (T). When you are doing this it is important to make it as large as possible. The reason for this is that it need to be rasterized in order to apply perspective.

The next step (you guessed it) is to rasterize the type layer. Go Layer > Rasterize > Type or right-click (PC) or Cntl-click (Mac) on the type layer and select Rasterize Type.

Now go Edit > Free Transform, or Cntl/Cmd-T and you will see a box around the text with eight anchor points on it. In order to apply perspective Cntl/Cmd-alt-shift-click on one of the four corner anchors and drag. But what you will find easier is just a Cntl/Cmd-click on one of the four corners of the Free Transform box to move that corner to wherever you want. Finally hit return to render the transform.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

So you’ve got your WordPress blog set up and you are just starting to write – what you do?

Words are, in my opinion, the most important thing on a website. This is because the search engine robots that crawl the web every day can pretty much “read” what you’ve written, but they can’t look at your website and think “mmm, nice graphics!”

For me, there’s two things to think about when writing. One is keywords; the other is making sure you’re writing stuff that people are going to want to read.

Keywords in your content

Keywords are what people type into a search engine (Google, for example) in order to find websites. Now there are good and bad ways to introduce keywords into your website text for SEO purposes, but I’ll come to that in my next post. For the time being, if you are a designer for example, you should write about – guess what? – design.

But it’s not as simple as that. It’s virtually impossible to be found on the internet with just one keyword so you should think of your second most important keyword; for me it’s probably “graphic”. Your third most important keyword; for me, “freelance”. The fourth; “London”. And so on. Don’t sweat about choosing these you can always change them.

Use these keywords in the title and body of your articles with the most important being the most frequent. But, there is only one way to do this – naturally.

Write about the subject as you would normally, don’t struggle to add the keywords as many times as possible or even once more than is necessary. For one thing, search engines will penalise you for keyword repetition; for another, it will make your site very unpleasant reading for your visitors.

How would you rather read about a subject you’re interested in – in an ad or an article? It’s so much better to read the considered thoughts of an expert in a field rather than the hurried ramblings of someone who just wants to make money.

Here’s how you make money:

Write content that people will want to read

Write intelligently and lucidly about what you know most about.

Remember, you are an expert, we all are. You’ve spent your life doing something – it doesn’t matter what it is – that something is useful to somebody. This to me is the crux of what internet marketing is all about.

When you write about your specialities you will naturally attract to your website those who are your best customers. Let me explain, I do graphic design and marketing, now graphic design and marketing are huge fields, it would be nuts for me to market myself in this area and leave it at that. So I specialise – every organisation does. Web information about a niche area will draw in like-minded people and perfect clients through Long Tail keywords.

So I’ve written tutorials for Photoshop and Illustrator, blog posts about delivering advertising messages with graphics, articles about web and print production. Other articles have been solely responsible for melanding certain jobs. The subjects of these have been: interactive and rich media PDFs; pop art; creating countries’ map outlines and flags; WordPress for website creation. Quite a mixed bag. But if someone wants to ask me to do something I’m always grateful for the work!

When you are writing about what you know best, keep checking your facts. Constantly ask yourself when you write something if you really are sure about it. Very often in our professional careers it’s easy to believe certain things by hearsay or rumour. Use the internet and any other resource to back up your assertions thoroughly before you publish your post.

So when writing about your specialities, do you spill the beans and reveal all your trade secrets or do you hold back on certain information hoping to retain the power of knowledge from your competitors? I would always favour the former rather than the latter.

I would encourage anyone to put as much detail into their descriptive articles as possible. I’m sure it won’t harm your business to reveal the correct and best practices that you use. Transparency in governments is considered to be ethical so I would encourage anyone to be open as possible in their own organisation.

Your potential clients won’t have the time or the inclination to use this information to do the job themselves and this priceless insight will win you kudos for your generosity. (And, of course, valuable information on the internet will be linked to raising the profile of your site and have it appear higher in search engines’ results, more to come on SEO in the next post.)

I have benefited immeasurably for the community of designers and marketers who have explained techniques and solved problems in websites, blogs and forums. It’s only fair that I give back to the community.

For me this is kind of business karma. Take Matt Mullenweg, for example, the founding developer of WordPress – the most popular and best blogging software that has empowered millions of ordinary people to publish in a beautiful way for free. Matt is listed in Business Week’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web, is in Inc.com’s 30 under 30 – America’s Coolest Young Entrepreneurs and his company Automattic Inc is 123rd in TechCrunch.com’s list of Startups Best Positioned To Weather A Downturn. My point is that Matt’s initial and ongoing commitment to open source software – giving out good stuff for free – has helped him in his brilliant career.

So I would advise virtually anyone to get a WordPress site and start writing on the cutting edge of what they know best. The advantages you will see in your community, your networking and your client list will far outweigh the effort.

And in the area of the style of writing, here are ten tips for writing a blog post.

Some say write for a month when starting and then publish for the first time. Some say write every week once you’ve got going. Some say make every post no longer than 350 words.

I say … write!

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Personally, I have noticed other recessions far sooner than this one. It seems like months and months of dreary economic forecasts had passed before I got an inkling that it was going on. Anyway, here’s some ways to defeat the dreaded downturn.

Diversify

Do something you’re not doing at the moment. Web designers should diversify into web development. Print people should explore the internet. Design firms should move into marketing.

One of the crazy things about the last few years is not how the internet has taken over but how all media has evolved. Take the humble PDF for example; it’s a way of supplying print ready artwork as well as a revolutionary form of digital communication. So printers, don’t worry if you think the internet is daunting you already have tremendous experience in creating one of the great formats of the future!

Advertise

As reported in a previous article about managing recession, two of the world’s biggest advertisers, Unilever and Procter & Gamble, announced recently that they would not cut their marketing budgets.

A recession is a time to increase your advertising budget not reduce it. Advertising space and marketing services may reduce in price as other companies cancel orders so you can steal market share at a good price.

Outsourcing and saving money

Why would you want to give work away? Because you’re too busy to do it. So you accept the work, give it to someone else to do and charge the client more than what you pay them.

Work from home. Email PDFs of invoices, quotes, work samples, etc. Don’t buy printers and use snail mail. Use Gimp instead of Photoshop. Xara Xtreme instead of Illustrator. There’s tons of free fonts, vectors, backgrounds and photos out there. Cut costs not quality.

Consolidate

Keep your existing clients as they are your best source of new business. Drop a line or make a call to a client if you haven’t heard from in a while. A Christmas card to everyone you’ve known in a professional capacity is one of the best exercises in consolidation there is.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Recession, credit crunch, slowdown – these are bywords of the moment and you would be forgiven for thinking that we’ve got to tighten out belts and prepare for hard times ahead.

The natural inclination for some businesses might be to scale back on marketing activities in an effort to save money. But, last week it was reported that two of the world’s biggest advertisers, Unilever and Procter & Gamble, would not cut their marketing budgets.

It’s been proved time after time that a recession (and let’s not forget we’re not actually technically in one yet!) is a time to increase your marketing budget.

Why? Because, in a downturn, the shortsighted companies will reduce their advertising spend allowing businesses that maintain or increase their spend to steal market share from them. Also, advertising space and marketing services may reduce in price so that the same advertising spend buys you more media.

One possible way to cut cost whilst increasing ‘share of voice’ would be to employ freelance graphic designers and marketeers rather than using an agency. Freelancers often outperform agencies in quality, price and timeliness. To put it bluntly, a freelancer could charge you £35/hour for what an agency would charge £150/hour. One client of mine recently commented that agencies seem to charge you for sneezing!

So, far from being a negative experience, the recent “bad” news on the economy may present us with an unparalleled opportunity!

What is your experience on the changes in marketing spend in your business?

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

It’s a fact of life in this country (and probably all over the world) that many companies try to save themselves a little money by paying small businesses late. This has happened to me recently and it’s not nice. Always at the back of your mind is the thought that the debtor could go out of business and you could lose alot of money.

But, fear not! Help is at hand. The Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 gives small businesses the statutory right to claim interest on late payments from other businesses. This means you can charge them 8% above the Bank of England base rate (currently 5.5%) on everyday after 30 days from the date of your invoice.

Here’s the bit where you feel like you’re back at school. To calculate how much you can charge the debtor you have to multiply the amount by the interest rate (so at the moment that would be 13.5%) multiplied by the number of days late divided by 365. Fear not! Help is at hand! Enter the figures here and let the computer do the maths!

Basically debts of £1000 over 2 or 3 months late or more would be worth invoicing. Obviously, it depends on the client, there are some I really want to keep and don’t want to annoy! I have just put in an invoice to a debtor for £60 (120$US) which is better than a slap round the face with a wet kipper (as my Mum would say). I’ll let you know how I get on.

Thank you ContractorUK for this post which led me here.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

Before I start of this post I would like to ask you to think of an answer to this question: What one thing could you do that you aren’t doing now that if you did on a regular basis would make a tremendous positive difference to your personal or professional life?

One book I enjoyed reading very much was Stephen Covey‘s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. One of the concepts in this book is about time management and the four quadrants of time.

Quadrant I: Urgent and important matters. Crises, pressing problems, deadline-driven projects. We all have these things; we’ve all got to do them.

Quadrant II: Non-urgent but important matters. Relationship building, planning, recognising new opportunities, improvements to your workplace, exercise, recreation. Things we know we should do but don’t because they’re not urgent.

Quadrant III: Urgent but not important things like phone calls, email, interruptions, popular matters, some meetings. This is visible stuff on-hand at the moment that isn’t really important. It’s easy to get caught up in this quadrant!

Quadrant IV: The worst of the lot – non-urgent and non-important matters. This includes trivia, spam, time wasters, distractions, non-productive activities.

OK. I bet your answer to the above question was a Quadrant II activity!

For Covey, time management, is all about minimising the Quadrant III and IV activities so that you can concentrate on Quadrant II (Quadrant I just has to be done!). It’s so easy to get caught up with your head down gardening that you don’t look up to realise you’re in the wrong garden!

Think about what it is you really want to achieve. A successful design business? How are you going to achieve that? How can you expand your business without neglecting what you’ve already worked hard to achieve?

I’m also a big believer in meditation to clear your head and realise your goals. I’ve talked about the method on my quitting smoking website. It’ll work for non-smokers as well.

This was written in response to a productivity meme. I was invited by webee‘s productivity post. Who was invited by Paul Enderson. Who was invited by Instigator Blog. Other excellent posts in this meme are Aaron’s 5 tips, Chris’s flow state and Tara’s productivity secrets

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.

I would advise anyone who wants to make money and find more work to get blogging.

I was encouraged to get a WordPress blog by a friend but I didn’t really realise what blogging was at first. I thought, what’s the point of writing “I woke up this morning, had breakfast …”? I really only started taking it seriously in November 2006 about two months before I started to get results.

There are plenty of ways to make money from your blog from advertising but that’s not what I’m discussing here. And, personally, I find blogs that are peppered with adverts really ugly.

Blogs are, for me, a great way to find work and make contacts through searches. But, because of the illogical and secretive way search engines in general and Google in particular work, you will never know how to be top of the list on certain searches. So the trick is go for every conceivable search you can think of.

You should write about what you know. Write about your work, your way of doing things, practices that other people might find useful. What sets you apart from others.

Take me as an example. If you search for “freelance graphic designer” on Google, I’m number 22. That’s the third page. Not so good. Even worse is “London graphic designer”, number 68 on Google. Pretty bad. However, one day someone – now a client of mine – wanted a PDF newsletter designed in InDesign so searched for “freelance InDesign London”. Guess what? I’m number 3!

How did that come about? Because I wrote a blog discussing PDF design, newsletters and InDesign amongst other things.

My point is I never would have guessed that someone would search specifically for that. It was only by writing about the nature of my work that I got work! And it is the blog that makes that process so easy.

This is an article from Rob Cubbon
Please download your free copy of How to Market Yourself Online a PDF eBook which contains all my best tips on internet marketing, social media and blogging.