You find yourself at a website that looks interesting, but just not completely trustworthy.

But you’re worried about handing over your email address in order to get the download link. If you sign up for the freebie, by default you also end up subscribing to their mailing list. You already get enough spam, and who knows how much junk will flood your inbox if you enter your email address and click that shiny ‘Subscribe’ button?

The answer is to use a free throw-away email address from 10 Minute Mail. It’s your email inbox’s new best friend. The email address lasts only just long enough for you to get your download link. If you like the special report enough, you can would then feel safe enough to subscribe to the site’s eZine or RSS feed. If it’s a load of doggy poop, at least you haven’t sacrificed your inbox to the spam gods.

BUT…

What if you’re one of those website owners who use a downloadable freebie as an enticement to subscribe to your eZine? Isn’t the disposable email address your bitterest enemy? Are you hating me for recommending a service like 10 Minute Mail? Please don’t. I have some tips for you (and for myself, as I plan on doing exactly this).

1. Make sure your website projects a polished and professional image. Avoid the common web design mistakes. I’m thinking along the lines of multi-colored text, yellow highlighting, and lots of exclamation marks and gratuitous emphasis!!! But simple things like not using enough ‘white space’ in your layout – especially around the margins, choosing hard-to-read fonts, and cramping up the elements on your page also hurts. Look as professional and trustworthy online as you are in ‘real life’.
2. Under-promise and over-deliver. Avoid sounding too hyped-up and ‘too-good-to-be-true’ in your content. Be specific and truthful about what you have to offer.
3. Convince your visitors that your eZine is also a fantastic resource, not just a sacrifice they have to make to get your freebie. Your visitor should believe that signing up for the freebie plus the eZine is a double blessing (rather than dreading that the eZine is the ugly old chaperone that puts a real damper on your date with the drop-dead gorgeous super-model).
4. Include links to your website and to your eZine subscription form in your freebie. It should be a ‘standalone’ marketing tool in its own right. Not only could your visitors use a service like 10 Minute Mail to avoid getting your eZine, but subscribers who really enjoyed the freebie might pass it around to their friends (that would be a great thing – it’s called ‘viral marketing’), and bypass the subscription process. You want to make it easy for them to get on your subscriber list now that they feel safe enough to do so.

I know of a success coach who tried to stop people from passing around his free eBooks because he wanted everyone to subscribe to his eZine first. He made a point of saying that if you shared the free eBooks with your friends, you were engaging in copyright violation and piracy.

I reckon he shot himself in the foot. Who wants to email their friends a link to a subscription form instead of just sending the PDF file? I’d feel embarrassed.

Encourage people to spread your freebies around – just make sure your freebie brings people to your site and persuade them that your eZine will be genuinely useful and interesting to them.

What do you think?

Mo Serious brings us a seriously cool video about website design, coding and SEO principles, all set to rap music. Who would have thought? I’m in love with this guy – he’s a genius.

Click here to view the embedded video.

On a serious note, here are some things you can do to avoid problem clients in the first place, no matter what kind of freelance work you do:

1. Don’t under-charge. People who are stingy with their money ironically want much more than they paid for. If you charge a fair price, you will attract fair clients. Don’t rip yourself off.
2. Set your boundaries at the beginning of the relationship. Clearly define what is included in your quote, and charge extra for anything extra. Know in advance what you’re prepared to do when the client wants revisions or changes to your agreement, and make that clear right up-front.
3. Divide the project into small steps, and charge the client step-by-step. You don’t move onto the next stage until the client signs off and pays for the previous stage. You won’t need to offer a money-back guarantee, you won’t have huge debts to collect, and it’s the least risky arrangement for both you and the client.

Kevin Boss wrote an article about what he learned from his early stages of being a freelance web designer. Thanks to him for including the Ashes of Problem Clients jar in his post.

photo credit: Gaetan Lee

So what does that have to do with space men and gorillas? Take a look and see. Let me know what you think.

Visit Area 404

Want to know more about how to create a 404 error page in WordPress?

See Are You Losing Readers From Your 404 Page?

It’s time for me to work on my About Page. I’ve decided to tackle creating my Graphic Profile, and write a tutorial on how to do it at the same time.

The first step is to collect all the photos you need for your montage. The photos have to be of things that you’re passionate about. ChiQ has 14 items in her Graphic Profile. If I want to create a Jigsaw Puzzle effect, I need to have 6 or 20 photos to have one for each piece. I think a 6 piece puzzle isn’t enough for a Graphic Profile, so I’d have to go with 20.

So, my plan is to aim for 20 photos of things I feel passionate about. And to get them from free sites, where possible.

I’m going to show you where I’m going to get my photos from. There are two free photo sites that I often use:

http://morguefile.com/

http://www.sxc.hu/

The usage rights are good for my purposes – check them for yourself.

The first thing I’ll try to do is find an Aussie flag. I want to include the Australian flag as one image, because I’m an Aussie. I’m not sure I’ll find one on either of these sites, but it’s worth a quick search.

I’ve found a few on Stock.Xchng. I’m going to click on and save the first photo, because the usage rights for

it are easier than for the others that I like. (The Beach House requires you to notify the photographer if you use it for a public work, and the Australian Flag requires you to get permission before using the photo. The Aussie flag doesn’t require anything special.)

Now, I’m going to search for and save other photos relating to my interests. Here is what I’ve collected:

I have more than one photo for some of my interests. For some, I’m not sure which will look better as a part of the montage, so I saved a couple of photos for it. And for some others, I saved two because I want to combine the two images into one, like the scissors and the colorful paper next to it.

I’ve considered adding photos of my kids, but if I’ve decided that pictures of toys would be better. I’m not sure I want photos of my children on a business site. There are issues of security and relevance.

It takes a while to find so many photos, so give yourself a good chunk of time to do this in.

The next step will be creating montages with the images. I plan on doing a jigsaw style and a grid-based style like ChiQ’s, and then I’ll use the one I like better.

If you have any questions or ideas, please leave a comment.

But I just got inspired by ChiQ Montes’ Graphic Profile on her About page.

Basically, as you can see in the smaller version I’ve included here, she’s created a well-designed montage of her favorite things, with a number in each picture that corresponds to a key under the graphic. For instance, the photo of Uno cards has a big white number 1 in the corner, and number 1 in the list underneath says: “1. I love playing UNO Cards!”

I’m definitely going to borrow this idea for my own About page, and hopefully I’ll remember to create a tutorial on how to create your own Graphic Profile. Maybe I’ll even add ‘Graphic Profile Creation’ as a service for those of you who would rather have me create one for you with the images you provide.

Other ideas I have:

1. Put the individual images the montage into jigsaw puzzle pieces.
2. Create a Comic Strip Profile of favorite things using Comic Life software.

What do you think about Graphic Profiles? Please leave a comment…