At the beginning of the year I wrote a post about thinking of your web design service as a product. In that case I was talking mostly about how this approach makes pricing your service easier. That’s all true, but I think I stumbled upon another benefit: it’s a lot easier to sell.

When I get in front of someone to pitch my services as a web developer, I seem to suddenly become shy. It feels a little strange to stand there and talk about how great I am. Immodest, even. (Maybe you don’t struggle with that, and if that’s the case than my hat is off to you.) So I end up going through the sales call almost apologetically, as if to say “I’m sorry that I can’t stop talking about myself. I know I sound like a jerk.”

The entire dynamic of that conversation changes for me, though, once I start talking about a product that I’ve built. I get more animated. I get enthusiastic. I can talk about all the exciting features of this product because it is just that one small step removed from bragging about myself. And that’s something that a customer can respond to. They want to hear that what they are buying from me is the neatest thing in the world.

So what can you find that allows you to get really excited when talking about your work? For me it is changing my offering from a service to a product. Maybe you get really excited when you talk about examples of how you’ve helped people on previous projects. Maybe you’re jazzed when you talk about a slick way to use AJAX. Find something because the sales process becomes a lot easier once you identify that trigger that gets your energy up.

Should you be more like Dr. House? Yes, if you possibly can. Now I’m not trying to say that you should be spiteful, difficult, or adopt any of the other character flaws of this character. But if you did, would people still work with you? Are you so talented and capable of producing at such a high quality that people will work with you despite any reason they may have not to? Because there’s always some reason not to work with you.

Hopefully the reason isn’t that you’re a big jerk. But maybe you have a different set of technical skills then what they envisioned for the project. Maybe you won’t be available for three more weeks. Maybe you are perfectly capable but don’t have any experience with the type of work that client needs. Maybe you’re a part-time freelancer with a 9 to 5 job that can’t take calls or schedule meetings during regular business hours. Maybe you cost more than all of your competition.

Whatever the “downside” is to working with you, are you so brilliant that customers are willing to work with you anyway?

My point is that at least the next few weeks are going to be extrememly busy for me. I’d rather not just leave my Best Practices blog fallow for that long, though. So consider this an open casting call for guest bloggers. Maybe you’re asking yourself, “Why would I want to write a post for someone else’s blog?” Here’s one blogger’s take.

So let’s assume you are convinced of the value of writing a guest post and eager to achieve fame and fortune among the Best Practices readership. Here are a few tips:

Topics

The focus of this blog is on things I have learned in my experience as a freelance web developers. A lot of the information is on running a freelance business in general, but some of the information is specifically about developing web sites. Your post should cover one of those two areas. It may be helpful when planning your topic to consider these recent posts that receive a fair amount of traffic:

• Should You Use Job Boards to Grow Your Freelance Business
• Advanced Topics in Database Audit Trails: Part 1
• Offer Email Templates as an Ancillary Service

Feel free to ask me about a topic idea you have before you sit down to write.

Exclusivity

I will only be accepting posts that are originally written to appear on this blog and do not appear elsewhere on the web. Mostly this is because of the search engine penalties that occur with duplicate content.

Byline

You should also write a byline that will appear at the bottom of your post. It should only be one or two sentences, and it can include links as long as you don’t get carried away. I will be adding a few sentences of introduction at the top of your post, so your byline should focus on how readers can learn more about you and your products/services (as opposed to introducing you or establishing credibility).

Submitting Your Guest Post

To submit your post use my contact form and include the words GUEST POST in the subject. I realize the form will strip any special formatting in your post (bold, italic, etc.). If your post is a good fit for this blog, though, we’ll exchange an email or two back and forth to make sure the formatting is correct. You’ll also have a chance to preview your post before it goes live to the public.

Now the writing style is definitely targeted towards an audience that doesn’t have a lot of experience with the web, but the material covered includes lots of little gems you could share with your own clients.

I’ve applied this idea of diversifying revenue to my freelance business. Here are some of the different income streams I’ve worked on since I started The Web Shop:

• Designing or redesigning web sites for clients
• Creating email templates for use in newsletter campaigns
• Retainer fees from marketing companies
• Custom Wordpress themes
• Subscription based web applications
• Monthly hosting fees
• Affiliate programs
• Google Adsense
• Email configuration

Wow. I didn’t realize how long that list was going to be until I started writing it. The problem here is that it takes a lot of energy to keep all these plates spinning. I’ve written before about how I moved away from hosting, and several of the other items on this list have already been relegated to the back burner.

I like all of these ideas. They all can be profitable. So it’s hard to say that I want to pick any to get the axe. But the simple fact is if I try to focus on all of them, I won’t be successful with any of them.

You have a lot of information locked up in your skull. Think about it. How often do you come across a web site and think to yourself the person in charge of this could make it 500% better if they just made a few simple changes? That’s unique information that you have and they don’t. It’s valuable. You should give it to them for free.

“What?!” you may be thinking. “I’m trying to make money here. If it’s valuable, I want to charge something for it.” Oh, I see. You got into the freelance web development business because you are a four star salesperson that could sell investment tips to Donald Trump. You feel entirely at home convincing a total stranger to hand you half of his or her annual marketing budget. Interesting.

I, for one, am not particularly gifted at sales. I can’t sweep into the room in a flourish of handshakes and toothy grins, regaling my potential customer with epic tales of my design and programming feats. I sort of walk in, ask questions about their business, and answer questions they have about mine. Any sales coach worth their salt would classify me as a hopeless underachiever when it comes time to make a pitch.

So I need all the help I can get. In the unlikely even that I could convince someone to pay me for a few tips on improving their site, what would that be worth? A hundred bucks? Two hundred, maybe? (By the way if you can convince someone to pay higher than that for just sitting down and talking to them about their site for an hour, you are a fantastic salesman who has no business reading this post. Please contact me about a guest author piece.)

Let’s examine what happens if I just give that information away. I tell them a few things to improve their site. In some cases my words will fall on deaf ears, but in some cases they will listen. If they implement the changes, they will see positive results. That makes me look really smart. The next time they need to make changes to their web site, they are going to come to me.

Think about that for a second. I’m not cold calling. I’m not asking them for business with my hat in my hand. They are coming to me because they view me as a knowledgeable expert. Do you think my ego gets a kick out of that? It’s not always a quick strategy, but it does make your sales process easier and, dare I say, enjoyable.

Now I’m not saying you should start emailing total strangers with a laundry list of things that are wrong with their web site. You won’t make any friends, and you’ll probably make a few enemies. This is really only something you can do when you already have a dialogue with someone. But it’s a very good way to turn casual acquaintances into future customers who will also tell their friends about how smart and pleasant to work with you are.

Don’t hoard your wisdom. It will do a lot more for you when you give it to others freely. (Hint: this also applies outside the world of business.)

It seems I hear a lot of stories about workaholic entrepreneurs. They spend 80 hours a week working on their business, and the few hours left over each week goes to their friends and family. I’m the exact opposite. I think.

I spent 10 hours at the office yesterday, and it was a very strange feeling. Usually I spend closer to 6 hours at work, and then I do a few little items from home in the evening. When I found out this weekend how much I owe in taxes, though, I felt a lot of urgency to get into work and make things happen.

The funny thing is I’m not sure that I accomplished significantly more with the extra time. I must have wasted at least an hour over the course of the entire day thinking about how much longer I was spending at work. I wonder if 10-hour days are something that you have to do on a regular basis to get much out of them.

When I was first starting this company, I wasn’t really sure what I was doing. I had the technical chops to build web sites, but I didn’t know much about running a business. Sales? Budgeting? I was just proud that I had completed the paperwork so that the state of Indiana recognized me as a business.

Since I wasn’t sure how to proceed, I wanted to know what my competition was doing. I checked out the web sites of some of the other web development companies in Indianapolis. They all had huge portfolios. I figured they all must have been in business for 20 years with at least that many employees. I felt tiny. If I wanted to compete with these guys and gals, I was going to need to puff my chest out and convince potential customers that I was just as big.

Nowhere was my insecurity more obvious than the copy that I wrote on my web site:

• We have extensive experience with…
• Contact us for an estimate…
• Our team is dedicated…

I was just one guy with a computer working out of a spare bedroom of my house. I assumed no one would want to do business with that guy, though.

Fast-forward a year and a half. My business has grown to the point where it isn’t just me anymore. I actually have an employee now. I can honestly use “we”, “us”, and “our team” in my marketing copy these days. Interestingly enough, though, I now focus on how small I am when I talk to potential customers. I use the words “I” and “me” when describing what my business has to offer.

My customers aren’t dealing with a giant organization that has complex processes and bureaucratic hoops to jump through. (Isn’t that what I was trying to get away from when I struck out on my own?) I am agile. I am flexible. I am easy to work with. I am accessible. Do business with me.

I went to bed last night with a killer headache centered right behind my eyes. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised since I had spent almost every waking hour of the past 4 days staring into my monitor as though it displayed the secret of eternal happiness and life everlasting. (It doesn’t.) The reason I’ve been going overboard is that I’m very excited about the overhaul I’m giving my facetious movie review site. I’ll post more about that in a few weeks, but now I want to talk about the research I did this morning on ways to prevent eyestrain.

Sadly I didn’t turn up any new information that I didn’t already know about. I set my monitor refresh rate as high as my system will allow. The process prompted me to update my video card driver, which is good, but I’m still only humming along at a very modest 70 Hertz. I guess it doesn’t really matter since I have an LCD monitor that doesn’t flicker anyway, but it seems like I might have some psychological comfort if I could jack the refresh rate up into the triple-digits.

Since I use Windows XP, I also went through the steps of recalibrating my ClearType settings. I honestly don’t notice any difference.

Those are the only technical configuration steps I found. I suppose the only perfect solution is to take frequent breaks to give my eyes a chance to rest. Many times this weekend, though, I would just get in a groove where hours slipped by without me even noticing.

Anyone else have any suggestions of things I should be doing to avoid eyestrain?

As a web developer you have the necessary set of skills to create HTML email formats. I was never that crazy about them because creating a design that will be effective in all major email clients is even more taxing than creating one for the major web browsers. You really have to keep the styling pretty vanilla.

But some business owners (particularly those with a marketing budget) love having a branded look-and-feel for their email messages. Sometimes they just want all of their outgoing messages to have a unique look. The first time you build a custom stationary in Outlook it may take a while to learn what you’re doing, but you get the hang of it pretty quickly.

Maybe they have higher aspirations for a monthly email newsletter that needs to have a more complex layout. Steer them towards Constant Contact or Exact Target and create a personal template just for them. These third party email campaign managers even have a lot of cool features already built in that could help you close a sale.

I don’t like doing email templates as much as I like building web sites, but it’s still a heck of a lot more fun than flipping burgers. When there’s nothing on your plate this might be a good way to bring in a trickle of income and build relationships with business that could lead to larger projects down the road.