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I’ve talked before about creating long-lasting relationships with your clients – but this week I want to focus on the importance of creating relationships with fellow designers, developers and other creatives. For the longest time, I didn’t reach out to the design community – I initially perceived them as competition rather than a source of […]

As designers, we’re usually the last ones on our priority list. We’re typically so busy that we neglect our own sites. I know it takes time and you have a million ideas, but at the end of the day, your site is your calling card. Until recently, my own site was a shoddy representation of […]

A few weeks ago a Minima Designs reader who has a math tutoring business asked me to talk more about referrals and the struggle to find clients. I actually used a math tutor in high school to get through geometry (I wasn't as genetically blessed as my physicist husband in that department) – how did […]

Several years into my business, I started getting quite a few RFPs (Requests for Proposals) from companies and organizations. I was impressed I was even getting asked (at the time, I was a one-person operation in a mid-sized town.) I labored for days over my first RFP. I must have spent 25 hours writing the […]

My #1 time saver – canned responses Do you find yourself answering the same questions over and over again? Perhaps you don’t want to answer pricing or sensitive questions on an FAQ page – the answer for you is canned responses! I use gmail, so I added a lab called "canned responses" for my most […]

Watch the video tutorial as I explain how to add and modify items to your navigation menu.

I’ve gotten a lot of requests for more info on how to run and manage retainers. While I used to do hourly updates, I’ve transitioned to a model I’ll discuss below. There’s never one way to do anything, so I also reached out to my network to see how other successful designers manage retainers. The […]

This week there’s been a lot of buzz around WordPress security and botnet site attacks. Truth is, these types of issues have been around a long time and simply changing the default admin account and your password isn’t enough to keep you secure. WordPress, while easy to install and use, is NOT set it and […]

With so many people claiming to be designers these days, how do you stand out? When I started as an interactive designer in the early 2000s, you had to know how to code AND design unless you worked at a large agency or corporation. Now, the ease of systems like WordPress and ready-made templates allows […]

This week I’m going to talk about building your business how YOU want it. There are many different models you can use to generate income for your business (and I’ve tried quite a few over the years!) You can even run a couple of these at the same time – a hybrid business that generates […]

This week I’m touching base with my friend Justin – the Redcord instructor whose site we created in the series: The RebalancedSF Project. Justin and I recently had a consulting session where we discussed how he could connect with new clients. Justin is fighting a bit of an uphill battle – unlike more common modalities […]

New designers often reach out to me to find out how I’ve been able to create my ideal business. They’re often hustling, searching for their clients and doing churn and burn projects. I know what they’re going through, because I used to do it too. That all changed a few years ago when I modified […]

Running an online business? You’re likely going to need to create a banner at some point to advertise a program, class, event or to promote a product offering. The images below were recently created for one of my clients to promote a teleclass. This tutorial highlights the different aspects I had to consider when designing […]

I often work with a lot of clients who need to show schedules, rates or options on their website. For ease of readability and maintenance, I like to place this data into a table. My favorite way to do this in WordPress is to use a great free plugin named TablePress. The flexibility of this […]

How your users can contact to you is of utmost importance. It amazes me every day the number of sites that make it just plain hard to contact the business! I’ve talked before about how location based businesses need to easily show their location in standard locations (upper right hand of site and footer) – […]