Nowadays, there are plenty of freelancers around the web offering all kinds of services you can imagine. As a freelancer yourself, the question rises, which category of freelancing do I fall into?

Oh, but wait…

What kind of freelancers are there? From working with numerous freelancers, I find there are two categories it all boils down to.

1. Specialized Freelancers – Individuals in this category are highly specialized in one field of web development. This is usually in graphic design, a coding language, domaining, search engine optimization, or internet marketing.

2. Know-it-All Freelancers – These folks know just about everything you need and can create a website from start-to-finish all by themselves (or so they say).

The question I recently came across, is am I a generalist or specialist? This, I believe is a very important focal point in every freelancers ‘career’ and it is important to know which path you wish to take.

Let’s examine the advantages and disadvantages of each category.

Freelance Generalists

Advantages

• These guys can usually solve all of your web development problems quickly. They hold a large databank of knowledge of the entire development process and visualize the entire process from a birds-eye view.
• The end product may turn out better since the individual knows what they want the results to be and take only the necessary steps to achieve that goal. In essence, these people are very results-driven.

Disadvantages

• Do not know everything like they think. While they do know a little about a lot, the majority does not know everything at the level a specialized freelancer would.
• Development process takes a long time. Doing an entire website development project, for example, may be fairly time-consuming and even stressful at times. Breaking up the work between several specialized developers would be a much better approach.
• The end product may not turn out as excellent as a client would expect. This is due to the fact that an individual who works with all aspects of the development process tends to lose that creativity flow and some things become overlooked along the way.

Freelance Specialists

Advantages

• Highly specialized in one (or several) key areas. The folks I’m talking about are graphic designers, hardcore coders, internet marketers, and SEO guru’s. These guys and gals know their thing inside-out and their work is not disappointing.
• Their creative juice does not stop! They work hard and fast and know what they’re doing. I particularly enjoy working with designers who have absolutely no end to their creativity.

Disadvantages

• Do not always see ‘the big picture’. A naturally talented designer loves to design. It’s their thing. But sometimes you can over-do your job and add too many unnecessary elements to your design, that it becomes a hassle to code and does not serve any particular purpose to the user.
• Are limited to only what they can do. If you’ve got talent, sooner or later you’ll come across a client who will want more than what you can do. Knowing design is great, but knowing how to slice up a design and turn it into some structured XHTML is even better.

Final Thoughts

• There is no right way of being a ‘freelancer’. The only right way to success is being unique and consistent.
• To be most efficient and productive in the development process is to have one or two freelance generalists who see the big pictures, and a group of specialists who can develop flawless work. This structure will lead to a very successful and results-driven development firm.
• Personally, I found it inevitable to  be specialized in design only. I could never find a good enough PHP coder and while I have not had any formal training in coding, little by little I began to understand systems, databases, marketing, and so forth. I cannot say I am specialized in any of those areas because I am not, but the knowledge I gained from learning the core aspects of the entire development process has enabled me to know how to work with specialists in those areas and direct them effectively and explain the job in a language they understand.

I would really appreciate some input on this. This is something I have seen through my personal career and would like to know if others have gone through the same phase in their life.

The following are 50 tips to help you succeed as an expert communicator:

1. Great posture, heads up look, smile, direct gaze

2. Don’t smile immediately. Pause, look into the other person, then smile.

3. With ladies: eyes on them. With guys: eyes slightly sticky.

4. Posture: door frame

5. Talk with people as with an old friend.

6. Don’t fidget.

7. Track listener’s reaction and plan what to say (tapping horse).

8. Visualize yourself before you act.

9. Match people’s moods for a moment

10. Meeting people? Wear a “whatz that?!”

11. Want to meet someone? Ask “who’s that” to someone you know.

12. Want to get into a conversation? Eavesdrop.

13. When asked “Where are you from?” provide facts or cool things about you.

14. Asked about job? Don’t give bare answers.

15. Revive a conversation by being a word detective.

16. Have the spotlight on the other person.

17. Parroting: repeat what the person said.

18. Talk about positive things in your life.

19. The latest news: don’t leave without it.

20. Don’t say: “What do you do?” Instead: “How do you spend most of your time?”

21. Don’t say: “I’m a web designer” Instead: “I help people create successful websites to promote their business.”

22. Nutshell Resume – different oral resume to different types of people.

23. Find synonyms for ordinary words: smart, nice, pretty, good

24. Instead of wonderful, say splendid, superb, extraordinary

25. When you have something in common with someone, the longer you don’t tell them that, the more moved they’ll be when you reveal it.

26. CommYOUnication: use “Can you”, “You’ll see”, “You look great”…focus on you, not me or I.

27. Don’t use the same smile to every person you come across; distinguish them.

28. Never make a joke at someone else’s expense.

29. When someone wants to persist on an unwelcome subject, simply repeat the same answer every time.

30. Don’t slobber over celebrities. If complimenting, complement very recent work.

31. Never say just “thank you”. Elaborate.

32. If you want to speak the language of a certain profession, ask a friend who speaks the lingo.

33. Before jumping into a conversation, find out that industry’s latest buzz.

34. Get deals made by talking like an insider.

35. Watch how people move. Copy them and you’ll be of the “same class”.

36. Echo nouns, verbs, adjectives to act like “an old friend”.

37. Evoke listener’s interests and weave images around it. With footballers, talk in “football lingo”.

38. Employ emphasizers : don’t say “uhuh”, instead use complete statements.

39. Anatomically correct empathizers: speak in the sense the person understands best. If they’re visual, use “visuary” words.

40. Use “we” instead of “you and me”

41. Have an “inside joke” – a special moment between you and the other person. Use it in conversations with that person.

42. Compliment people through the “grapevine” rather than directly.

43. Be a carrier pigeon (carry on good news).

44. Give a few comments in a conversation that praise the person subtly.

45. Echo the other persons words; how they say things.

46. Put in a few comments that pre-assure something positive about a person.

47. Sneak in a praise into your sentence.

48. Killer compliments: unique, quality. Say in private, be credible, say only 1-2 times a year.

49. Praise people the moment they do something good.

50. Boomerang comments you receive.

1. Be Consistent: Personally, this has been a biggie for me. Being inconsistent with my development strategy has been a downfall that lingered my potential for some time until I sat down and created a consistent plan for developing my empire. I consider consistency the number one factor in terms of failure and success and I GUARANTEE if you are not consistent, you WILL NOT succeed.
2. Success Does Not Happen Overnight: Too many spammers and shady con artists have created an impression that the internet is a ‘get rich
3. Determination: Always have a goal for your business. One important thing I learned is to define a mission and vision for your company. This does not have to be a long paragraph of what you wish to accomplish in life, but simply something that describes what you wish to achieve for both yourself, your company, and your clients. This, I believe, will be a great motivator and reduce your chances of dropping out of whatever business you are in.
4. Finish what you start! Another issue for me has been getting excited about an opportunity, starting it, and then after a while that excitement died down and I was left with no results, time and money gone to waste, and no ROI. Don’t let this happen to you!

These four short points are what I see in the web development business as the keys to being successful. Perhaps I haven not listed every single aspect of being a winner as a web developer; however, I do believe being consistent, determined, and punctual in addressing your goals and wants will give you an edge over the other 90% of developers who struggle yet fail (sadly).

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Enjoy!

• Ryan Fiat’s Sticky Footer: Good sticky footer, except one problem. Unless a DIV does not have a height defined, the sticky footer fails to recognize how big the content DIV is and therefore we end up with overlapping DIV’s.
• CSS Sticky Footer: This sticky footer I’ve ran across before, and now checking it out again, this is a good sticky footer to use. However, the only issue it has is the fact it uses several hacks in order to be compatible with the major browsers it supports.
• …and Several More: While there are other attempts at figuring out the sticky footer issue, there really is no point to list them since none of them are perfect in terms of cross-browser compatibility.

That being said, I find the CSS Sticky Footer is currently the best way to address the sticky footer issue. While for some, this code’s use of CSS hacks isn’t quite ‘delicate‘, it still does the trick and therefore I recommend anyone who comes across this issue to use the 2009 CSS Sticky Footer. It’ll save you both time and frustration in your coding process.

Now that I finally found the time and analyze things through, I feel the reason why I haven’t been posting is not because I am overloaded with work (although I am) and it is not because I don’t have a purpose or sense of direction (I do, somewhat). The real reason is probably because I lost that feeling of putting effort into sharing my ideas and experiences with others as well as being motivated by my own blog.

Blogs are supposed to motivate not just the readers, but the writers as well, and for some reason that’s kinda slipped a bit. I definitely don’t intend on shutting it down because I {heart} my blog, but somehow I want to do a reboot on here and get back to posting not once a month, but once a day.

Any suggestions?

Today is the official day Microsoft released their so-called “final” version of Internet Explorer 8. While I haven’t downloaded it yet, I have used the beta versions and I have to say, even though I have strong opinions about IE, there’s a few features I like about it. No, I don’t mean the InPrivate browsing , what I was referring to is the browsers better support of W3C Standards and parsing bugs that have been an annoyance to coders for too long.

I won’t list all the features of Internet Explorer 8, however, as we all know, Wikipedia is our #1 trusted source, so head over to the link below to read all the features of IE8.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_8

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001

1. Define your site’s goal and mission: Ask the question, what is this site supposed to give to the visitor? What benefit will the visitor receive? And most importantly, why should they go here rather than a competitor’s site?
2. Analyze your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT Analysis for all you schoolkids)
   
   • Strengths: Figure out what you have that your competitor’s don’t. This could be as simple as an easier-to-remember domain name, better design, etc.
   • Weaknesses: What do other sites have that you don’t? This will not only help you see where you can improve, but also, how to turn these weaknesses into strengths.
   • Opportunities: What kind of opportunities are coming at your site? There may not be very many, but anything from advertising, getting reviews, etc..
   • Threats: How can competitor’s sites threaten you? Sure they already have traffic and loyal visitors, but how can they seriously hurt your performance?
3. Identify Marketing Opportunities: How can you “get your foot in the door”? For this step look at what specific audience you can target that your competitor is not targeting very well. You can start by targeting a certain age group, a demographic, a culture, or even target certain countries only. The second part is to position yourself so your site clearly answers number one of this entire process when a visitor goes to your site. Because as everyone should know by now, first impressions as usually last impressions.
4. Implement your marketing strategy and use resources: In this step actually go out and get your word out there. The best way to do it is to follow the, what marketer’s call, 4P’s:
   • Product or Service: Position your websites service or products to make the customer’s you are targeting want it. The best way people will return to your site is if they see a need in your service. Therefore, create value in your site.
   • Price: If you’re selling products or offering memberships or paid services, consider your price carefully. It may be beneficial to lower your initial prices to compete against the competition. But then again, you don’t want to become the Wal-Mart of web design, so take that into play as well.
   • Place: This is key. In the real world, you want to create a service in a location where it is readily accessible. In the virtual world, you want to create a site that is also readily accessible. Therefore, downtime, long loading, server hardware are important. Imagine you follow the above steps and you make it to the front page of Digg and you’re on a shared server. There’s a good chance you’ve just pissed off a lot of visitors when your site went down.
   • Promotion: Decide where and how you want to advertise in conjunction with what you’re promoting in the other three P’s above. If its a blog, you can use reviews, banners, blog networks, etc.
5. Evaluate your Performance: If you thought the above four things would turn you into a successful entrepreneur, I’ve got great news. It may, but there’s a fairly high chance that’s not going to happen the first time. So it is vital to track your site and target market and see how you can improve your sites performance as the process rolls by. For many, this process is never ending as websites continuously struggle to increase market-share, develop a strong foundation in their area of expertise, and broaden their horizons.

So that’s basically the plan. If this method works in the real world, I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t work with the internet world as well.