If you’re a business owner or a freelancer, you know that it can be stressful enough having an unstable and variable income. The last thing you want to worry about is clients that ghost you after your work is done. Your livelihood depends entirely on invoices paid on time by your clients. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen. Since starting my web design business, I have not encountered this problem once. Here are some tips to prevent late and non-payments

Logos are essential for the branding of your company, and can also have an effect on the overall design of your site. This can certainly be an intimidating process if you have never designed a logo before, but it doesn’t have to be.

As a designer, I often scoff at those tacky, cliché stock images of tiny fish-eye perspective people pointing at a giant clock to indicate being late, or an astonished business woman gaping at a huge upward-trending graph with no data on it. However, imagery is one of, if not the most powerful elements of any good design…

There are a lot of good reasons that you might want to decline a project. It’s also important to remember that it’s ok to say no to a project that you don’t want to do when you work for yourself.

I’d like to share some of my favourite tools and resources because all of these tools are free to use, and sharing them is my way of showing appreciation for the help and guidance they’ve provided.

A portfolio is your chance to tell a story about the successes of your clients and the benefits of hiring a professional like you to build a trustworthy brand. In this article, I’ll outline the steps necessary to help ensure that your website converts those casual looky-loos into people who identify with what you’re selling and potential clients who can’t wait to hire you.

The growth of my business has already exceeded my expectations, but I still have a long way to go. With that said, I feel that much of my growth can be attributed to content marketing.

There are more distractions, people get busier, and attention spans get shorter every day. Keeping people’s attention has become a HUGE challenge, and many of us have failed to recognize it.

In a very, very short amount of time, I've already encountered several situations during which extended family, friends, colleagues, and even acquaintances have asked for a favour in the form of free design work.

As a minimalist designer, I often do my layouts completely in grayscale and then consider colour options later. However, picking colours can be one of the most difficult, important and fun parts of coming up with a new design.

Everyone knows what blogging is. A blog, or "web log" is an online journal used to display information or share views on topics of interest. Content marketing is a little lesser known, but so much more important for businesses like mine who are doing everything they can to gain authority and notoriety within the online space.

Think about the biggest and most successful brands you know. Are you able pick up on the vibe they're giving? Do you understand the story they're telling?

Question: Would you leave sensitive documents with tons of your personal information out on a table when you have guests over to your house?

If so, kudos to you for having a trusting, carefree spirit—you probably won't care about this topic. If not, keep reading

Are you seeing lots of page visits in your analytics but no one is calling? Maybe someone referred a friend to your business and they never got back to you. In the world of business you have seven seconds to make a first impression. With your website, you have even less time than that.

Coming from someone who sells web design services, one could argue that my answer might be a little bit biased. I build websites for small businesses, start-ups, musicians, etc., so why would I tell you to go build your own website?