One of the most difficult tasks for a web designer is finding that initial group of clients to get your business off of the ground. Once you have a strong base of satisfied clients under your belt and you’ve built up a nice portfolio of sites, it is quite easy to keep a steady stream of income going on the referrals alone. Word-of-mouth will get you more leads than you can manage at times but how do we get that first batch of clients?

Too many web designers make the same mistake (I did too). You see a new business sprout up and you search Google to see if the business has a site already. They don’t! There’s a potential client that desperately needs your services, right? Not exactly.

Read on to see how I do it and be sure to leave a comment with your own insights!

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I started this blog as an attempt to help people and share some of the knowledge I’ve learned along the way. In the beginning, one of the greatest tools I had to get this information out there was to submit my stories to the popular site Digg.com.
I had four of my stories hit Digg’s […]

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It’s Black History Month in the United States and Canada but did you even notice? Should you notice? This month is designed for us to remember the history specific to Afro-American culture but how many people even pay it any attention? There are a lot of flaws with Black History Month and the concept is slightly offensive to me for a number of reasons. I think it is great that African-Americans reflect on their history and remember their great achievements along the way but do we really need to provide an entire month?

I saw a local spot on television this morning reminding me that it was Black History Month and was surprised that it was the first time I had heard mention of it. After all, we are twelve days into the month. Before sitting down to write this article, I called an African-American friend of mine that I grew up with to ask him if he knew. His response shocked me–”Oh yeah, it is February. I just didn’t realize. Normally they make a big deal out of it.”

This is a month for African-Americans and my friend provided an example of how it may be an irrelevant highlight on our calendars already.

Read on to hear my opinion on the topic of Black History Month. If you are African-American and have insight to share, please leave a comment so we can start a great conversation.

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One of the key traits entrepreneurs share is that their minds are never at rest. Entrepreneurs have a perpetual drive to imagine the next big product consumers will want and then race to deliver it to market. We see new restaurants popping up in our towns at a feverish pace or lawn care companies filling our mailboxes with postcards offering to maintain our yards at great prices. This begs the question–are chefs selling food and lawn care business owners selling affordable maintenance for our yard? Perhaps not.

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