Great Year for Freelancing

So far 2009 has been a wicked year project-wise for me, and I guess for freelancers everywhere. I figure because of the recession more and more people are leaning towards outsourcing for competitive pricing.

My site, http://www.mockup2markup.net, a PSD to CSS conversion service, has had lots of hits (not that high in conversion, though, ehehe), despite being still relatively low on the search rankings. Nevertheless, hits are hits, and that just goes to show that more and more people are looking towards freelance web developers and companies for their projects and web management needs.

On the freelance site where I'm based, I've noticed an increase of around 25% project postings since fourth quarter last year (from ~4K to ~5K+ postings), further confirming my earlier observation.

So if you are a full-time freelancer, or just doing it on the side, now might be a great time to polish up your online portfolio and resume, and start landing those projects.

Social Network Marketing

As a freelancer I always try to get my portfolio out to as many potential clients as possible, at the LOWEST cost possible. It used to be that investing in Google Adwords (yes, I've tried it) was THE way to get targetted traffic to your site, and consequently, to your services. Now, with the advent of social networking, reaching the potential clients is made easier than ever, provided you post the right stuff.

What I'm trying to learn by observing is how the people who've had success with Internet Marketing compose their posts on Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, and other social and professional networking sites. That way, I don't have to waste time repeating what doesn't work, and can concentrate on improving what does.

Happy tweeting!

http://www.mockup2markup.net

I just launched my new idea on the internet. It's a web service where I take people's web design mockups and convert them into valid CSS/XHTML pages for a fee. I call it Mockup 2 Markup.

Apparently, I was not the first to think of it. Right now I'm ranking pretty low in google's page results since it's a new site, but eventually once I get my site Search Engine Optimized, I'll slowly climb to the first page results.

I'm taking a huge leap with this site, since I'm guaranteeing that I'll deliver their finished code within 8 - 12 hours, but I can do it. I've actually done complete sites in that time span before.

That's why my slogan is Delivering your code faster than pizza!