Hello everyone,

I am going to talk to all you freelancers reading about a little special deal I have been running in the past couple of months. Starting from December 07′ I started a little - private - deal and wanted to see how it would go along. For some selected individuals who purchased from me since December, I would give them a ‘coupon’ if you like for 10% off the next purchase that they take from me.

Well i’d like to say that its been such a success. I was lucky enough to speak with a really nice guy who loved my work (thanks Darren) and he was the first guy who I let into knowing about the 10% off deal. After designing his first project, he was back 2 weeks or so later with another project in hand. Now into around about 2 months speaking occasionally with Darren he know has a third project lined up for me.

This blog post is aimed at freelancers who aren’t really getting any business at the moment. I’d like to give you a few tips on how to increase your chances of doing so.

Firstly start of by going through your prices and doing a little research into whats selling best at the moment.
Then re-think your prices that you are charging (but don’t underprice, you don’t want to be selling yourself short).
Last but not least, advertise your services and see if you get any luck with clients. TIP - Don’t just advertise on one place, advertise on as many places as possible, you’ll be guaranteed at least one client!

If your not into the whole advertising scheme, then try what I did and give your best clients some personal deals, although remember to impress on the first project, so that the client WILL come back. Also when I say ‘best’ clients I mean the clients who have always came to your services for work and have trusted you no matter the project. I have some really loyal clients that I am grateful for because if it wasn’t for them, i’d probably be broke. Thanks again guys!

This is just a quick one just letting you know that a small deal can bring in more clients at once. I have been currently under the wind with projects at the moment, but I love the challenge at getting them done on time and satisfying my clients. If you have any stories to tell which you have encountered recently, please let me know by commenting on this post - I’d love to hear em’!

Regards

Every month I will be having a day were I post the ‘Top 10′ of something. Last month we had the Top 10 E-Commerce Website Designs. Basically these designs or whatever I choose are basically from my own opinion on them.

Okay, so todays ‘Top 10′ is the Top 10 Hosting Designs on the internet today.

• Media Template Web Hosting Solutions

• 1&1 Web Hosting

• Web Fusion Hosting

• Pixel Internet Web Hosting

• United Hosting

• FastHosts

• HostedFX

• Heart Internet Web Hosting

• Network Solutions

• RackSpace Web Solutions

I’ve chosen Media Temple as my most favourite design because it has a really simple yet effective design. This design was also chosen first due to its very simplistic usability and functionality. The graphics used in the design aswell really give the design that bit of flair and excitement.

That’s it for now folks, enjoy!

Kindest regards,
James

Guest blogging is beginning to pick up in the blogosphere and is something which is really useful for your blog. If you are a blogger and your writing lets say a post a day. Why don’t you take a break yourself and let someone else have a pop at writing some decent content for your blog?

Guest blogging is also a great way to get your readers involved which is something that I am looking into doing in the foreseeable future. Another reason how guest blogging can be effective is, maybe you have a busy week ahead and your most likely not going to get some posts online - with guest blogging you can ask nicely if someone who has participated before or maybe one of your readers to write a few posts while your working away.

Whats in it for the guest blogger themeselves?

Exposure For Their Blog - If you have a blog yourself then it is most likely the owner of the blog of which you are guest blogging on will allow you to plug your blog/website near the bottom of the actual post. This is a good way of getting traffic to your blog.

Link Back To Your Blog - If your lucky and you get to guest blog on a particularly well known, high income traffic blog then this is good for having a link bank to your site and will most definitely increase your pagerank and SEO.

Getting Your Name Out Into The Blogosphere - If your relatively new to the blogosphere and haven’t written much and you want to build up your reputation online and impress with your writing skills then guest blogging for ‘free’ and if your lucky ‘get paid’ to blog on other peoples blogs then it is a good way to get your name out there and build a starting structure for your blogging hobbie/career.

EatFruitPlease - Introducing Guest Blogging

Over the course of the next few months I will be extremely busy working and will also have a lot of coursework to juggle about with university started back. So. I am on the look out for extremely talented writers. I am not looking for much. If you think you can do the majority of the following then please apply:

• Write For Free (I am not really looking to pay-out loads for writing at the moment)

• Write For Fun

• Write At Least 500-700 words on one of the following topics - ‘Web Design’, ‘Web Development’, ‘Marketing’, ‘Blogging Tips’ and ‘SEO’.

• Show examples of at least two of your writing work.

I am willing to let you have a link to your blog (preferably down the bottom) as long as it is appropriate (no porn) and the occasional blurb (1 or 2 sentences) about your blog.

How Will It Work?

Simple. Just basically open your word processing program (Microsoft Word, Notepad) start writing about each of the topics I have listed above. You can then send it over to me and I will verify it and stuff to see if its suitable to go online and then I will publish it as a post. Viola.

Remember to include your link to your blog.
Thats all for now. Thanks for reading EatFruitPlease, will have some more blog updates soon.

Regards.

Hello everyone, personally I don’t like to brag and go on about how much uniques or whatever I get. But I thought I would let you into some backend cpanel stuff. I purchased a $10.00 advertisement from YayClick from a friend of mine who owns the site on Tuesday night and I never had access to the internet the whole of yesterday. So today I came back in and checked emails and stuff and then checked my statistics (traffic etc) and noticed that on the 30/01/08 (yesterday) that EatFruitPlease overall had 668 unique visitors, 995 page views and 11,496 hits which really is a good thing personally for me.

This has set a record for EatFruitPlease and it has also set a new record for overall monthly traffic. Each month I always aim to get more and more traffic to my blog - like every blogger does.

Last Months Statistics:

This Months Statistics

So as you can see a slightly bigger difference since last month. Average hits per day this month has accumulated to around 250 unique visitors per day which I pleased about.So plans for next month, I’d like to hit around 4000-4250 unique visitors.For this month aswell, I’d like to thank the ‘free advertisements‘. They are as follows:

Sentences.org - Sentences is the online personal/business marketing blog of Bryan Le. His posts are simply inspiring and helpful. I would recommend you go over and have a look at some of his work.

HostedFX - HostedFX is a reliable and affordable web host and one of the best on the internet to this day. Owned by a good friend of mine Gareth Hodson, i’d recommend his host to anyone.

Anyway folks, thats another update for EatFruitPlease - thank you for reading should have another update soon.
Regards folks, thats another update for EatFruitPlease - thank you for reading should have another update soon.Regards

This is a review sponsored by Smorty - an advertising campaign for bloggers to make more money online and for advertisers to gain mass traffic.

TopUSAOnlineCasinos

Top USA Online Casinos is a website which offers a free guide to US gamblers who are on the lookout for safe and fun gambling destinations. Basically the website consists of a list of 10 top Online Gambling websites. Over the weeks these 10 change depending on a few things. Firstly the list is broken down into separate columns. For each of the gambling destinations to be ranked (1 being the best, 10 being the least best) it depends on pro poker & blackjack players, according to bonus prize, payout rate, customer support, number of games within the online casino, deposit options and finally the graphics and ease of use of the website.

Design & Structure

A first impression is always a key factor and I believe for this type of website, simplicity is the key. TopUSAOnlineCasinos has definitely got a simple design although possibly a bit too simple. I think the execution of the design is vital and I think more could be done to draw the visitors attention more to the small ‘Casino Banners’ or more towards the casino listings itself.

Another thing which would could enhance the website a great deal would be a custom logo. Having bland, plain text on a background such as what it has isn’t very visually striking or aesthetically pleasing, so this could also be taken into account.

Why is this website helpful?

This website is really handy for regular online gamblers. If they for instance wanted to try some were new? Or wanted to earn themselves more money, they would quickly toggle the top ten casinos which are listed and check out the statistics - in this case they would most definitely check out the bonus prize and the payout rate.

* Something that is quite obvious about the site is that it is only aimed at people in the USA and casinos which exist online that are USA based. I personally think if they did more research and expanded on their branch and market I think the site itself could improve further.

Do you need to be a member?

Nope, as it states in the header and main text, it is a free guide to helping potential gamblers find a right place to put there money were their mouth is.

If your a bit of an online gambler and from the United States and want to check out various different online casinos then please visit TopUSAOnlineCasinos.com

Recently, I have speaking with one of my best friends (Andrew) and hes always aiming high with goals etc and he wants to be a rich business man just like myself one day. He is currently studying Fashion Business in college and he is very interested in what I do with my time online. So we were speaking the other day and we are thinking of starting our online business sometime this year by selling off clothing.

Business Plan

Andy himself is a very creative guy. An example of his creativity and innovative thinking was that weekend just there. On the saturday night we both had an 18th birthday party to go to and he didn’t tell me what he was getting the birthday, turns out he designed and made from scratch a beautiful scarf.

At the party we were chatting about university and college and we ended up talking about the ‘imagine if we were rich’ topic with a few of our other mates. After about half an hour it was just myself and Andy that were still on the same topic and we ended up chatting about joining forces this year and setting up a little company. I thought it was a great idea. Myself and Andrew have always been very business-alike and we’ve always wanted to make money, so I believe this could be our best oppertunity. We spoke about setting up our own website - which led us to decided which role each of us would take up. We decided that I’d set up the whole website, coded and what have you and Andy would do all the manufacturing, obviously getting help from either myself or a few other friends. The more the merrier.

We’ve kept it secret for now until we have the right amount of funds to tackle this challenge. Both of us are really looking forward to working on it and we are really motivated to do so. One of the main reasons why we can’t start until a few months yet is because of our holiday. Andy is one of the guys going on holiday to Magaluf with me this year, so we are all saving at the moment rather than spending!
But once we are back, we will definitely be going through with this project.

Keeping it local.

During our conversation we were talking about target market and we’ve decided to start with aiming it towards the people who go to the following night clubs in Glasgow: The Tunnel Nightclub, Karbon, The Garage, Campus, Sin Club and Play Nightclub. Why nightclubs you might be thinking to yourself? Basically we are targeting nightclubs because we are taking music as our inspiration for this project. The website I am hoping for it to be flash based with a shopping cart of some sort integrated. We will also be getting flyers and banners made and giving them out around the city of Glasgow and also giving it too our family and friends.

What our project won’t offer.

Due to mostly my lack of knowledge in the field of e-commerce online, we won’t be offering shipping overseas at the beginning. We will be keeping the project local and when I say local I mean our neighbourhoods, friends and family. Why? Simply because we won’t have the finances to take on such large orders and Andrew probably won’t have enough time to devote to creating so much clothing!

I hate to be negative about that, but I think our project will grow naturally and develop over time. We came up with some ideas. I’ll let you in on one. We were thinking of creating simple collared t-shirts with a neat, attractive logo on either the left or right side - just like brands such as Armani, Lyle & Scott etc.

I know for a fact, if a few people get wearing them, people will ask were they got them from. This then leads to word of mouth traffic resulting in more money and a unique brand. Our colours in t-shirts will also be limited to save us money and easy manufacturing.

It all sounds like a project waiting to happen… and it will. Myself and Andrew have agreed that after our holiday, we will sit down and brainstorm some ideas. We came up with a rough estimate (around mid £xxx) which we are going to save up and completely put it all into getting the site online and get a few first orders on the go. Once we get a few sales, it’ll gradually pick up through word of mouth.

I guarantee you all a post nearer the time for developing the site.
Thats all for now.

Kindest regards,
James

I’ll have part two online when myself and adam have progressed with the forum skin. I’ll also update you all whenever I have any new ideas for FS aswell.

Kindest regards,
James

So it’s been almost a week now that i’ve had my macbook and its been amazing! Picked the usability of it up quite quickely and know my way around. Still finding it difficult to get used to the keyboard although its coming on.

 A few things I love about the Macbook is the speed and overall sexy look. I knew from the first minute of actually messing around with a Macbook that I wanted one, and now luckily enough I have one. A week on now and its been great, the look, the feel the browsing the applications everything is so different from Windows.

Obviously I will be using my PC to design on but even only a week in i’m finding myself on my Macbook more and finding it so much better to work on, so is this the time to switch to Apple completely?! Maybe so. I will be purchasing an wireless Apple Mighty Mouse soon so I can do my designing on my Macbook aswell.

Some things that annoy me on the Macbook are the fact that it only has one click rather than two (like a right click on any other laptop). An example of this is when I am designing and sometimes I want to right click and simply copy the image but can’t. Another thing is the ‘@’ key. Why has it got to be there!? (Rhetorical question - I know why) I always find myself typing in my email address and end up typing ‘info:eatfruitplease.com’… something i’ll get used to though.

So overall, already i’m loving my Macbook. I’m using iMovie and messing around with GarageBand, both two amazing applications. I also love the Chess game - haven’t won a game yet though - but its great! Anyways just a quick update letting you guys know how the Macbooks treating me. I’ll update next month to see how it’s going and to see if i’ve converted completely to Apple.

Kindest regards,
James

Hello everyone last night I was messing around with GarageBand on my macbook and was trying to come up with a nice little sound intro for my video blogs, so here is what I came up with (its nothing special I thought like the tuning and the whole electrical surge sound would go along with the theme of the site).

Let me know what you guys think.

In this blog post the websites chosen are from my pure opinion on them, either the design & functionality or the actual meaning of the website. I have decided to give you ten of my most favourite e-commerce website designs that exist on the internet today.

1. Freddy And Ma

2. Hefty Records

3. Colette.fr 

4. Bureau De Tabas

5. Agent Provocateur

6. FilaTiva

7. John Varvatoss Fragrance

8. Fun Factory

9. Logo Yes

10. Nuan

As you can see most websites that I have featured are flash animated, but personally these are my favourite. You’ll notice i’ve listed a couple of girl/woman type websites .i.e. Freddy&Ma and these tend to look the best. The Freddy&Ma website design is my most favourite because of the simplicity and simple functionality of the overall site. The nice flash fold also adds to the simple graphics giving it that more ‘wow’ factor as you enter the site.

That’s my most favourite e-commerce website designs, please leave your comments on what you think of them. Do you think theres another site there that should be number one on the list? I would love to know!

Regards,
James