We have also completed a CMS (Joomla) driven website for Oak Inspirations (on behalf of Win Marketing, Loughborough), and just awaiting final profile/gallery images before making the site live.

Well this is my first post!

I’ve finally decided to take the plunge into blogging in an attempt to raise the profile of my website in the search engine rankings. This is one thing on my to do list that I’ve been slowly working down in an attempt to generate more leads and hopefully clients for my freelance website design work and hence allow me to follow my desired lifestyle change and be able to work from home more – hence get out of the “motorway daily life”; and have a more flexible lifestyle! In conjunction with this I’ve been also doing other things to generate leads and clients; joining various forums, finding out where business breakfast meetings are taking place locally, looking at what sort of advertising might work best, that sort of thing.

Normally I work as a contract project manager, which pays well but often means a fair bit of traveling up and down the motorways. However since Xmas that contract work has dried up a bit (wonder why) and I’ve been forced to look at other ways to earn money, and had the website design work on the back burner. It is something I have been involved in over the last 15 years or so, from designing and implementing to project managing developments as well. What I’ve discovered with being forced to stay at home is apart from I can basically do what I want when I want, is actually how much less money you need per month to live on. For example, I’ve calculated that I save on average £400 per month on motoring costs – 1 tank of petrol lasts me 1-2 months and the car doesn’t need servicing, tyres etc. etc. So it became apparent to me that I don’t really need to earn as much money as I thought I did to live!?!

Fortunately I have been working on and off with a local marketing company over the last couple of years that has allowed me to build up a portfolio of design work now and I’ve also done some local organisation sites for free for the same reason. In fact one of these generated a lead within a week of it being put live! So this one action, of doing selected work for free has already achieved it’s aim, whereas another didn’t; taking out an advert on a well known online directory – I had this for 2 years and it generated zero leads, money down the drain! I have spoke with some of my peers and colleagues and they all seem to have the same experience – so beware before you part with your cash! It might work for some businesses/industries but for website design or internet related work it looks about as useful as a chocolate fireguard!

So as a starter for the blog, thought I’d keep a record of how successful I am in generating enough leads/clients to get to the lifestyle I want. I’ll keep people updated on the various actions I’m trying to generate those leads and how successful these are!

Neil