Frisk Design in 2009 and beyond
I must be one of the last to write a Happy New Year post, though at only 7 days late, maybe that’s not so bad! So… happy New Year to you one and all. Here’s some thoughts about my 2008 and looking forwards to 2009 and beyond.
I hope 2008 was a good year for you and that the coming year will be even better. And if 2008 sucked, I empathise: I had a pretty tough one too. But the only way is up, right?
I have a lot of plans for 2009 and beyond. By the end of 2008 I had been in business 17 months and boy was it an eye opener! I made a lot of mistakes but they were good things to learn from and I also managed to stay in business – which is pretty damn good if I say so myself. As they say, if you can survive the first year going it alone, it’s a good sign for the future. (Well, these days people say it takes 3 years to get any stability, but I’m confident I can do that – no problem.)
So, what for the future? I’ve learned a lot about my strengths and weaknesses and where I want to take the business and this means changing my offering somewhat. At the moment, my web site is not really selling the benefits of all my skills; I’m far more than simply a WordPress themer, so I shall be completely changing my core offering and demoting the focus on skills and technologies in favour of business results and complete solutions.
To enable this, I’m also building relationships with other companies and freelancers. I’m very good at a lot of things, but no-one can ever hope to be an expert at everything, so I’m looking to partner up with top quality developers, SEO experts, graphic designers and XHTML/CSS gurus. I’ll still be doing core stuff myself (High level site architecture and wire-framing, graphic design, XHTML/CSS) but would love to develop more relationships with other people who I can call in to fill in my knowledge gaps or take on work when I get too busy.
Lastly, I need to push myself more in approaching more agencies: I need to get out there more and network and make my name known. I’ve had a lot of good work this year from word-of-mouth referrals which has been fabulous, but I definitely need a wider circle of potential clients which can often be had through other established agencies.
So, please get in touch if you fall into any of these categories and would like to work in collaboration with me:
- Freelance Web Designer
- Freelance Web Developer (able to code complete sites using your own CMS or popular open-source solutions)
- An agency looking for a reliable freelance designer/XHTML & CSS coder.
And of course, if you are reading this and you’re in a small to medium sized business requiring a new web presence or an old one updating, then please also get in touch to see how I can help your business succeed.