Category archives: Best of

How to get that first web development job

You’ve just graduated from university, or college and you want to get a job as a web developer / web designer, but it turns out it’s much harder than you realised. So how do you get that first job as a web developer? This post was first published 1st January 2009 but has been updated

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A freelancer’s guide to getting paid in 10 steps

As a freelancer, getting paid on time is absolutely crucial and yet, the attitude amongst some freelancers is that getting paid late (or not at all in some circumstances) is beyond their control. It isn’t. So how do you ensure you get paid on time, almost every time? Well, it’s not easy. I myself get

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Cash flow: the hidden killer for freelancers

I’ve been a full-time freelancer for over three years and in that time, I’ve changed from being quite shy about the topic of money and charging clients to being very upfront and realistic but, even now, one of the hardest concepts is cash flow management.

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A guide to recognising tyre kickers

This website does very well for the search term, ‘freelance web designer manchester’. This means I get more than my fair share of emails from people requesting quotes for projects whereby the people requesting the quote have never commissioned a website before and don’t know how much it should cost or what’s involved.

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What a UK junior web developer should expect to earn

Prior to gaining my first job as a junior web developer, I often wondered how much I could expect to earn. Whilst at university, during 2001-2005, I heard a lot about the average salary for a university graduate being around £18,000 a year (regardless of profession) – whether this was an accurate figure or not,

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Getting to number 1 in Google: An SEO case study

To try and increase sales and awareness at the JJB Sports website, I set about optimising the site for search engines and customers. The major success story was getting the site to the number 1 spot in Google (UK) for the keyword “nike trainers“. Here’s how I did it:

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