Can I Make Money Working In Graphic Design

There is a lot of requirement for graphic designers these days and it can be said that this field is in reality thriving. Online promotion gives enough income for graphic designers and there are many business houses that are slowly becoming conscious of the prospect for income in this field.

They know that a well designed and working website will be a good source of regular income. In fact it is one of the primary reasons for an increase in profits, and these companies are looking for web design professionals that will help them create such profitable websites.

If you are a person who understands some thing regarding graphic design, then you will most likely be observing a swell in business. Of late the financial system is weakening in numerous areas, and so it makes sense to do a lot of businesses online. When you compare this to a brick and mortar store, you will see that selling stuff online is less costly. That is one of the main reasons why this field is seeing a growth in profits.

If you are just starting out in the field then it will definitely seem difficult. However, you will quickly realize that graphic design is a field that is not difficult to study. There are a variety of schools now offering either a course of study to earn a certificate in design, or a degree in design. There are also a variety of ways that graphic design techniques can be taught.

After you have developed and honed your skills and creativity and have gained a certain amount of experience in this area, you can market your services to various enterprises that need websites. You can choose your own path. You could take a position in a design firm or you could do freelance work for individuals and corporations throughout the globe.

However, the best idea at first is to drum up projects in your neighborhood to enlarge your customer base. All sorts of individuals require website design services. There is a wide variety of web design software to assist you and you’ll find that you too can perform flash web design and eventually turn into a first-rate designer.

Internet marketing provides a more than sufficient salary for design professionals. If you know a little about graphic design, then you will be more than likely to see an increase in business. You can work for a company or you can perform services for different people throughout the world who requires you. On the other hand, it is a good arrangement to start creating work in your own locality and increase your clients initially. You may also find different web design software packages to help you in your business. Even you can do flash web design once you go on to become a first-class designer.

- menlo lippowski

Non-www Redirects & More

This is a quick tutorial showing you how to redirect non-www urls, i.e. http://alexybecker.com/ to http://www.alexybecker.com/.

First of all, let me emphasize why it’s important to have uniform url linking structure. The easiest way to explain this is to break it down to you in the simplest of terms. Search engines like google, yahoo, and msn think that http://alexybecker.com/ and http://www.alexybecker.com/ are two completely different pages, therefore, not having non-www redirects implemented will give you an inherent duplicate content penalty; that is arguably the biggest search engine traffic killer.

Before I begin this tutorial I should warn people that I’m currently using an Apache based server and thus will be using an .htaccess file that will tell the server to redirect visitors and search engines alike that both non www urls and www urls are the same page. Some servers require different steps to properly setup a non-www redirect. For more information on non-Apache www redirects please click here.

Your first step is to see if you have an .htaccess file already on your web server. If you do, download it to your desktop and open it with your favorite editor. If you do not have an .htaccess file, open up your favorite editor and create a new file and save it as .htaccess – with the period! Now, copy the code pasted below exactly as written below, replacing all instances of thecreditco with your websites url. OK, so now that you know why we are either adding code to our original .htaccess file or creating a new one, let’s get down to the actual code.

Here is the actual .htaccess code if you are interested in downloading my actual .htaccess file, please click here.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^thecreditco.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.thecreditco.com/$1 [R=301,L]
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.thecreditco.com/


You will notice that I have also included a line of code for a 404 redirect to my main website (the 4th line of code). For those of you who are unfamiliar with 404 redirects, they tell the server to redirect users to the designated 404 redirect url or the custom 404 redirect page. For example, http://www.thecreditco.com/abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.html does NOT exist, but if you click that url, it will redirect you to my home page instead of a broken page. It’s a good idea to have it in your .htaccess file!

I told you it was a simple tutorial and I think it is. I’m assuming that if you are interested in learning www redirects and 404 redirects you are familiar with basic web publishing and server management. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!

Relief Search – The Future of Search Engines

No, it’s not a google killer, it’s a Search Engine that posts results from Wikipedia, Google, Blogger, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Delicious, etc. It’s essentially a meta-search mash-up that provides results across multiple social media websites along with standard google results (which we can’t live without of course!). The best part is, part of the proceeds from revenue made from clicks go to charitable organizations and other reputable groups or associations.

Ben Padnos, the founder of ReliefSearch has hopes that organizations will seek out their own customized Relief Search sites that are branded to the organization in question. People will be raising money for their causes by just searching via the branded site, earning revenues by clicking ads. The economy is tough and people can barely afford to rent let alone donate to a charitable organization. Well, this would allow you to contribute for free just by clicking your finger. Check out benpadnos.com for more info.