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Yesterday we introduced Google Instant, a change to make search fast and interactive by showing you results instantly as you type. With Instant we’ve turned search from a static HTML page into an AJAX application, just as we did with Google Maps and Gmail. You can learn more about Google Instant in yesterday’s blog post, but we also wanted to share a peek behind the scenes into some of the engineering challenges we faced in design and infrastructure.

The design challenge: relevant, not distracting
Our key design challenge was to make sure people would notice relevant results without being distracted. We knew it would take extensive testing to find the right design, so we ran through a sequence of prototypes, usability studies (testing with people from the community), dogfooding (testing with Google employees) and search experiments (testing with a small percentage of Google users). Some of our early prototypes weren’t perfect. For example, we tried a prototype where we waited for someone to stop typing before showing results, which did not work. We realized the experience needed to be fast to work well. We also considered other interfaces which essentially clustered results for a variety of queries based on probability. Here are a couple examples:

Grouped results prototype

Blended results prototype
In the end, our grouped and blended interfaces seemed too difficult to scan while typing, so we pursued a model based on a single search. We hit upon two features that worked well together: first, a query prediction in the search box in gray text and second, results for the top prediction that update continuously while the user types. In user studies, people quickly found a new way to interact with Google: type until the gray text matches your intention and then move your eyes to the results. We were actually surprised at how well this worked—most people in our studies didn’t even notice that anything had changed. Google was just faster.

The infrastructure challenge: 5-7X more results pages for typical searches
We’ve been optimizing performance and speed for more than 10 years, and we’ve found that every second counts. When we came to the infrastructure team and said, “we’re going to be serving five to seven times as many results pages for each query performed in Google Instant,” first they threw a fit, then they figured out how to get us there! Even before Instant, Google was serving more than a billion searches per day, and our systems were optimized to ensure those searches happen as quickly as possible (usually less than a quarter second). How could we serve so many more searches without breaking or slowing down our systems?

One solution would have been to simply invest in a tremendous increase in server capacity, but we wanted to find smarter ways to solve the problem. We did increase our back-end capacity, but we also pursued a variety of strategies to efficiently address the incredible demand from Google Instant. Some of these are quite technical, but here are some examples:

• We deployed new caches that can handle high request rates while keeping results fresh as we continuously crawl and re-index the web.
• We introduced user-state data into our back-ends to keep track of the results pages already shown to a given user—this way we don’t re-fetch the same results repeatedly.
• We optimized page-rendering JavaScript code to help ensure web browsers could keep up with the rest of the system.

In total, these efforts enabled us to release Google Instant while maintaining the speed people have come to expect from Google.

The engineering team at work
As Google Instant neared completion, we packed the core teams into two large rooms on our main campus. We began having daily stand stand-up meetings (more than 50 people). With all that hard work behind us, we’re thrilled to see Google Instant out in the wild! But, in some ways, this is just the beginning of a new kind of “conversational” search interaction. We will continue to experiment, as we always have—and with the help of your feedback, we hope to make Instant even better over time! While it’s a big change, I personally believe that we’ll look back and wonder how search was ever any other way.

Members of the Google Instant team watching the launch announcement
Posted by Ben Gomes, Distinguished Engineer

Last year, the travel industry—like many others—was having a difficult time. To grow its business, Hawaiian Airlines created and ran an engaging and interactive display ad campaign on the Google Display Network (comprising over a million partner websites, as well as Google sites like YouTube), encouraging people to fly to Hawaii. The campaign worked. Hawaiian Airlines increased online ticket orders and revenues by three percent in a very difficult year, and now spends 15 percent of its advertising budget on the Google Display Network.

We’re now proud to see thousands of great display advertising stories like this every month—from large and small advertisers. If you’ve read this blog or the press over the past few months, you’ll know that display advertising is no longer just the “next big business” for Google—it’s already central to what we and our clients do.

Advertising with Google used to be all about four lines of text, on Google.com and on our partner sites. No longer. Did you know that, outside of ads alongside search results, more than 40 percent of the ads that we show are now non-text ads? And that doesn’t include the 45 billion ads that our DoubleClick advertising products serve every day across the web.

We get excited by display advertising for a number of reasons. First, we now know that we can use all the technology and expertise that we’ve developed in search and search advertising to improve display advertising for users, advertisers and publishers, right across the web. Second, helping advertisers and publishers to easily deliver the most engaging, relevant, creative and valuable ad contains the sort of huge technical challenge that we love. And third, great display advertising helps to fund great content on the web.

Display advertising has come a long way from the ugly banner ads and pop-ups of the mid 1990s, but there’s still huge improvements to come. As we’ve indicated in previous posts, our efforts are focused on three core areas.

Simplifying display advertising

Many advertisers still don’t bother with display advertising because buying ads across millions of sites in various formats causes too many headaches. We’ve been working to simplify the process for advertisers and agencies so they can buy with ease. For example, our DoubleClick platform manages the complexity of planning, scheduling, measuring and optimizing ad campaigns across the web. And Teracent’s technology can automatically tailor and select the creative elements in an ad, and adjust them based on location, language, weather and even the past performance of ads, to show the optimal ad.

Delivering better performance

We’re focused on helping advertisers get the best results from their campaigns—by enabling creative branding campaigns, precise targeting, wide reach and effective measurement. Over recent years, we’ve added a ton of new features to YouTube and the Google Display Network, to help advertisers get—and measure—the results they’re after. From remarketing to Campaign Insights to video targeting on YouTube, we’re building tools that are helping advertisers get great results and enabling them to run some of the most amazing ad campaigns the world has ever seen.

Opening the display ecosystem

Like search advertising, display advertising should be accessible and effective for every advertiser and publisher, from the smallest corner store to the biggest global brand. Display advertising will grow if it is more open and inclusive. Products like the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, which enable publishers and agencies to buy and sell ad space in an open, competitive, real-time environment, are making it happen. Every day, there are more ad calls on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange than there are trades on all the world’s stock exchanges combined.

WATCH THIS SPACE

Our single message about display advertising can be summed up in three words: “WATCH THIS SPACE.”

Starting today, we’re going to be talking about our vision for display advertising with a campaign called “WATCH THIS SPACE.” As part of this, you might see ads across the web, in print and maybe even elsewhere. Drop on by the site, read about what’s happening today in display advertising at Google and—even more importantly—what’s yet to come!



Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management

(Cross-posted from the Lat Long Blog)
When you think of Google Earth, you might think about flying to the top of Mt. Everest, surveying the ancient Acropolis, or simply finding the house where you grew up. For the past five years, people all over the world have been discovering new places to explore through our community, blogs, news articles and Gallery. Now you can go to one place—our brand new Google Earth website—to find everything you’re looking for.

The new site is loaded with lots of great content including images, videos, tours, maps and tutorials on how to get started with Google Earth. We invite you to explore the new site, starting with these five areas:

• Showcase: Browse our collection of featured content about the Ocean, Moon, 3D buildings and more to see all the ways you can explore the world around you.
• Video tutorials: Whether you’re new to Google Earth or an expert user, watch our new video tutorials to learn how to create placemarks, record a tour, add a 3D building, import GPS data and more.
• More products: See all the different ways ways you can experience Google Earth. Did you know you can access the 3D globe from your phone or on Google Maps?
• Community: Get connected with other Google Earth fans in our forums and stay up-to-date through our newsletter, blog and Twitter feeds.
• Industries: Everyone uses Google Earth for a different reason, so we created unique pages for educators, media, developers, businesses, non-profits and data providers.

Now it’s your turn to explore the website on your own. Right now, it’s only available in English but don’t worry, we’ll be adding more languages soon. Check out what’s new with Google Earth at earth.google.com.


Posted by Tasha Danko, Product Marketing Manager

(Cross-posted to the Google Public Policy Blog)
Helping your children use the Internet safely is similar to teaching them to navigate the offline world. There are parts of the real world that you wouldn’t let your children explore unsupervised—and that goes for the online world as well. But while most of us remember being taught to cross the road and not talk to strangers, we probably weren’t taught how much personal information we should share online or how to handle cyberbullies.

Therefore, it’s no surprise when parents and teachers tell us they want to learn more about how to help their kids use the Internet safely and responsibly.

Today, we’re launching our new Family Safety Center; a one-stop shop about staying safe online. We’ve included advice from leading child safety organizations around the world, tips and ideas from parents here at Google, as well as information on how to use the safety tools and controls built into Google products.

For day-to-day practical tips we asked some of our parents at Google to share their own ideas. Tactics they use range from limiting screen time and preventing computers in kids’ bedrooms to ad hoc checks on their browser history and social networking profiles. Everyone has different ideas and there’s no right or wrong answer, but hopefully some of these will resonate and inspire you. See more videos and let us know your own thoughts on our YouTube channel.



To answer some of the toughest questions most important to parents, such as accessing inappropriate content and meeting strangers online, we went straight to the people that know best; the organizations that advocate and promote child safety and digital literacy. Organizations that we’ve partnered with around the world include the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s OnGuard Online initiative, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, U.K.’s ChildNet, and New Zealand’s NetSafe.

The new Safety Center also provides information on the safety tools built into Google products. SafeSearch and YouTube Safety Mode can help you control what content your children stumble across. Sharing controls in YouTube, Picasa, Blogger and others ensure your videos, photos and blogs are shared only with the right people. And in response to popular requests, we’ve added a section on managing geolocation features on mobiles.

With kids growing up in an age where digital know-how is essential, it’s increasingly important to ensure that they’re developing healthy, safe and responsible online habits. And we’re thinking every day about how we can help parents and teachers to do just that.
Posted by Kate Hammond, Marketing Manager

Creating An NFS-Like Standalone Storage Server With GlusterFS On Ubuntu 10.04

This tutorial shows how to set up a standalone storage server on Ubuntu 10.04. Instead of NFS, I will use GlusterFS here. The client system will be able to access the storage as if it was a local filesystem. GlusterFS is a clustered file-system capable of scaling to several peta-bytes. It aggregates various storage bricks over Infiniband RDMA or TCP/IP interconnect into one large parallel network file system. Storage bricks can be made of any commodity hardware such as x86_64 servers with SATA-II RAID and Infiniband HBA.

Qmail OpenLdap On Ubuntu

This guide will help you easily set up a email server On Ubuntu using Qmail as MTA, OpenLDAP as a back-end for users, and Courier IMAP for IMAP server.

Another great thing about being a freelancer is the number and diversity of clients you can have.  By introducing them to each other, you are creating valuable connections that will likely result in more work for you.  If you can help your clients be successful, it’s almost a sure bet that you will benefit, too.

Here are 5 ways to introduce clients to each other:

Drink More – Ok, maybe not alcohol, but schedule a coffee meeting between two or three clients that share a similar industry (but not direct competitors).  Introduce them to each other, and see how the conversation goes.

Eat More – Host a BBQ and invite a few of the clients that you enjoy working with.  Don’t have a place to have a BBQ?  Plan a picnic in a local park or at the beach.  It doesn’t have to be a large expense, just tell them that you’ve reserved a spot, and they are welcome to bring their own picnic lunch and have a relaxing day.

Play More – If you share an interest in sports, invite your clients to a game.  If you’re like me and don’t have the sports gene, host a LAN party or xbox tournament.

Write More – Create a newsletter or email to share amongst your clients.  If you have a regular newsletter, create a “featured client” section.  Send regular updates when new clients sign up.  If your clients think you’re busy and successful, they’re more inclined to recommend you to others and keep work coming your way.

Give More – If you like to volunteer, invite your clients to join you.  Community gardens, local shelters, and local or national associations can use an extra set of hands, even if it’s just one day at a time.

As the host, it’s your responsibility to set the tone for these meetings.  Find the balance of professional and casual that works for you, and then take steps to find the people that share your values.

Good luck, and have fun!

Search as you type. It’s a simple and straightforward idea—people can get results as they type their queries. Imagining the future of search, the idea of being able to search for partial queries or provide some interactive feedback while searching has come up more than a few times. Along the way, we’ve even built quite a few demos (notably, Amit Patel in 1999 and Nikhil Bhatla in 2003). Our search-as-you-type demos were thought-provoking—fun, fast and interactive—but fundamentally flawed. Why? Because you don’t really want search-as-you-type (no one wants search results for [bike h] in the process of searching for [bike helmets]). You really want search-before-you-type—that is, you want results for the most likely search given what you have already typed.

As you can imagine, searching even before someone types isn’t easy—which is why we are so excited today to be unveiling Google Instant. Google Instant is search-before-you-type. Instant takes what you have typed already, predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real-time for those predictions—yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive, predictive and powerful.

Here are a few of the core features in Google Instant:

• Dynamic Results - Google dynamically displays relevant search results as you type so you can quickly interact and click through to the web content you need.
• Predictions - One of the key technologies in Google Instant is that we predict the rest of your query (in light gray text) before you finish typing. See what you need? Stop typing, look down and find what you’re looking for.
• Scroll to search - Scroll through predictions and see results instantly for each as you arrow down.

Here’s a video that explains Google Instant in greater depth:



To bring Google Instant to life, we needed a host of new technologies including new caching systems, the ability to adaptively control the rate at which we show results pages and an optimization of page-rendering JavaScript to help web browsers keep up with the rest of the system. In the end, we needed to produce a system that was able to scale while searching as fast as people can type and think—all while maintaining the relevance and simplicity people expect from Google.

The user benefits of Google Instant are many—but the primary one is time saved. Our testing has shown that Google Instant saves the average searcher two to five seconds per search. That may not seem like a lot at first, but it adds up. With Google Instant, we estimate that we’ll save our users 11 hours with each passing second!

As part of our current rollout, Google Instant will become the core search experience on Google.com for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE 8. We’ll also be offering Google Instant to our users in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and the U.K. who are signed in and have Instant-capable browsers. Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll work to roll out Google Instant to all geographies and platforms.

We’re very excited about today’s announcement and hope that you are too. Give Google Instant a try and let us know what you think!

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)

William Jefferson Clinton has worn many hats over the years. He served two terms as the 42nd President of the United States. He founded the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative to tackle problems like global health, poverty, education and climate change. He’s spent much of this year leading the recovery effort in Haiti through the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.

And starting now, he’s taking your questions in our latest YouTube interview.



To participate, visit www.youtube.com/citizentube and use the Moderator platform to upload your video question for President Clinton—and vote for the ones you like the best. You can also submit a text question if you can’t record a video.

Later this month, at his annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting, President Clinton will sit down with us and answer a selection of your top-voted questions in our interview.

Submit your question and start voting early! The submission period closes on September 13.

Posted by Ramya Raghavan, YouTube News and Politics

Freelancing can get quite lonely and you may feel rather disconnected from the outside world. While many advocate working in an environment filled with others (such as your local Starbucks), the fact remains that you just don’t get the same benefits of being able to bounce ideas off of colleagues. While this may seem an unfortunate side effect of going solo, I have the mindset that working independently doesn’t mean that the array of community focused efforts online can’t benefit you. Freelance Isn’t Loneliness Being a freelancer means being in charge of your destiny, it doesn’t mean that you need to become a caveman in some contact free environment. Whether we are emailing, tweeting, reading the latest Freelance Switch article or something entirely different, it’s the way we choose to communicate that dictates how we run our businesses and keep our knowledge current. Participating in social events at our own choice can increase our sense of independence whilst maintaining useful relationships. The loneliness we suffer is often caused by our own lack of willingness to spend time outside the projects we work on for clients, effectively leaving us as drones of our own productivity. While the idea of putting aside an hour a day to cultivating yourself socially may seem like wasting time, the fruits of your labor make themselves apparent as you’re not only helping others better themselves but you gain meaningful personal and business relationships that may well help you in the future. Business Networking Sources Firstly we should pay close attention to the places where social interaction can occur that may enrich ourselves and our businesses. The list below outlines just a few of the potential networking opportunities that could benefit you over time:

• Blogging: Passing on your own knowledge or contributing useful comments.
• Forums: Showcasing your skills, helping others, getting support and more.
• Conferences: Word of mouth, chatting with experts and learning new skills.
• Social Networks: Gaining support, friends and followers with links or content.
• Side Projects: Money earners, extra-curricular activities or contributory work.
• Mentoring: Potentially gaining potential employees or job opportunities.
• Meet-ups: Getting like-minded people together to interact and gain leads.
• Skill-swaps: Offering services for others in return (bi-directional outsourcing).

Each of these sources has their own pros and cons so it’s worth weighing up the cost vs benefit ratio before undertaking a specific method of socializing. It’s also worth highlighting that it depends on the amount of time, effort and energy you put into each that will determine what kind of response you get. Not every solution will be suitable for every kind of person but finding something that works for you (over the long term) may undoubtedly help you escape the trappings of freelance isolation. Recouping Your Investment So what are the benefits of participating in communities and why should you spend time taking part in such a convention, well amongst the many benefits, the below should seem somewhat tempting, even to an individual with little free time:

• Giving back: You should get a warm fuzzy feeling from helping others.
• Contacts: You may gain friends or colleagues that work in similar fields.
• Advertisements: Potential opportunities to highlight your sites and projects.
• Potential leads: You may be approached to undertake their paying projects.
• Free assistance: You can gain useful assistance with your own questions.
• Resume boost: Showing community spirit gives your resume a nice edge.
• Education: You can learn plenty by helping or chatting about subjects.
• Social interaction: You will make friends and become less socially excluded.
• Reputation: Helping others and showcasing your talent boosts credibility.
• Experience: You gain communication skills which may help you gain clients.
• Job prospects: Regular contributors may be offered full time (paying) jobs.

As a regular contributor to a well known web design forum, I have myself benefitted from several of the above benefits which appeared entirely as a lovely consequence of my attempts to simply gain a few extra friends in order to stave off the loneliness of working from home on a daily basis. So many people get so much out of contributing to communities as a whole that it often surprises me that the vast majority of working professionals still haven’t considered the importance networking can have. Set Yourself Networking Goals As you read this article, the benefits for business networking should become quite obvious, and the ideal response would be for more of those individuals who stay in the background, simply reading about what others are contributing to get involved themselves. Perhaps you might be shy or have little in the way of free time, but being a freelancer shouldn’t hold you back. It’s important as a solo practitioner to cultivate yourself in the community if for no other reason than to establish yourself. Why not set yourself aside an amount of time over the coming year by establishing some networking goals you wish to accomplish. It could be anything from setting up a blog to build up a user base to spending more time cultivating a crowd in Twitter. Whatever method you choose, you should place an emphasis on making the communication work in both ways (not just to advertise your products and services). Who knows how such interaction could improve your business and life in the future?

For today’s featured freelancer, we are going to meet Stephanie Gonzaga.  You’ve probably seen her comments of your favorite posts. She’s usually providing great feedback, useful tips, or much-needed words of encouragement.  And her post about working for Clients in Other Countries was very well received!

We are pleased to present Stef Gonzaga:

What kind of freelancer are you?

I’m a freelance writer, specializing in blog ghostwriting, web content writing, and catalog copywriting.

I enjoy writing for online stores

How did freelancing change your life?

Well, let’s just say I’m a “virgin freelancer”, meaning I never went through the corporate life as most people have. I started freelancing during my second year in college (I’m still a university student) because I wanted to be independent from my parents financially. It worked and gave me so much more, such as creative freedom, access to a lot of knowledge, and time to spend for my family.

What is the value of a freelancer?

Well, a freelancer is first and foremost a professional with big dreams and goals. The best part is that he can meet these goals, or surpass them, without depending solely on employment — a.k.a. set salaries. He can also be creative and smart in what he does for a living and with his lifestyle, which is what I find most appealing with my career as a freelance writer.

I get to be as creative as I can be while boosting my career and doing what I love. That’s also another great thing about the freelancer: he gets to do what he loves and is the most passionate.

Does working outside of North America affect you?

Well, working with international clients like from the US or the UK has challenges such as communication and security in terms of getting paid. I make sure to be as clear and straightforward as I can be with my clients to avoid issues.  For example, whenever I’m done with a particular phase of the project, or the project as a whole, I never fail to send an email about it. I also make sure to be professional, reliable and fun to work with, which always makes them feel comfortable when working with me. The nice thing about working outside of the US is the income I’m receiving from my work and being able to impress clients with my English skills despite being a Filipino.

What’s the best advice you can give to new freelancers?

Set an example if you want your clients to respect you as a freelancer.  Be reliable, honest, and true to what you say about yourself and your services. If you want your clients to pay you well, do the work assigned to you properly.  If you want clients to pay you at all, be professional and firm with your terms, follow-up on your invoices, and be prepared to take action. If you want to win more clients, start by working on projects you believe in and where you are confident in doing good work.

Which project are you most proud of, and why?

I guess it would be the projects I do copywriting work for, the best being the content of an Australian art store. I also loved my work as a catalog copywriter, writing product descriptions for a scarf store in the UK and a bank checks store in the US. Hopefully I’ll get to fulfill my biggest dream, which is to write descriptions and content for women’s accessories stores like Coach and Gucci or baby product stores

Where are you going to be in five years?

Definitely graduated from university, working in my beautiful home office, living in a nice safe home, and spending quality time with my husband and kids. I can also see myself helping out in organizations for animal rescue and building my own chicken and cattle farm. I love animals.

—–

Who should we interview next? If you have a freelancer that you are just dying to know more about, nominate them in the comments section, and we’ll see what we can do.

How many times have you created a new account at a website and seen a message that said: “Thank you for creating an account. To activate your new account, please access your email and click the verification URL provided.”

Even though you just want to start using the website, this lengthy process requires you to manually perform a whole bunch of steps—including switching to your mailbox, trying to find the message the website sent you (which might be in your Spam folder), opening the message, clicking the link, etc. Until recently, we also required people to follow these steps if they wanted to sign up for a Google Account using their existing email address, such as a @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com, or other address.

To make this process simpler, we’re now using an Internet standard called OpenID which is supported by several email providers, including Yahoo!. Instead of the process above, Yahoo! users who sign up with Google see the page below with a button that sends them to Yahoo! for verification.

Once you click that button, Yahoo! shows you a page to get your consent to share your email address with Google.

After you agree, you’re done and can start using any Google service, such as Google Groups, Docs, Reader, AdWords, etc. We have found that a much larger number of people complete the email verification process when this method is used.

In the future we hope to expand this feature to other email providers, and we also hope other website operators will read more on the Google Code Blog about how they can implement a similar feature.

Posted by Eric Sachs, Senior Product Manager, Google Security

Installing Apache2 With PHP5 And MySQL Support On Mandriva 2010.1 Spring (LAMP)

LAMP is short for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. This tutorial shows how you can install an Apache2 webserver on a Mandriva 2010.1 Spring server with PHP5 support (mod_php) and MySQL support.

Why would a freelancer want to establish herself as a thought leader in her industry or client niche? Well even for the most bashful of us, the day often (and quickly!) arrives when pushing hours for dollars or pounds just doesn’t quite cut it anymore.

I’m not saying everyone will be interested in this path. But if you are, then this article may just become your road map!.Ask yourself:

What if you had an additional option for making money that steadily grew over time, reinforced your freelancing efforts, landed you more clients, and required less and less of your time?

Yeah, it sounded good to me too. That’s why my client projects now take up less than 50% of my time and I focus the rest of my efforts on my own business, which includes establishing myself as a thought leader in my two primary industries: freelancing and women’s empowerment.

This dual focus has given me the success and financial freedom to travel this past year full-time and without paid work. Here’s how I did it and how you can too.

The Freelancer’s Path to Financial Freedom Via Thought Leadership

The following process will help you build a website that you can eventually make money with, either through sponsors or advertisers, or by partnering with fellow experts who have products or services they’d like to offer to your audience. (You can of course offer your own products, as well as your freelancing services, but for the purpose of this article I’ll assume you want to do as little as possible and you want to do the work ONCE and get paid for that work repeatedly, month after month.)

The key to selling sponsorship or even partnership opportunities is to build three assets: your reputation in the market, your monthly or daily unique visitor count, and your email list (and their responsiveness to you).

WARNING: Don’t expect a shiny red button here that you can push and get pummeled with cash! I’m sorry to say it but we both know it doesn’t work that way. However I’ve provided you here a steady, tried-and-true business strategy to help any freelancer establish herself as a thought leader and strategically build a platform that generates money even when she isn’t specifically working on the business.

Step One: Know What You Stand For and What You Offer

Before you can establish yourself as a leader, you kinda gotta figure out what you’re leading, right? Right.

So if you’re a graphics designer, what is your stance on design? Do you have a particular client niche you’re passionate about or deeply understand? The more focused you get (and you can extend to more than one niche over time) the better. Also consider what makes you unique in the services you provide or how you provide them. For example copywriters and marketers are a dime a dozen (and most far cheaper than I am), but I established myself as one of the only people who specialize in multi-million dollar copywriting and launch management for bestselling authors and speakers in the self-help, wealth, spirituality and female empowerment niches.

Now that is almost painfully specific. Yet it makes it easy for me to market myself, to become a leader in a niche service that nearly no one else provides, and my clients know that my skill set is designed specifically to meet their needs. This type of branding makes selling almost unnecessary. I rarely if ever have to ask for the sale.

Step Two: Create a Content Website You’d Be Proud to Slap Your Name On

First of all, it goes without saying: create a website you can be proud of. If you’re not a graphics designer or you want to save time, you can get some fantastic Wordpress templates for free or next to nothing that do the trick beautifully and in five seconds flat. Also make sure the content is worth reading. We’re building a brand here and providing value, not attempting to get rich quick.

That aside, let’s say that your ideal client works in the pet niche. You love dogs, they love dogs. It’s more fun for you to focus on projects with fur and fluff all over them!

Well isn’t it likely that your ideal client surfs the net for the latest lovable canine content, interacts with fellow pet-lovers on the social networks, and just might be interested in working with a freelancer who is also considered the leading authority on pet owners, their four-legged friends, and how best to market to them (the owners, not their pets)?

When you establish yourself as a niche authority on, as an example, design elements dog owners are shown to respond to, and you start teaching those in the dog industry how to better market themselves and position their website design elements, you’re dominating a market in one fell swoop because no one else thought of it and to your surprise a lot of people appreciate your specialized knowledge.

This is what I did with launch copywriting and personality-based branding, and what I’m about to do with my unique brand of women’s empowerment that I’m about to launch.

Here’s the key though: once you build your content site, it’s how you structure and market it that will catapult you to the head of the class, or stamp you as an “epic fail.” Read on young grasshopper, read on.

Step Three: Step Into Rush Hour Traffic

Yeah, sure you can build it . . . but nope, sorry — they won’t come! Unless search optimization is your specialty you’re going to have to meet your future fans half way. There are two ways to do this, but first let me explain a nuance of thought leadership for freelancers: you can be seen as a thought leader by your target audience (other businesses or professionals in most cases), or — far more profitable — you can become a thought leader for your client’s target audience (individuals passionate about dogs and furry friends, for example).

I prefer the latter as this gives you a wider variety of content you can discuss on your website and when it comes to partnering with someone whose product you can sell, or with advertisers, 80% of them are going to want access to individual consumers, not businesses. Plus, when prospects see that you’re an authority to their target market, they will practically stampede each other on the way to your door.

On how to drive traffic to your new epic website:

If you’re a writer or enjoy writing: Secure yourself a gig writing articles for popular blogs and websites that cater to your target audience (such as pet or dog lovers in the above example). Make sure that you can include an “Author’s Box” at the end of your articles where you introduce yourself and mention your website (more on this further down).

HOT TIP: Do not link to your website’s home page. Instead, write a call to action that inspires the reader to click immediately to receive some free giveaway, and then link that call to action phrase to a page inviting your visitor to grab that freebie. They give you their email address and you send it their way. See my author summary at the bottom of this article for an example.

If you don’t want to write: Approach experts in your field who are good, engaging writers and ask them to write the content both for your website and for offsite columns. You can trade exposure for their content or, if you’re a handy salesman, sell them a marketing package where by providing you site content and offsite articles, you’ll get them massive exposure.

You’d be surprised how many people don’t know how to secure their own writing gigs or simply don’t have the stomach to try. What’s easy for you may be terrifying for someone else. So don’t discount the value of what you’d be doing when you create a content site, drive traffic to it, and catapult not just yourself but fellow experts into the limelight!

HOT TIP: In this case, get a one sentence bio from each expert. The Author Box would then include their once sentence bio, and the fact that they are a featured authority on the leading pet lover’s site (insert your brand here), and then give your call to action for your related free giveaway that drives them back to your website. Both of you gain exposure!

Other Ways to Step Into Rush Hour Traffic Online:

• Get on Press Notification Lists like ReporterConnection where you’ll be notified daily of publications, press and authors who need to interview experts like yourself
• Mention articles and blog posts from other leaders in the industry and give your perspective/opinion. Your link back to their site often shows up in their comments and drives traffic your way.
• Here’s a tip I got from Tim Ferriss recently: Try to write for B-level blogs and websites (in terms of traffic), meaning they might not get as much traffic but they’re usually run by one or a few writers who post once a day or less, vs. posting 10 articles each day on loosely related topics. This helps you NOT get lost in the noise and will usually translate into more traffic back to your site than being featured on the larger A-level sites.
• In addition, consider offering your expertise to bloggers in your niche as an expert they can interview (for blogs run by a single author that does not accept guest articles).
• Track news, current events and hot topics in your niche that you can post about quickly. You’ll get fast rankings in news engines because it’s a hot, recent topic and the new influx of interest will be funneled your way.
• Social media of course – but that’s a whole other conversation!
• Consider video blogging and short video clips you can blast on the dozens of video sites out there. You can use TubeMogul to easily place your video on the major (and some niche) networks. Video gets ranked quite quickly and consumed more readily by our increasingly ADD culture.

Step Four: Funnel Everyone Into Your List

Remember that freebie I mentioned above? You want to funnel all your traffic into an opt-in landing page (where the visitor gives his email address for something you’re offering) so that you capture most of the visitors who come to your site. This way you can build a solid relationship with them over time, plus you’ll have a powerful asset to leverage when selling advertising on the site later… or when negotiating partnership deals.

Here’s how to create a landing page. This is the formula I use for myself and my clients and I see an average opt-in conversion of 65%.

You’ll also want an opt in form on your site’s main page for any casual visitors.

Eventually you’ll want to market your own offers or partner offers to your list. But in the beginning you may not have anything to offer. Plus the point is to build a solid relationship with them. So right now, just notify them when you post anything new to the blog. If you’re posting every day, maybe just send an email once or twice a week mentioning the strongest article along with a secondary list of the other articles posted that week.

This will keep people engaged with your site and if you incorporate any referral mechanisms like a “tell a friend” script, you’ll grow your list and site visitors this way as well.

Step Five: Treat This Site as a Client and Build Over Time

If there’s one thing I’ve learned managing multimillion dollar launches, it’s that the epic money is never made in the big, glossy launch. Much of that money goes to the massive technology resources to pull off the influx of traffic, to experts like myself who make the magic happen behind the scenes, and to the promotional partners who spread the word and mail the offer to their lists.

So why do people still do these big launches when they only take home maybe 20% of the earnings? Because it builds them an email list, a presence, and a brand. They know however that the real money is made over the long term as they monetize those new assets.

You don’t need to carry off a big launch (though you can and I’ll share how in another article) to win the long-term game. Just remember that it’s a long-term game you’re playing and put a bit of effort into it every day. Schedule it in like you schedule in a client. Once the site is created and the initial work done as outlined above, your daily tasks are simple:

• Create new content for the site (or manage your experts who provide content)
• Create new offsite content to drive traffic back
• Monitor press opportunities and respond quickly to applicable ones
• Develop and maintain a social marketing strategy
• Attend major industry events or network online so that you can forge relationships with potential partners, experts, and advertisers
• Email your list once or more per week (the more you mail, the more they buy, but until you’re ready to sell them something, I recommend two to three times per week).

And that’s it!

It sounds like a handful, and it is. But I’ll be straight with you: as freelancers we spend our time building empires for others. Consider it an exercise in self-love to point some of your effort your own way and build something lasting for yourself that you can count on in a bind.

Good luck!

At the start of every month, we’ll be rounding up the best posts from the business network of blogs and directing you to them. Here’s the best of business in July, including articles from WorkAwesome, the Netsetter and FreelanceSwitch.

The Netsetter

An Effective Marketing Plan: Getting Started

A well-conceived and properly implemented marketing plan is the foundation for your business’ success. You might be the best at what you do, but if nobody knows about you and your offerings, and why they’re of value, then that shingle you hung up is going to come tumbling down.

Just How Popular are List Posts?

Magazines have always known the power of a good list. Look at the covers on your local newsstand and you’ll see plenty of “5 tips to shed your winter pounds” or “10 ways to save on your home loan” type headlines. This style of content just works, and if you’re a blogger, you’d be wise to pay attention. Collis Ta’eed looks at the effect of list posts on blogs.

Does More Posts = More Traffic?

Collis Ta’eed tackles the question of whether more frequent posts directly correlates to more traffic on a blog, using examples from the Envato blog network such as FreelanceSwitch and AppStorm.

How to Search Engine Optimize WordPress

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to making your website easily accessible to search engines, and helping them understand and read the content so that they can rank it high up in their index. Abhjeet Mukherjee tackles important SEO factors and tips for optimizing a WordPress blog.

How to Get Started as a Web Entrepreneur

Collis Ta’eed shares the audio and presentation slides from a talk he gave at WebDU 2010 earlier this year. The talk covers how the founder of Envato would approach starting up from scratch, and through out references a hypothetical new startup idea and how Collis might approach it now.

WorkAwesome

Making Ideas Happen with Scott Belsky: Book Review and Interview

Scott Belsky has been making ideas happen for some time now, whether it be at Behance, through the annual 99% Conference or with the creation of tools like the Action Method. He’s now made a book happen as well.  Peter North not only does a review, but conducts an interview with the author in this article.

Why I Stick to Pen and Paper for Goals and Tasks

While some people are right at home electronic organizers and smartphone apps, others find technology either daunting – or even inconvenient – resulting in a slowdown in productivity. Ana Da Silva discusses why she sticks to the tried, tested and true productivity tools known as pen and paper.

Should You Switch to a Health Savings Account?

Health care has been one of the hot-button issues in the United States over the past year, and there’s a lot to consider when choosing how to manage your (and your family’s) health. Bob Bessette offers his own insights as to whether or not you should go with a Health Savings Account – and why he did just that.

28 Creative PowerPoint and Keynote Presentation Designs

Powerpoint and Keynotes can be boring. In fact, they often turn out that way. We’ve collected some of the best presentations on the web to help you make sure that yours don’t.

7 Reasons to Switch to the Dvorak Keyboard Layout

Ever wished you could increase your typing speed? Wondering why you end up pecking at the keyboard instead of churning out words at a decent pace? It might not be you that’s the issue – it could be the QWERTY keyboard layout that’s holding you back.  Red Tani offers seven reasons why you should switch to the Dvorak layout in this piece that has drawn a lot of comments…both for and against the notion.

FreelanceSwitch

What to Do When a Client Kills a Project

So, there you are, working away on a project, and oh, is it a good one. You’re having fun, the client’s loving your work, and then…the whole thing comes to a screeching halt.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying, Love My Job — And Leave It

Ever wonder how your fellow freelancers ended up where they are today? What goes through your head when you realize you’re not happy in your traditional career? Cassie McDaniel tells her own inspirational and surprising story on how she made the jump from full-time employee to freelancer.

Real Home Offices from FreelanceSwitch Readers

Forget the pristine glass surfaces and spotless, useless office set-ups. We take a look at home office photos submitted by fellow FreelanceSwitch readers–find some real world inspiration for your own home office!

14 Resources for Free and Premium Fonts

You can’t deny that typography is important in design. You could have the most beautiful illustrations in the world, but if you use a font like Jokerman, your entire design will look iffy. Use these tools and resources below to help you find the perfect font for your next project.

When to NOT Invest in Your Freelance Career

There’s no shortage of opportunities to invest in freelancing, whether it’s in coaching, e-courses, college courses, books and e-books, or even retreats for entrepreneurs. But not all freelancers are good candidates for these products and opportunities, and not all times are the right time to invest. Here’s when not to spend your hard-earned cash on career development.

vtiger Installation On CentOS 5.x

vtiger is the CRM / complete tracking solution I have looked for and needed for 10 years!!! An all-in-one tracking everything organic package that ties everything together - because every task has many things associated with it, and vtiger works the way people think.

How To Set Up Apache2 With mod_fcgid And PHP5 On Ubuntu 10.04

This tutorial describes how you can install Apache2 with mod_fcgid and PHP5 on Ubuntu 10.04. mod_fcgid is a compatible alternative to the older mod_fastcgi. It lets you execute PHP scripts with the permissions of their owners instead of the Apache user.

Blogging For Web Designers: Editorial Calendars and Style Guides

A few years ago, you might not have pointed out during a meeting with a potential client that you maintained a blog. Over time, though, blogs have evolved from the being a personal hobby to a serious work tool. In fact, today, web designers are supposed to know much more than just how to design and build websites. Customer’s expectations have increased, and unless you are in position to choose your favourite clients, meeting these expectations requires hard work.

Working For A Web Design Agency

The most obvious job for a web designer is working for a web design agency, but if you’ve never done that before… then how do you know what to expect? Is it even the right path for you?

Setting foot in an agency for the first time can be daunting. It’s filled with people who have probably worked in the industry longer than you and who probably know a lot more than you.

5 Ways to be Financially Fit

Let’s face it—no matter how much you might love your job and enjoy going to work every day, when it comes down to it, you rely on your profession to pay the bills and support yourself and your family. Though you may not be in your ideal salary range just yet, if you’re financially fit–responsible with your spending and mindful of how much you have in your accounts–you should still be able to cover your expenses and hopefully have something left over at the end of each month.

How to Write a Press Release

It used to be that you picked up a newspaper and noticed the headlines and knew there was something interesting to be learned that day. Press releases were the lifeblood of any newspaper worth its ink and the companies who issued them were judged by the amount of free publicity they could garner for their clients.

Print Tutorial: Creating A Magazine Cover

Graphic design in a print environment can be a nice change for someone who normally does web design. It’s a slightly different skillset, but still incorporates a lot of the same concepts. Print projects can be an exciting new challenge, something that lets a designer stretch their creativity a bit and even recharge if they’re getting stressed out by too many web design projects.

24 Impressive Blog Plugins You Should Consider

One of the great things about blogging is how easy it is to set up a blog on any of the multitude of blogging platforms. While there are many options for building your blog, one of the most popular platforms is WordPress.org.

However, what you get when you set up a WordPress blog can be pretty basic depending on the theme you choose. To make your new blog sing and work for you, it’s a good idea to install some key plugins.

Why & How Freelancers Should Exercise (from Fitness Expert Scott Tousignant)

As freelancers, our biggest assets are our minds and bodies. If we get sick, we can’t do any work. If our minds are foggy, we can’t produce our best. Therefore, we don’t make any money or as much money as we could.

Unfortunately, the care of our bodies is not always a top priority for many freelancers. It’s easy to get caught up in all our work–particularly because we enjoy it so much.

10 Requirements for Working with Clients in Other Countries

Freelancers are given the opportunity to work for either clients within their respective areas or clients coming from abroad. Personally, as a freelancer living in Asia, I’ve worked only with clients who run their businesses a hundred miles away such as those in the US, the UK, and Australia. I’ve never seen their faces, heard their voices, and of course never tried visiting them at their offices since our only mode of communication is either the email or the instant messenger.

Blogging by Numbers: How to Create Headlines That Get Retweeted

There is an art and science to getting blog posts to travel like wildfire.

This post will look at both, based on number crunching with 281 posts, 39,000+ comments, and almost 2,000,000 click-throughs via my Twitter profile and Facebook fan page in the last six months.

Here’s what I’ve found to work well…

As you build your freelance business, you get the satisfaction of touting the work you have already done when talking to new prospects for your services. Demonstrating that you have experience delivering the services your prospects are looking for can make all the difference in landing that next project.

Make sure you tally up that experience so that you can present it with maximum impact.

Care to Have Your Gall Bladder Removed?

A good example of the power of experience in recommending a service provider is surgery. If you are facing an operation, you want to go under the knife with someone who has performed the procedure many times before. It doesn’t matter if you are having an organ removed, your eyesight modified by laser surgery, or any other major procedure, experience counts.

So you look for someone who specializes, who concentrates on a particular type of surgical procedure, and who does it (successfully) over and over again. You’d rather have an old hand, not a rookie, take out your gall bladder any day.

What Are the Units of Your Services?

For surgeons, “customers served” tends to be very close to “procedures done.” Nobody goes back to have a gall bladder removed a second time!

At the fast food chain McDonald’s, signs advertise “burgers sold,” perhaps because many of those burgers were sold to repeat customers. Very simply, it is a more impressive number if you count the individual sales, rather than the people served.

For many of the services freelancers provide, the McDonald’s approach makes more sense. Web designers do not create just one page for each customer. Copywriters, hopefully, write more than one word for each client. Training professionals may serve dozens of participants at a time, in a single seminar.

Working at the level of those individual units can give your prospects a more accurate, and a more persuasive, sample of your experience than working at the client or customer level.

For Example . . .

One of the services I provide is ghostwriting newsletter articles. To simplify the arithmetic, let’s take just a couple of those newsletters and compare the numbers that different accounting methods — all of them truthful and accurate – can generate.

When a current client makes a referral, and I get a call from a new prospect looking for help with an e-zine, they often bring up “wordsmithing,” the notion that I will take their content and make it more effective. If I am trying to convince them that handling words, for newsletters, is one of my strengths, which of the following statements is most likely to do that job?

• “I have been handling most of the biweekly e-zine writing for two clients for the past six months.”
• “I have written more than 50 articles in the past six months for newsletters just like yours.”
• “I have created more than 22,000 words of highly effective e-newsletter content for my clients in the past six months.”

All of these statements are true, but surely “50 articles” and “22,000 words” will beat “two clients” any day of the week!

At a recent meeting with a training consultant looking for marketing help, it was clear  that writing content of various kinds would be important  to winning the business. When I told him I kept track of my business writing output, and that I average nearly 250,000 words a year, it immediately resolved any doubts he had about my experience in providing writing services.

Log Your Production

If you are a web designer, would you rather tell people how many sites you maintain, or how many pages you have created? For writers, articles and similar products can tell the tale, not to mention words. For training consultants, the number of participants you have educated can far exceed the number of clients you have served.

Admittedly, if you haven’t been thinking this way to date, you may have to look at past projects and estimate your output, to some extent. And you should do exactly that.

Going forward, put systems in place to capture your production so that you can use those data to impress your prospects with your experience in providing the services they need.

The more impressive you can legitimately make that “burgers sold” number, the more “customers served” you can look forward to in your freelance business.