Features:

• Tested on Latest Wordpress version
• 3 columns
• Widget ready
• Fixed Width
• Cross browser compatible with IE, FF, Opera, Flock & Safari

Demo | Download

License: Free to use must keep footer intact AS IS

As we’re partecipating a Blogging Idol 2 we need lots of new subscribers; that’s why we’re making this offer. Subscribe via e-mail to GFXer.net using the form in the right sidebar. Then verify your e-mail. At the end, post a comment here saying that you completed the offer using the same e-mail that you subscribed. Also in the comment include your link. It will be a blogroll link, that means many good backlinks to your site. The backlinks will be on this site till the end of this year: December 31th 2008.

We’re hoping to reach 100+ active subscribers at the end of blogging idol and this is one of our strategies to complete this goal.

By subscribing you’d help us in the competition but you’d help yourself too because all the latest post here will be sent via e-mail to you.  Take advantage of this great opportunity. Hurry! The offer will on November 30th.

Also, I have some a big surprise coming up in the following week. It will be a great post for you guys!

Thank you for your time,
GFXER

In this article it’s supposed that you have already have a portofolio with some work. Check here on how to fill your portofolio.

These are the remaining steps to being a successful design that is making lots of money online.

Advertising to clients

This is the most important bit, getting the clients. The whole point of getting in clients is not just to make a one off splash in your PayPal account; it’s to gain a client base you can go back to when you need some work. You have to remember to impress your clients if you want them to come back to you, this is very important as word of mouth is a good advertising method. There are many ways you can advertise your services. You must remember that some are better than others however its best to try them all.You can do the following to gain clients: Post advertising on forums with special discounts. Advertise on Instant Messenger to your friends and family. Contact local businesses that don’t have a website. Offer complimentary website design to local charities. Buy low‐cost advertisements on the website design related sites. There are many other ways to advertise your services, but the six methods above are the most recommended. Be sure not to be classed as a spammer when advertising on forums.

How much do I charge?

This part is up to you; however you have to remember that there are lots of designers out there who have well adbuilt portfolios. People are more likely to spend more money when they see a fully built portfolio. This being the case means that you have to charge a lot less for your first pieces of work. I personally recommend starting at a very low price of only five dollars and increasing by five after each 10 successful clients. However you must do your market research to establish a current price for each type of design. For example, the average going rate for logos is about $30. You may find clients willing to pay up to $100 if it’s something that means a lot to them. Web page designs typically sell for $50 per page; however certain features on the page may make the price change. Ultimately this is up to you but I do recommend the above method.

Doing the work

This is the most important part of being a designer so make sure you don’t screw it up. Actually finishing the work given to you by a client isn’t something I can help you with. However I can point you in the right  direction. Make sure you have the latest software from Adobe and Macromedia as this is the best software on the market for web designers. An experienced web designer uses Photoshop, but if you’re not sure how to use this yet you can probably get away with using Fireworks. If you can’t afford the packages from Adobe you can download a trial version and use it for up to 60 days. You never know, you might make enough sales to buy the full copy of yourself. Another tip is to make sure you’re using the right program for the right project. For example, if you’re designing a logo use fireworks. If you’re designing a website, it’s probably best to use Dreamweaver. One other thing to remember when designing for a third party is to only ever sell them work that you would use yourself.Make sure you stick to the turnaround time agreed with the client. Sticking to this time is very important as it can encourage a good review. Remember you want your clients to love what you do.

Finished the work? Now send it to the client.

If you finished the work given to you by the client, you’re going to need to arrange a payment method. Some designers prefer to be paid half before doing the actual work and half after, however as a new designer it is best to ask for full payment after the design is completed. Before asking for payment its best to show the client a watermark version of the work you have completed. If they are happy with the work you can proceed with payment arrangements. If not it’s back to the drawing board with the client’s recommendations. Always remember to ask the client what they didn’t like and what they would like. When making payment arrangements try and stick to one payment processor. The most used payment processor is PayPal. With PayPal you can accept credit card payments and bank transfers from anyone in the world with very low fees. Most of your clients should be okay with this payment method, but if they are not, you must have a backup method available. You can also accept payments through Google Checkout or a plan and simple bank transfer. Make sure that when using a payment method that involves paying high fees that the client covers them. Once payment is fully received and cleared you can zip up all the documents you used and send them to the client e‐mail address.

Thank you for your time,
GFXER

There is another good news also: We are in search for a new template. GFXER Blog is growing very quickly and we think that the current skin is not suitable for this kind of blogs. A template change will be expected on December. Mabye it will be a custom design for us, let’s hope.

I need that regular readers contact me using the contact form and send your feedback and suggestions. What would you like to be changed here? What do you want to add? It’s very important for us to know if the visitors and regular readers like our features and design.

About the October Stats:

October has been the best month for GFXER from its creation. Our hard work was rewarded with some pretty cool stats. On October we had 2000+ Unique Visitors and 3000+ Total Visitors. We think that this month (November) the October stats will be crushed by the new stats. The number of subscribers for 1 week has grown with 30!. I hope we keep up with this great rythms.

Blogging Idol News:

Blogging Idol is going good for us. There are some great bloggers out there that have great strategies to win this contest. As I’ve always said we’re not even hoping to win Blogging Idol but we want our partecipation to be one of the best and that would be a victory for us.

Soon, GFXER will have a sister site: TheTechTalks.com . It will be a technology blog with latest news and stuff. Currently it is under construction and it’s expected to be launched after 2 weeks. This is one of the several projects that we, the creators of GFXER, will do in the future.

Thank you for reading this short news article about our blog,
Regards,
GFXER

As you might know GFXER is partecipating at Blogging Idol 2 competition. (Go here for more information). The contest is not going bad at all for us as the number of subscribers has been doubled and continues to increase daily. Although, we need lots of more subscribers.

Our goal is to reach 100 Subscribers till the end of the contest. That would be a magnificent thing. If we keep going by this rythms it’s sure that in the next 2 weeks we’ll have 100+ subscribers but I’m a bit worried about the rythm. To keep this rythm I need that the readers help me. I need you guys to enter your email on the right sidebar form and verify it. You’d help us a lot by doing this, but not only us; you’d help yourselves too by receiving the latest update from GFXER every day via email. Also, you can tell your friends to come & visit us and subscribe.

If GFXER takes any of the prices from Blogging Idol we guarantee you guys some great changes round here (custom design, great contests, free stuff etc.). That’s why if you ever wanted to subscribe at GFXER THIS IS THE TIME!

Also, check this post to see updates about Blogging Idol and when the voting is open you can vote for us. (Although I’ll keep you guys updated with everything).

Thank you for reading this post,
GFXER

Features:

• Tested on Latest Wordpress version
• 2 columns
• Widget ready
• Fixed Width
• Cross browser compatible with IE, FF, Opera, Flock & Safari

Demo | Download

License: Free to use must keep footer intact AS IS

Features:

• Tested on Latest Wordpress version
• 3 columns
• Widget ready
• Fixed Width
• Cross browser compatible with IE, FF, Opera, Flock & Safari

Demo | Download | Theme URI

License: Free to use must keep footer intact AS IS

Premium Niche Restaurant wordpress theme with tabs and 125 banner ads.

Features:

• Tested on Latest Wordpress version
• 3 columns
• Widget ready
• Fixed Width
• Cross browser compatible with IE, FF, Opera, Flock & Safari

Demo | Download | Theme URI

License: Free to use must keep footer intact AS IS

Well, I’m glad to announce that we have joined a very popular blog’s competition: Blogging Idol 2. It’s a great contest ran by Daniel Scocco. This is a new blog and we’re not even hoping to win because there are many great other blogs out there, aged and with better content as us. Anyway, I think this is a great way for promotion for GFXer and  will increase the traffic slightly.

The competition has started today. There are great prices for the winner. Here they are:

Win Over $4500

First of all I would like to thank the sponsors that we have aboard.

* A lifetime subscription to Keyword Country (worth $2,000)
* An annual subscription to the Trackur corporate edition (worth $1,000)
* $300 courtesy of Sponsored Reviews
* $300 courtesy of BidVertiser
* $300 courtesy of TNX
* $100 from Daily Blog Tips
* $300 in text links from Text-Link-Ads
* A 3-month subscription to the SEO Book Training Program (worth $300)

This time we will also have prizes for the 3 competitors with more points. The first prize will be the lifetime subscription to Keyword Country and $1,000 in cash. The second prize will be the annual subscription to Trackur and $300 in text links. And the third prize will be the 3-month subscription to the SEO Book Trainning program.

The Rules

1. Any blog or website with 2,000 RSS readers or fewer can participate. One blog per competitor only. (participant blogs must have the Feedburner feed count enabled)

2. The competition runs from November 1st until November 30th. During that period, 7 points will be awarded to the competitors, on the following way:

• 1 point to the competitor with the highest increase on the number of RSS subscribers
• 3 points to the competitors (one for each) with the highest number of votes on the open voting session
• 3 points awarded by a panel of judges

3. The criteria for the voting session and for the judge points will be: the most clever and effective strategy for gaining RSS subscribers and for promoting the blog. Paid and blackhat promotional methods are not allowed.

4. On November 30th, the blogger with more points (it will probably be 3 or 2 points) will be declared the winner and receive the prizes. The second and third places will also receive prizes.

General Information

In the case you are wondering who the 3 judges will be: Daniel Scocco, Ricky from Keyword Country is the second, and Jarrod from Sponsored Reviews is the third one.

Overall the objective is similar to the Blogging Idol one: increasing the number of RSS subscribers using clever and efficient promotion strategies.

The difference is that this time we also have an open voting sessions and a panel of judges, which I think will make the competition more fair.

How so? Even if someone cheats to gain more RSS subscribers than everyone else, he could still lose the competition if he doesn’t get a vote from the readers or from the judges. (The competitors will be monitored to make sure they play under the rules).

Secondly, even small bloggers have a good chance now. The voting session and the points awarded by the judges will be related to the blogger using the most clever and efficient strategy for gaining RSS subscribers. The only requirement here is creativity, so small bloggers could easily beat the big guys if they are smart enough. In other words, it does not matter if you started the competition with 7 subscribers and ended with 30. If your strategies were clever, you could still get the votes from the readers and from the judges.

Finally, in the case of a draw in the end (i.e. 3 bloggers end up with 2 points each), the decisive parameter will be the increase in the number of RSS subscribers.

Thank you for your time,
GFXER

Why join the forum?

• The forum has a very clean and light design that really relaxes your mind and eyes after a tiring day of webmastering or designing or both.
• It includes all kind of movies discussions ( TV Shows, Videoclips etc. ) and also Off Topic discussions.
• It’s an International forum; which means that members from all the world have joined and will join. You’ll read opinions that come from people in the other part of the globe.
• The forum is clean of spams and useless posts.

Well, I think that’s all for Movie-Talking. As I wrote, the forum was created by us (creators of GFXER), that means that this post a paid review or something like that.

I hope you liked this recommendation by GFXER Designing blog and that you’ll follow it.
Thank you for your time,
GFXER CEO