This past week I went to a client’s house and fixed his internet. He thought it was an email problem, and it turned out to not be such a big deal, but he’s not very techy and he’d had the problem for a while, so finally I just went over there and called tech support for him, and we got it fixed. It hasn’t even broken again since.

Yes, I’m a designer. No, I don’t offer tech support as one of my package options, or even talk about it much on my site at all. But I’ve learned that a small business owner doesn’t just get overwhelmed by business card vendors and web hosts — and since I’m small, I can afford to use all my skills for my clients’ benefits, and not just the ones that fit under my job title.

I only have a few regular clients, and while I would like to have more, it’s never been my ambition to have a lot more. I’d rather go deep than wide — I think I can be more help to a small number of clients over a long time, than I could be to dozens or hundreds as one-shots. I don’t want to just be a designer, I want to be their designer, the person they feel like they can call whenever they have a problem.

I’ve realized that for a client relationship to work for me, it has to work both ways — I have to be committed to their success as a business, not just because it means more work for me. I work hardest for my clients when I believe in them, and because of that, I want to help them do what they do, within my abilities.

It’s helped clarify my marketing a lot — I’m looking for small businesses that do something nifty. I’m looking for people who need my help, and with whom I can work to build their business into what they dream that it will be.

And I’m happy to help them with their email problems, as long as they’re on a Mac.

So you’re on the internet, you’ve got a website, and you’ve put up some stuff for sale. And yet, the sales aren’t rolling in.

It could be that no one knows you’re there, and that’s a different problem for which there is a whole slew of other advice, and other people more qualified to give it. This isn’t about that.

I’m here to ask you one simple question:

How easy is it for people to give you money?

Go on your own site. Get as far as you can in the buying process, even to the point of going all the way through buying stuff, if you can (Paypal won’t let you buy from yourself, for obvious reasons). Count the steps. Think about how you’d feel if this was someone else’s site.

Then call up your web-clueless friend or relative, offer a full refund (plus a small bribe, if you’re feeling generous), and get them to do the same thing while you’re there to watch.

You might be amazed at how hard, confusing, or weird this process is for someone who isn’t you.

Recently I was on a teleseminar and someone sent us to the cool sale on their site. There was a giant banner about the sale, totally obvious, so I clicked it! And got a blog post, with a smaller banner at the top. So I clicked that, and it sent me… back to the blog post. Which I skimmed, but had no obvious “so go here!” link that I could spot.

Even though it seemed obvious to them, it wasn’t easy for someone new to the site to get to the sale. So they put up a quick-and-dirty box at the top of the post with the basic sale info, and now it’s a whole lot more obvious to slackers like me who never read anything on the page. And there’s even a chance they’ll get my money.

It’s very hard to look at this objectively. No, really, don’t feel bad! You built or paid for the site, so you know where everything is. All that stuff that other people find confusing seems really obvious to you, because you already know the answer, before you even have to ask the questions.

So here’s my piece of wisdom for today: remove every possible obstacle between the buyer’s money and your pocket. Strip away every step you can, make the button really big, put the price in bold and put them next to each other.

Then make a link to your shipping costs and put that on every single page — if shipping is free, even better! But put a link anyway, even if it’s just to a page that explains about your free shipping, and who it applies to, and if it isn’t everyone (like, say, Canadians), then how much shipping is for those other people. Well, unless you sell only virtual products, and then you need a link that explains the download process in painfully specific detail. Possibly twice.

People on your site might be shopping, and they might not, but if you make it too hard for them, then you definitely won’t be the one getting their money in the end.

Make it so easy that they’re done buying before they can think of those fifteen reasons why they’re not really sure they want your stuff right now. Make it so obvious that a busy skimmer who doesn’t even glance at your carefully-crafted copy can do it. And make the fine print easy to find, for those who need that extra reassurance.

Your pocket will thank you.

One of the most oft-bashed time wasters in the productivity world is television. Vapid, pointless, mind-numbing and useless are the kindest terms I’ve seen used to describe it. Get off your ass, they say, and follow your dreams! Or read a book, for once!

The thing they totally neglect to think about is that every TV show is someone’s dream, too. Actually, it’s a lot of someone’s dreams, all bundled up into one thing that they hope will entertain and engage enough people that they get to keep doing it another week, another season. A book is great — I love books, and I own enough of them to make the simplicity crowd cry mercy — but a book is really just one person’s dream.

How many actor hopefuls do you know, or know of? Script writers? Directors? What about FX techs, stage painters, dancers, costumers? If you live down near LA, or up in Vancouver, it’ll be even more. And it takes all of those people to make a TV show and more, the PAs and grips and security guys who help make those dreams come true, or have dreams of their own. (Yes, yes, books require the publishing industry. That’s not the point, because honestly, when was the last time a productivity guru told you not to read?)

I’m not saying there’s not a lot of bad TV out there — Sturgeon’s Law applies to television as well as everywhere else, and it’s compounded by the committee effect. But there’s also nothing wrong with enjoying a good story, a hot actor or actress, or even someone falling on their ass in a dance-off. Like in so many other places, it’s about moderation and choices, and deciding if this week’s episode of CSI is going to supplant something that’s more important to you, give you an excuse not to do that thing you’re afraid of failing at, or if perhaps you just really like CSI.

Make the choices you need to make to realize your dreams — but don’t stomp on other people’s dreams on the way.

This is one of the commissions I finished right before I ran off for vacation, a book cover for Annette Gisby’s novel Drowning Rapunzel. She originally asked for print-resolution digital art (6″x9″ with a 0.25″ bleed, a fairly standard “oversize paperback” sort of size), which I did using Corel Painter IX. During the process of having the cover made, the ebook version got picked up by an epub, who allowed her to supply her own cover.

A tiny plug, if you want to commission me for art, just drop me a line and we can discuss pricing and deadlines. Don’t be afraid that I’ll hard sell you — I only have 3 spots left in my art queue at the moment anyway.

As always, you can skip to the bottom to see the finished piece, or scroll through the “progress” to get an idea of how it all came together.

After some discussion and many photos of towers, i came up with this Incredibly Lame “sketch” just to get an idea of positioning and whatnot:

There were a few steps between that and this, but I figured I’d skip to the first real significant progress. I feel the need to point out that the tower took as long as the entire rest of the image combined, and if I never shade another tiny brick again it might be too soon. @_@ The black lines show the “bleed” area, which is what would be cut off in a print book — I personally like the full version better, so I’m glad she got to use it.

Here I properly drew in the figure of the girl, and shaded the lake:

And now, grass! Annette wanted to be sure I wasn’t going to leave our poor Rapunzel on a muddy bank, and it worked out better to have the grass layer put in before shading the trees and whatnot.

Here’s the final version, complete with titles added in Photoshop.

Click the image for a larger version

I’ve been looking into Marketing lately. And by lately I mean for the last year, and by “looking into” I mean “desperately trying to figure out.”

Every single bit of marketing advice I found started with one thing: choose your niche.

And that’s where I’d get stuck, every single time. So no matter how clever they were about leveraging your online presence or developing a marketing strategy, I never got that far, because I’d be over there pondering the niche issue.

Cue the recession.

Now, a lot of marketing and small business coaches will tell you there is no problem with the economy, that small businesses and solo professionals all over the place are doin’ it for themselves just fine. To those people, I say, “Bite me.”

When your biggest client is in the financial industry, there is an economy, you cannot stick your head in the sand and deny the recession, and those people make you want to hit things. Preferably them.

So there was more panic and more soul-searching and even a brief flirtation with renaming myself, but in the end it was all just me being a big avoidy-pants about choosing a niche. I was Wembling — waffling, panicking, flailing and wailing, all to keep from having to make this one decision.

It turns out, I was doing it wrong.

The thing is, from all the vague hand-wavey instructions I’d seen about choosing your niche, it was Really Important to be marketing just in one narrow market, because that gets you the best results. And I was interpreting that to mean I had to pick one industry, and start marketing just to them, which is what most marketing gurus either implied or explicitly stated. Except that wasn’t what I wanted, didn’t feel genuine, and thus I encountered this giant block of resistance. To the point where I was considering a whole host of other, stupider options, just to avoid making this one decision.

So I sat myself down, and opened up the Destuckification Sampler I’d downloaded. And calmed myself the heck down, so instead of imitating Wembley Fraggle, I had more of a Mokey thing going on.

Then I paid Naomi from Ittybiz a ridiculously paltry sum to join her new program, and she kindly carved out some time for me that wasn’t on the phone, and wasn’t email — she actually got onto Google Chat with me, which is my brain-fueling format of text and waiting and getting to go back later and see what the other person said. Except with much more immediacy than email.

And in less than an hour, I had a niche. And you know what? It was exactly what I’d been doing all along — a little of this, a little of that, and a whole lot of helping out small businesses who didn’t know where to look for help.

Because here’s the thing — Naomi is smart. She knew that a niche could be “design for monster truck rally promoters,” but that it could also be “one-stop shopping design for small businesses on a budget.” Which I did not know. But now the latter one is my niche.

Even as I type this, cogs are whirling and things are in motion to solidify my niche, including a convenient package of services for a single up-front price. Because I forget that the hardest part about starting a business is as much bracing yourself for scary sticker shock as it is finding a designer whose work you like. And apparently, unbeknownst to me, there’s a million web designers but not very many of us left who are comfortable doing print, too. And a brand new small business needs more than just a website, which of course I knew, because I work with small businesses all the time.

And soon, more of them will know that I know it, and hopefully pay me to do it.

It’s just me and my cats here, so I tend to do household chores on a pretty simple “as needed” schedule, with a few things that get done every other day.

Putting this schedule together has taught me a lot about my work habits, and when my brain will get in the way of getting stuff done.

For instance, the cat boxes. Gross chore, right? Stinky, heavy, dusty, ick. But here’s the thing — I had worked it up in my mind that it was also a time-consuming chore, lots of hard work! And so I tended to put it off until the last possible moment, to my cat’s utter disgust. (Bella got revenge by barfing on things. It was not good for either of us. And that was before the kitten!) Then one day, I sat down and sent an IM to a friend — brb, going to do the cat box. I trudged around, cleaned the box, washed my hands, and sat back down to IM — all done, back!

Much to my surprise, less than two full minutes had passed between messages.

I had spent far more effort avoiding this chore than I the effort it took to just get up and do it. So now when it comes in the schedule, I don’t drag my feet and put it off, because I know that it only takes two minutes. And when it’s done both my cats and I are all relieved.

How does this get applied to work? Well, if I get an email from a client asking about something I know will take less than five minutes, I do it right then. And then, instead of them waiting for my reply until it coms around on the to-do list, and me putting it off or forgetting about it in a ton of other emailed requests, we’re both relieved. And my clients think I’m awesome, and are more inclined to forgive when something else takes an extra day or two.

The second chore I tend to put off is dishes, and this one is where I found the really hard lesson.

I am really, really prone to overwhelm.

When I’ve been eating at home from leftovers and pre-prepared foods, then two days is just about right to have a sink full of dishes and use up one good squirt of dishwashing liquid, with most everything fitting in the drainer. I find the process itself kind of Zen, warming and soothing at once, letting my mind wander (well, as long as I don’t drop anything).

But if I’ve been cooking, or had people over, then there’s extra dishes. And that’s when I hit Dish Overwhelm — as soon as there’s more dishes than I can readily wash in one go, I start putting them off, feeling powerless and overwhelmed, and then more dishes pile up and nothing gets done.

See where this is going?

I made beer bread yesterday — it was delicious, btw — and now I have extra bowls and dishes piled up around my sink, overflowing the area and causing both physical and mental clutter. But I don’t want to wash them. Just looking in there makes me all tense and unhappy, driving away that warm, sudsy dishwashing Zen I was talking about earlier. The pile is too big and it feels like I’ve let it go too long (even though it’s dish day by my normal schedule), and so my instinct is to avoid it, let the pile grow even bigger, and blow my schedule completely.

Enter work, and the power of the to-do list.

Productivity blogs everywhere will tell you to have a master to-do list, and a daily list. My problem is, as soon as I start looking at that master list I get a big case of overwhelm and I don’t even want to think about how I’m going to get it all done with only five measly slots per day and more things coming in all the time.

So I procrastinate, play Facebook games, and generally let the problem get worse until I run out of dishes — well, okay, until deadlines force me into last-minute rushing. Or they whoosh past and guilt piles on with the overwhelm. That’s always extra fun.

How do I avoid this? By not keeping the master list.

I have deadlines noted down in my calendar, and I keep those in mind when I make my daily to-do list, but that master list is kept out of sight. I just deal with the small pile in front of me, 5 tasks per day (I slack on weekends and only do 3, or count things like “relax” and “hang out with friends” as tasks), and then tomorrow there’ll be another pile. The overwhelm is still there sometimes, looming especially when I sit down to make a daily list, but it’s not as scary as it would be if I had a giant list.

The thing is, a 5-task to-do list is a bunch of items I know I can succeed on today. The giant list of everything I need to do in the next few weeks/months/whatever is just an invitation to think of all the ways it can fail to get any of them done.

One sink full of dishes? I know I can do that. When it overflows onto countertops and starts to really pile up, that’s an invitation to dropped glasses, unwashed corners, and failure.

For next time, perhaps we can manage a pithy commentary on how taking out the trash is like marketing (my two most hated things in life), and how to outsource the stuff you shouldn’t be doing (like, say, vacuuming). Not to mention the bigger chores, like cleaning the bathroom and updating your website.

Until then, I have dishes to wash, cat boxes to clean, and the trash to take out. Wish me luck!

This fall, my friend Jeff commissioned me to paint a gift for his wife, for a combination 5th anniversary and Christmas present. It was an interesting challenge keeping it a secret for two months, but the moment of presentation was a smashing success!

Here’s a bit of the process, for the curious…

The worst thing in the world: a blank canvas.

Look, color!

And here’s a little more, getting in the shadows and a vague hint of what will someday be the background.

You can see my references taped to the easel now, or some of them, anyway, and the blocked-in color for the ghost ship.

Some detail going in on the ship:

More ship, and some foliage!

Rawr! He’s a little toothless, but he’ll get his later.

And now we block in our mermaid! The real star of the painting.

Our shark has teeth, and the mermaid has some color now.

Texture on her tail, and a whole lot of kelp.

All done except for the lighting. Little fishies!

And here’s the final! Click the image for a bigger version:

Recently Copyblogger reminded me of a very important principle in blogging, writing, and many other everyday sorts of tasks: consistency wins.

In my everyday life, this most often comes up when playing Mouse Hunt on Facebook — if I sound the Hunter’s Horn every fifteen minutes consistently (or at least once an hour, so other people can take me along on their hunts), then it doesn’t matter if any given catch is a bust, because overall I’ll keep making progress in the game.

Blogging’s like that, too — it’s a hard habit to get into, but once you get started, you don’t have to produce Pulitzer-winning gems every time. You just have to keep putting that content out there, and some of it will spark with your readers. Assuming you have readers. (Hi, readers!)

Email can be like that as well, though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend poking at it every fifteen minutes — instead of letting the mail pile up until there’s hundreds of old emails you never want to see again, make sure that keep up with replies, do the stuff that’s small as soon as it comes in, and keep filing or deleting whenever possible. You might find an email or two still falling through the cracks, getting deleted before the project it was reminding you to do is done or ending up sliding into your spam folder, but overall you’ll keep ahead of the game.

Cleaning can be that way, too — five minutes clearing off the counters can help, even if you don’t have time to mop, scrub and bleach to your heart’s content. But you have to do something every day, or entropy sets in.

So, if you’re a business wanting to start blogging, here’s my best advice: start blogging. Put it in the schedule, make yourself sit down and be consistent. It doesn’t matter if some of your posts are more like pyrite than pure gold, as long as you keep polishing them up and setting them on the shelf for people to see for themselves.

My friend Gretchen commissioned me to paint her a giant squid to go over her mantle. We agreed on 24×36, and after many months of slowness on my part acquiring the iridescent paint (He is about 95% iridescent or pearlescent. Shiny!), working and reworking his background, and finally getting him painted in and then made to not look bad, I have… SQUID!

For the curious, here’s a bit of his process. Note how the bottom edge of the easel matches the bottom of the painting — you can see I’m a very careful, precise sort of artist. 😉

The original Background:

Change #1, plus original smaller squid:

More background changes, and o no Mr. Squid!

The new squid. Sort of.

This is what Jeff calls “past the ass point”, where I am no longer ashamed to have painted it:

Suckers! And pupils! And then he stared at me for a week…

Then we darkened up his fins to match, and gave him lighting. The bubbles you see below were the very last thing added.

And here we see the final squid! His name is Nugget. I will say that none of the photos really capture the color well, and nothing can really make you see the shiny that it is in person. It’s subtle, but awesome.

Click the squid for bigger squid!

It’s been a strange year for me so far, but I can’t say it’s really bad. Well, except for the stomach flu, that was all bad.

I’m having a slow, frustrating divorce from one of my oldest and best clients — they have less and less money for spending on a designer, and I find myself less and less interested in the things they need from me. Unfortunately, we’re both stuck in a cycle of dependence. I need them to pay my rent. They need me to keep their site updated. But we both, in our own ways, want out.

So, how do you break up with a client and have it end well for everyone?

I’ll start with the caveat that each situation is different. In this case, I don’t think cold turkey would be the way to go for either of us. They don’t have anyone on staff who could do what I do, and when they looked into replacing me they found out that I’m actually very reasonably priced for what they get out of me.

The problem is, it’s just not what either of us wants anymore, so this is what I’ve begun and will continue to do:

• Aggressively explore other avenues of income that are more in line with what I really want to do, rather than the work I’ve fallen into doing — art and Design versus back-end coding and endless forms.
• Take more fine art and illustration commissions, which I’ve already begun to do.
• Really work on getting better at my technique and improve my skill and speed, so that making art is a good value for my time for both myself and my new clients.
• Create some stock vector art and niche websites for passive income streams.
• Find other ways to be creative that I will enjoy and make money off of, like selling small handmade items at Etsy.com.
• Finish that novella and see if I can’t find an e-Pub to sell to.
• Learn as much about Marketing my own work as I can.
• Make an effort to hook into the local art community and surround myself with people who are encouraging, creative, or both.
• Keep supporting the client for as long as they need me, and try to find ways to make the work I have for them less time-consuming and more efficient for both of us.

That last is, in a lot of ways, the most important — I don’t want either of us to build up a lot of resentment. In the end, I know that they don’t want to have to figure out a new designer any more than I want to figure out how to replace the income, but I get (oh how do I get) that money is tight and it’s hard for them to see the benefits of such an abstract investment.

Still, they’ve been a loyal client for so long it’s hard to imagine being freelance without them, so I want to make sure that the relationship ends amicably. When the time comes, I’ll make sure to give them their files, and let them know I’m here if they need me. I won’t be the ex-girlfriend who put your guitar in a blender, but the one who mailed back your childhood ornaments when she found them in with her Christmas stuff.

Or at least, that’s what I’ll try for!