I’ve been tested pretty darn good over the past few weeks when it comes to restraint. As a freelance designer, you’ll receive email inquiries from all different kinds of people. Some know a little bit about design, but I’m finding out that most people know diddly squat about the subject…hence the reaching out for help.

The restraint part takes effect when the people reaching out want something done with little to no money to put towards the adventure, almost expecting you to work for free. I wanted to send a really rude email back saying something to the effect of “I’m not coming to you, asking you to work for free” or “you’re a moron”, but then I remind myself that not everyone lives and breathes the design world. Most people don’t understand what goes into making something”look pretty” or how many hours you’ll be staring at the computer screen making things happen, and they surely don’t know how much money you paid to go to design school to be able to call yourself a professional.

So lesson learned-ing is to stop and think before you email a potential client back with a string of profanities or evil stares. It’s really really tough you guys. I’m sure a lot of you know exactly what I’m talking about 🙂

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Hi there guys. I hope the day is treating you well 🙂 I wanted to pop in today and share some of my thoughts about the last blog brunch that happened this past weekend. Where you there?? I wasn’t able to make the first half of the chat, but found several topics of discussion to be very interesting. The whole chat got me thinking about my blog and some things that might need a little more thought.

1. Weekly/Monthly Newsletters: I’ve always been interested in this idea, but wasn’t sure if adding a newsletter would be beneficial to my readers. What do you share? What extra content would be interesting to get. I completely understand why having a newsletter for a small shop would be a great asset in spreading the word about new products, but how can a newsletter help my for my blog?? Would love to hear your thoughts about newsletters in general and also what you’d like to receive in a newsletter.

2. Less Commenting: It was mentioned that less commenting has been a trend recently in blog land. I’ve been noticing this as well and it was reassuring to hear that it’s not just my blog/my content, but an overall trend. I don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing…

3. Search Bars: I really hate search bars and I really want to get rid of mine. Would anyone be disappointed if it just magically disappeared??

4. Viewing Blog Content In Readers: I don’t know why I didn’t think about this before, but a lot of people don’t even come to my blog to read a post!! Shocking, but makes 100% sense. After making this connection, I realized that it is SUPER important that I design/write my blog post content to reflect that knowledge. I’m curious now…who reads blogs in readers versus actually visiting a blog??

That’s it for now. Blog Brunch really got me thinking. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on the topics above.

Get an invite to BlogBrunch here, and catch up on the discussion here (recap)!

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