Now, my work is primarily all about fonts in terms of choosing the right ones and using them properly.

But I ran across something the other day that I wish I had when I started. It’s a nice PDF of font combinations that work well together, especially in subhead/body copy usage.

It is just one person’s opinion, but if you’re starting out and totally lost, one person’s opinion is a big help.

From the list on the BonFX site, I favor the Myriad/Minion combo. I also use Myriad/Garamond a lot. Like any designer, I actually use a number of combos, but those two work really well for the types of projects I do.

I could comment on this video interview, but it would be a waste of your time and I don’t want to influence your interpretation of what he’s saying.

Just watch the interview and take from it what you can.

He addresses how you might respond when someone says, “I’m sorry, I like your proposal, but your price is too high.”

For the record, I think they’re great suggestions. But I’d like to add two more.

1. Walk away without any negotiation.

OK, it takes guts to walk away if you don’t already have a full calendar. I’m not even saying this is a great suggestion. Just pointing out that it is an option you might choose from time to time.

I’ve taken this step myself more than once. When it comes to certain projects that I have a lot of experience with, I know what it’s worth to me. And there are times, albeit rare, that some of Huggins’ excellent suggestions don’t work with the prospect.

In other words, you don’t want to give and they don’t either. Not exactly the Win-Win we read about in the negotiation books, but it can happen for legitimate reasons.

You’re not going to be the best fit for every project that comes your way. And you need to respect that just because you think a project is worth X amount of dollars to you, it may not be worth that much to the prospect. That’s OK.

Don’t always look at it as the prospect being cheap. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. Sometimes, the fit just isn’t there.

When it happens to me, I wish the prospect well, thank them for contacting me, and leave it open that a future project might be something to discuss. Let me quickly point out, though, that when you’re seen as someone who won’t budge, you may be immediately scratched off the “call-back” list. That’s a risk you’d need to be willing to take.

So let’s be clear again… this isn’t the best option. Try to avoid walking away. Instead, try to make it work. But realize that sometimes it just won’t.

2. Maybe your prices really are way off base.

This is actually what prompted me to write this article. Sometimes your quote is way outside what might be considered normal and the prospect is right: Your price is too high.

It’s important you consider this scenario, especially if you’re new to freelancing or bidding on new types of projects. Ideally, you’ve done some research to find out the average prices of  projects you want to work on. But beginners stumble over this issue time and time again. Unfortunately, they lose out on a number of projects before they somehow learn how to price projects better.

There are resources to help you price projects, but the one I’m most familiar with is written by Lori Haller: The Ultimate Guide to Building a Highly Profitable Graphic Design Business

Lori is pro through and through, so just learning from her experiences in this book is a great thing. But there’s also a price-range list for common direct market design projects. If you have nothing else, this is a good place to start researching to build your own price list.

So, yes… try to go with Huggins’ advice. But keep my two points tucked away in the back of your mind just in case.

I’m kind of tying this article in with my last article on Chambers networking events. At that end of that article, I linked to an article I wrote long ago on how to approach networking events.

If there’s anyone who knows how to master networking, it’s Dr. Misner. I was reminded of this as I read an article of his in the November/December 2009 issue of Networking Times magazine.

Networking Times is primarily focused on network marketers. However, I’ve found that most of the articles in each issue are easily applied to any business. In that issue, Dr. Misner talks about a couple of things I talked about in my article on how to make the most of networking events. For example, he mentions getting a professionally-made name badge and acting like a host at networking events, not a guest.

Obviously, Dr. Misner didn’t get those ideas from my article. In fact, as a former member of BNI, I probably got those ideas from him or the BNI organization in general.

But as I was thinking about all this, I remembered a conference call I was on where Dr. Misner was a guest. With a relatively small number of people taking part in the call, we each had a chance to ask Dr. Misner a question. While I can’t recall what I asked, I do remember a brilliant piece of advice he gave.

I figured I couldn’t explain it any better than he could, so I scoured the Internet and found where he described the same idea he told us on the call. Sure enough, I found this article – Shape up Your Business With Networking Aerobics – where Dr. Misner explains “open or closed two and threes.” It’s point #4 in the article.

It’s brilliant stuff. It’s even more brilliant if you consider yourself the shy type and not sure how to approach a room full of people you don’t know.

By the way, I’ve said this before (and it’s a bit harsh) but I’ll say it again since it applies: At a networking event, nobody cares that you’re shy. Either get over it on your own, or join a group like Toastmasters to help you speak with confidence.

I’ve run into more than a few people at networking events and seminars who are really shy. In fact, it’s the only thing they’re not shy about: Telling other people how shy they are. I’m obviously not a psychologist, but these folks seem to take more-than-healthy bit of comfort in being shy and letting other people know about it. However, as a freelancer, it really doesn’t serve you well.

I don’t consider myself either shy or out-going. But I understood early on that if I was going to make any progress in networking and as a freelancer, I was going to have to get over any issues I might have facing groups of people I didn’t know. In some cases, I’ve faked it… I pretended to be more out-going than I really was. Nobody knew, nobody cared.

I’ve also mentioned that as a Chamber Ambassador, part of the job was to be a host at Chamber networking events. That was actually a big help to me… I had to be out-going since it was part of the job as an Ambassador. It’s almost like an actor who has to take on a new personality as part of a role.

I’m not saying you should be a fake, insincere person. I’m saying you sometimes have to step a bit outside of yourself to achieve your goals. That might include playing some mental games with yourself so you’re not focused on whatever fear you might have in new situations.

Hopefully, over time, those temporary qualities you adopt for these situations will become a real part of your everyday personality that benefits your business and the people you associate with.

I knew that would bug some people. The headline of the article itself was intended to grab attention. (I do have a copywriting background, after all.)

But I didn’t write the article to annoy people. I wrote it because I believe it and I want to give you something to think about. In the end, it doesn’t matter whether you agree with me or not. In fact, if all I’ve done is cause you to re-commit to an opinion that’s totally opposite of mine, that’s a good thing.

Today, I found this article taking me to task for my article. Looks like it was written a year ago, but some things that are brought up are worth commenting on.

Frank Kenny writes:

I wish he would have allowed comments.

I don’t allow comments on either of my blogs because I don’t have the time to address people who comment on a regular basis. If you take the time I post a comment, I feel I owe you the respect of a response. But I just can’t these days… business is good, free time is short. That’s why my own participation in other blogs is way down.

And, sad to say, there seems to be a lot of people who make it their mission to be disruptive on blogs whether it’s with rude, disrespectful comments, or spam. Again, I just don’t have the time to deal with it.

Having said that, I’m never opposed to including a well thought-out rebuttal in a future article if you want to contact me directly. Or posting an article that links to your own blog where you have a different point of view. In fact, that’s what I’m doing with Mr. Kenny’s article. I wish I had known about it long before now.

He fails to mention being of service. He is all about “what’s in it for me”. People like this are horrible networkers because all they want to do is take.

Actually, I failed to mention lots of things. It was already a long article. I could have written pages and pages more.

But for the record, I’m not all about “what’s in it for me.” I was a Chamber Ambassador, on the board of the Chamber Ambassadors (even nominated for Ambassador of the Year), on numerous committees, etc. My trouble ended up being that I was giving too much at the expense of my freelance business. (Same thing with being in Rotary.)

Going beyond that, the seminars/classes I’ve taught, these blog articles to share my experiences with other freelancers… that doesn’t come from someone who is selfish. I’m not sure how Mr. Kenny could read the original article and come to that conclusion, unless he thought I was lying when I wrote:

Years later, when I became a freelance writer, I had the some of the best times of my professional life volunteering as a chamber Ambassador and getting involved in the community in ways I had never done before. Some of the people that I worked with on various committees remain good friends even though I’m no longer a member of any chamber.

So, again, I have nothing against chambers in general.

But his point about people who are just in it for themselves being horrible networkers is spot-on. In fact, that’s one of the main reasons why Chamber networking events can be such a waste of your time… the people who are just in it for themselves.

To a certain degree, you have to have a bit of “what’s in it for me” in you. You’re not running a charity… you’re running a freelancer copywriting or design business. You have bills to pay. There does come a point where you have to be on the receiving end of things.

You can only control your own actions and attitudes, though. It’s a nice idea that you can change people and their attitude about networking. And given enough time and effort, you could probably make good progress in changing other people. But we always have to come back to the reality that, as a freelancer, you have limited time and probably limited financial resources. If you’re not focused on the right things, you’ll soon be out of business. (And then the Chamber loses, too, because you’ll have to stop being a paying member.)

Glad he is not a member of my chamber.

I interpret that comment as one coming for a person who is personally hurt that I strongly said something he didn’t agree with. Otherwise, I’m not sure why you’d say something like that without really knowing me or developing a deeper understanding of why I believe what I believe if it’s not making any sense to you. It would be unfair to expect anyone to read every blog post I’ve written here or elsewhere, but I think it would create a very clear picture of my attitude toward giving. It’s a shame to apparently be judged like that off of one blog article that holds an opposing view.

It’s not bragging for me to say I was a valued member of my Chamber because of all the volunteer time I put in to help make my Chamber as good as it could be. They were sad when I moved away because it’s hard to find people who are willing to put in so much extra volunteer time. (And can do so during “business” hours because of my flexible freelance hours.) Chambers would be much stronger if more people would find ways to pitch in.

I would have been a valued member of Mr. Kenny’s Chamber, too. But because I criticized one aspect of Chamber membership, I guess I’m marked as selfish, despite my comments in the original article and my service to my own Chamber at the time.

Addressing some of the other comments made by others in Mr. Kenny’s post, I would agree that Chambers need to do a better job of helping people understand what might be realistic in their networking environment. I don’t think my Chamber did a really good job at that time. And part of that blame falls on me as someone who was on the Ambassador Board. The beauty of 20-20 hindsight, eh?

And I would also agree that Chambers do far more to help businesses than just hold monthly networking events. But that still doesn’t mean Chamber membership is the best thing for you, much less their networking events.

There are very few, if any, Chambers that have unlimited resources. So they have to make tough decisions on what they can offer, now more than ever. That means they can’t be all things to all people. So it’s not being selfish for you to examine whether you’re getting good value from your Chamber or any of their events. While it might not be fair, for beginning or struggling freelancers, “good value” can sometimes be nothing less than “paid projects.”

I stand by everything I said in the original article including how Chambers have a tendency to create an atmosphere of “attend our event to make sales.” Unfortunately, it’s natural for smaller businesses that are struggling to go into those events with that mindset.

If you get a roomful of people like that, it’s not so much a matter of them all being selfish, although I’m sure some are. Instead, I think it’s more about not being educated by their Chamber or still being totally unrealistic if their Chamber does have an educational program in place. (And as someone said, that might be as simple as Chamber Ambassador becoming something of a “big brother, big sister” to the new member.)

I also need to point out that my article was in a narrow focus of freelance copywriters and designers and using your networking time most efficiently. We are sometimes seen as a luxury. At best, people know the value of what we do and would love to hire us, but simply can’t afford us. Again, that’s something even more prevalent in this economic environment than it was when I wrote the original article. At some point, you have to move on to better opportunities. (And I gave ideas for that in my original article.)

I didn’t say you shouldn’t join a Chamber. I didn’t say you shouldn’t attend Chamber networking events.  I didn’t say there’s no value at all in talking to the non-bigwigs of a company. I certainly didn’t say you should go in with a “what’s in it for me” attitude.

What I did say was that these events may not be the most efficient use of your time. I did say that, given limited time, there might be better opportunities for you, the copywriter or designer.

And here’s what I did say from my original article (with copywriters and designers in mind):

To network efficiently and to land projects that will help you reach your financial goals, you need to be where your best clients are. My guess is they’re not sitting next to you at a chamber breakfast once a month.

That’s just my opinion based on my experience and the experience of writer/designer colleagues across the U.S. If your Chamber is different, I am truly happy for you. In fact, I’d like to hear about it and post it here. If you’re a freelance copywriter or designer, send me your positive Chamber networking event story and a link to your site so I can consider it for inclusion on this blog.

I want to end with a link to a PDF. It’s an article I wrote several years ago called, 12 Steps to Make Networking Events Successful. That was based on lots of Chamber events I attended, first as a total newcomer (and pretty-much a know-nothing networker), then as an Ambassador with a lot more experience under my belt.

What’s kind of funny (or sad, I suppose) about the situation is that the person has no clue whether my message is worth copying because he has no idea what the results have been with that message. I consider myself a successful direct market designer, but that certainly doesn’t mean everything I try in the marketing realm works successfully.

It’s natural when you’re starting out to pull whatever lessons you can from those who have gone before you. That’s the whole purpose of this blog: To share what I’ve learned the way other people shared with me when I was starting. But there’s a difference between letting something be an inspiration to you as you develop your own style and message, and simply copying it.

As quickly as possible, you really should come up with your own message based on your goals, your experience, your personality, etc. And don’t be silly enough to think that what you see in someone else’s marketing is actually working effectively. One thing worse than copying someone is copying their bad ideas.

I could sit down with you and go over everything I’ve done to make my business successful. But if you tried to apply those things exactly to your business, it’s likely you wouldn’t have the exact same results. There are just too many variables and intangible things that can’t be passed along in a conversation or copied from someone else’s marketing.

You’re going to have a much higher rate of success when you’re coming up with your own marketing ideas that mesh with your goals, experience and personality. If you’re not experienced with marketing, buy a book on the topic and see what makes sense to you based on thorough discussions of why certain ideas work or don’t work. Or consult with a marketing expert.

To close… a couple of FYI items for you:

1. The direct marketing world, in particular, is a small universe. Seems like everyone knows everyone else. Good stories or bad, word about you will spread… fast. (Even faster in these days of Twitter and Facebook.) Just something to be aware of.

2. There are no secrets on the Internet. And there are tools that can find if material has been copied from another site. Don’t think that because you’re not a big name, people won’t discover if you’ve, to put it politely, taken some shortcuts.

Be confident about what you offer and what makes you unique, and then chart your own path… don’t be riding on the coat-tails of someone else as they travel their own path.

Looking at the pasted text in the e-mail, I realized a sentence in one paragraph might be a candidate for getting chopped. So just to make things easier, I separated all paragraphs into single-sentence paragraphs. I figured it might make it easier for the other person to either comment on the copy or to line it out if it was weak.

Wow! What a difference that made in evaluating the effectiveness of each and every sentence. I don’t know if it will help the person I’m sending the copy to. But I suddenly had a much better sense of whether each sentence was pulling its own weight.

As many of you know, I can write long articles full of long paragraphs. But that does make it harder to see where there might be waste.

When it comes to your marketing copy, waste is a bad thing.

So this tip might be something to try with the copy on your website. Copy and paste it into some other document, then break paragraphs into single sentences. Looking at those sentences by themselves should make it much easier to see if it has any value to your overall message. (And when you’re done, feel free to put things back into paragraph form. I’m not suggesting your sales copy is completely single-sentence paragraphs.)

This year, I’ve been thinking a lot about where I am with my business and where I want to be. Overall, I’ve had a lot of success, but have been thinking it’s time to take it to a much higher level. When you start seriously focusing on that, an amazing thing happens: The right people and circumstances seem to appear out of nowhere. (You may have heard the old saying, When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.)

But while this has been going on for me, I’ve also been running into a lot of hopeful copywriters and designers who are, as I phrased it a moment ago, spinning their wheels. Obviously I don’t know the details of everyone’s circumstances, but here’s what I can tell you based on people I’ve talked to since I started as a freelancer some years ago. About 5% of the folks who want to make a change in their career haven’t done so for valid reasons. For example, in addition to working a full-time job and managing a family, they’re also responsible for a seriously ailing family member.

The trouble is, the other 95% seems to think that they’re in that valid 5%. Those “95%” folks are certainly busy, but these days everyone is busy and probably struggling to some degree. Yet the ones who are serious about making a change find a way to do it, even if it means sacrificing what little free time and resources they have. In fact, I dare say it’s impossible to make a career change without some level of sacrifice. Unfortunately, these people won’t face the reality that they’re never going to get around to making a change. They fool themselves by reading and posting on blogs, or buying (and even reading) books that they’ll never put into practice.

Doing that gives you the illusion of making progress. But if you’re never taking what you’re reading and putting it into practice, the best you can say is that you’re becoming a professional reader or web surfer. Of course, if you’re not getting paid for that, strike the word professional from the previous sentence.

That brings us to Jeremy Tuber’s book, Being a Starving Graphic Artist Sucks. I’ve mentioned Tuber’s other book, Verbal Kung-Fu for Freelancers, here. As for BASAS, I just finished it. At just over 500 pages, this isn’t a glossing-over of how to succeed as a designer. This book covers so much, it’s simply easier for me to link to the book’s table of contents so you can see for yourself what it covers.

Pleasantly, this is an easy read. Tuber gets right to the point on each topic, so you’ll move through the book at a quick pace. If you’re a struggling designer and can’t find at least one action step from each section, you’re simply not paying attention.

But here’s where I want to tie things in to what I said earlier about the folks spinning their wheels. This book is filled with many, many ways to get off to a great start and begin notching some victories. Even if you’ve been freelancing for a bit, I think you’ll find helpful hints or new distinctions on certain topics just like I did. For example, if I had better known and appreciated the difference between a logo design and a concept design when I was starting out, I might not have developed such an intense distaste for logo design. (See page 47 in the book.) And the chapter, “Think Only Kids Tell Stories?” (page 267), should be required reading by every designer who thinks hanging a virtual OPEN FOR BUSINESS sign is good enough.

So, bottom line, I recommend this book without reservation for those who are serious about putting the advice and ideas to use.

Having said that, don’t bother buying this book (or any other for that matter) unless you intend to put it to use. You know if you’re one who has been making excuses about starting a freelance design career. As we approach the beginning of a new year, this is a natural time to start planning what you intend to do in 2010. Not what you would like to do, but what you intend to do. If you intend to make a design career happen, this book is going to help you. If you simply like the feeling that you’re making progress when you’re really not, save your money. In fact – and this may be harsh, but I’ll say it anyway – it may be time to get really honest with yourself and move on to something else. There’s no shame in giving up a “dream” if you’re never really going to move it from a dream in your head to real, measurable action.

I’m hoping you’re going to make it real and just need a kick in the rear-end.

By the way, if you do consider yourself serious, also look into Tuber’s iTunes album, From Zero to Graphic Design Hero. If quiet reading time is hard to come by, having something you can listen to during your commute or when you and your iPod can get away for a bit is a great use of your time. Tuber’s calm and friendly voice will walk you through some foundational items that will help you build a strong and successful graphic design business. From iTunes, you can see the topics and hear audio samples of each chapter.

But I never want that to stop me from passing along something that I think may help other freelancers, especially when the product is targeted toward freelance designers.

Not that long ago, I included an article from Jeremy Tuber here on the blog. He’s the keeper of the Being a Starving Graphic Artist Sucks website. Conveniently enough, that’s also the name of a book of his that I’m still working my way through.

When I bought my Kindle, one of the first books I downloaded was another book by Tuber, Verbal Kung-Fu For Freelancers. I finally finished it this past week.

If you click on that link, you’ll see all the topics he covers. Bottom line: this is a great resource for common client questions/issues and how you might deal with them.

Now I’ll be honest with you… I wouldn’t deal with some of these situations the way Tuber would, nor is he suggesting that you do. His responses are simply suggestions of how you could deal with similar situations when they come up. And believe me, they will come up.

In fact, I think one of the biggest values of the book is the simple matter of exposing you to the wide range of situations a client can throw at you. And by reading his suggestions on how to deal with them, you’ll start to form your own responses based on your experience, your personality and your situation at the time. Sometimes your responses might be similar to Tuber’s, other times you might take a totally different approach.

If you have no ideas of your own about how to respond, go with what Tuber suggests. The advice is coming from someone who is having success as a freelance designer. That’s the type of person you want to be taking advice from… the “been there, done that” type of person.

Not knowing what to expect is one of the biggest stress points of beginning designers. So when you have a book that lays out over 100 possible scenarios and how to deal with them… well, I trust you can see just how valuable that is.

With Christmas just around the corner, do yourself a favor and treat yourself to Tuber’s two books and his iTunes program. It will help lay a great foundation as your get ready to tackle 2010.

What I do see is lots of people repeating inspiring quotes, or passing along links they find interesting. And some folks do a good job of carrying on some sort of conversation given the 140 character limit. Conversations equal stronger connections and stronger connections can equal future clients.

One thing I have found is that a link included in a tweet is an easy way to get search engines to your site. And that’s a great thing.

Let me explain…

When I post an article on one of my blogs, I usually promote it on Twitter. Almost instantly, I can see via my website stats that the blog article is getting hit by all kinds of search bots.

You might recall in a prior blog post where I said that most hits to my blog come from search results on sites like Google. That’s a great thing because then I’m getting hits to my site that I probably wouldn’t otherwise have. That exposes me to more potential clients. For a freelancer, free exposure is as good as gold.

It almost doesn’t even matter whether any of my Twitter followers read the article (although I hope they will.) The real value is ensuring that the tweet is allowing me to get “scanned” almost immediately and placed into relevant search results. That’s a lot of fantastic promotional heavy lifting for 140 characters worth of info.

While I’m here, let me mention someone worth following: twitter.com/DesignNewz

It’s not often I click on links in tweets. If I did, I wouldn’t have time for client projects. But I find myself clicking on links from DesignNewz more than any other person or group I follow.