As great as technology is, when it comes to finding the time to completely immerse yourself in your work, let’s face it – the same technology we depend on can just as quickly turn into a major hindrance. Being a web designer, the very nature of my job requires that I spend the majority of my workday online – which makes it that much more important that I take extra care not to get easily sidetracked.

While the suggestions below are mostly common sense, and quite frankly nothing you probably haven’t already heard, sometimes you need a bit of a reminder – myself included! These are all tried and true tricks that work, as long as you commit yourself to sticking to them.

Sending out a big “Thank You” to BizCard for their gracious offer of 1,500 business cards to three of my readers, and of course, thank you to everyone who entered and who helped spread the word about the contest.

And the Winners Are…

I’m happy to announce a new giveaway on the blog today!

BizCard, an Eco-Friendly online printer, has recently offered me 1,500 business cards to giveaway to three of my readers. That’s right, three of you are less than a week away from winning 500 business cards!

Eco-Friendly Printing Solutions

What’s unique about BizCard is that they specialize in Eco-Friendly printing. With today’s focus on going green, it is nice to come across a printing company who helps you promote your business by printing your marketing materials – all while being responsible to the environment.

So, what’s in it for you and how can you win?

Just a very quick note to ask you to please pardon the dust on the web site and blog – especially if you are subscribed to the feed!

The last few weeks have found me hard at work moving the site to a new web hosting company, Blue Host (which happens to be the #1 recommended web host by WordPress).

Making The Most of My Time

Having the freedom of a private server address that worked separately from the live site, this served as the perfect opportunity to make several upgrades to the site itself – both in terms of the WordPress theme, as well as some of the content.

If you are one of the over 200 million people with a Facebook account, there’s no doubt that you’ve heard all of the hype over Facebook usernames and vanity URL’s.

These initially became available for both personal profiles and fan pages at 12:01am EST on June 13, 2009. I for one was among those who stayed up late on a Saturday night to get a vanity URL for my own personal profile.

Like many others, however, my fan page was fairly new, and did not meet the initial requirement of having 1,000 fans in order to get a fan page username. That would come later…

The Second Wave = Mass Confusion?

This past weekend, on June 29th, Facebook opened up the second wave of fan page username registration. However, it didn’t come without a bit of controversy and confusion…

Today’s post started out as a short one, to thank the Geek Girls Network for asking me to participate in their interview series. But I soon realized that I’ve been interviewed several times in the last year, and wanted to share those with you, as well.

Most of the interviews focus on my experiences as a web designer, business owner, and as someone who has recently taken the freelance plunge.

I’m honored to have been asked to interview by so many great bloggers – they all ask some very interesting questions, which give you a bit of an insight as to what makes this “geek girl” tick…

Within the last few months, I have written several guest posts on Freelance Folder that focus on topics relating to web site design and development. As I spread my wings in the blogging world, I’ve recently been approached by Mashable about contributing a WordPress related post to their blog.

Mashable is the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news. With more than 6 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is the most prolific blog reviewing new Web sites and services, publishing breaking news on what’s new on the web and offering social media resources and guides.

Given Mashable’s popularity, you can imagine my surprise at the invitation – one that I could not turn down!

Top 10 WordPress Plugins to Promote Your Social Media Profiles

First and foremost, I want to thank everyone for the congratulations on reaching my first anniversary of being a full time freelancer! It’s been an amazing first year, and I can’t wait to see what is in store for my second year!

Of course, it goes without saying that I’d like to thank everyone who entered the giveaway, and UPrinting for sponsoring the prizes.

And The Winners Are…

It’s sometimes difficult to believe how quickly time flies…

One year ago today, I took the plunge towards running my own web design business full time, by giving my two weeks notice at work. In two short weeks, I’ll officially be celebrating the one year anniversary of being a full time freelancer!

To commemorate this milestone, I’m hosting a giveaway!

I was approached last summer by UPrinting with an offer for free business card printing, in exchange for a sponsored review. Just starting out on my own full time, it was perfect timing for a new set of business cards to help promote my business.

UPrinting has contacted me again with a similar offer – but this time I’m able to give back to my readers by offering a giveaway!

Given the complexities of the various phases of the web design and development process – including many variables often revolving around pending client feedback – I have often wondered how other web designers go about scheduling their own projects.

Status Quo

Although I officially started my web design company, iDesign Studios, in 2001 – it was originally nothing more than a bit of side work here or there. It wasn’t until the last couple years that I finally had the drive and determination to take my business to the next level.

Next month marks my one year anniversary of having quit my day job to run my company full time, and things have been steadily getting busier. Up until recently, my general policy on scheduling new projects was to start work on them immediately upon receipt of a signed contract and 50% deposit, delivering each major phase within one week (with two to three business days for minor revisions).

With this method, my workload has been (for the most part) completely manageable… until the moon and stars align, and I get hit with three or four people sending in their contracts and deposits over a two day period – leaving me with a very busy week ahead!

I’ve found this to be happening more and more frequently lately, and realize it’s finally time to re-evaluate my scheduling process.