Finally, the new look is up and ready. I’m excited as this is a great start to the site.

I believe in giving good first impressions and having a good site design is a great way to start things off. I’m happy with the new look and things are going to get much better from now on.

I want to give a shout out to Kerrie Bracey of PlanetTheme.com (as of this post, the site is still in progress) for the great work she has done.

Finding a great designer who has some internet marketing know-how as well as a good flair for design is a hard combination to find… not to mention absolutely affordable! She made me this design and inclusive of some other works for less than $200. Worth every penny, in my book.

She told me that she’ll be moving off from freelance design to creating premium designs so people can buy it off the shelf rather than having it customized. Great move, Kerrie! We all know that freelancing is only the start and shouldn’t be the final solution to creating a profitable, successful online business.

I found her on the Warrior Forums.

Now, the “Warriors For Hire” section is not just for designers, you’ll see people offering to work in 4 categories – Programmer, Webmaster, Design, Content. I was looking for someone to create a design so I paid attention specifically for Designers.

If you’re there and you want to get people to do your work for you, I highly recommend that you check for these things (applies if you want to outsource your work to someone else anywhere on the internet):

Check for testimonials/reviews – this means you aren’t “victim number 1”. Sometimes, some people here are new and offer their service at low, low, low prices. But that might bring you more headaches because they’re new at dealing with people. So, you might not have a pleasant working experience with the low pricing people. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that high prices will be better – but chances are better than a cheap one.

Shop around – the very first thread you open may not be the best service available. Check through as many of the different competitors as possible. Go on to page two, three and four even. Unlike most forums, people can’t get to the top of the forum by requesting others to post a response. They need to pay to bump it to the top – so be sure to check out the older threads.

Contact them privately – I’ve had this happen a few times, when I posted on the thread to ask something, I actually forgot about it. So, it’s better if you send them a private message and get them to carry on the conversation via email. You can ask more questions and it’s much faster, more flexible. Likewise, if I had created a thread, I would definitely send a private message in response to anyone who posts a reply.

Proportional payment – this only applies to certain threads. Don’t pay up the entire fee straight away. While it doesn’t happen much on this forum, once in a while, people happen to take the money and run. Do a 50-50. 50% of the money to be paid upfront and when the work is delivered, the rest of the 50%. This way, they are motivated to work for you to get the work done. If you send the entire payment, they might take their own sweet time to finish it – which is not what you want.

Remember, the internet is filled with people who can do great work at great prices. The only challenge is to find these people! You don’t have to do everything yourself – there are people in this world who can do things better than you.

Instead of trying to do a mediocre job yourself, get someone to do an excellent job in your place.