This past week, I’ve converted the design of 2 websites into a blog theme or template. One of the site needs a matching Wordpress Theme for their site and the other one needs a matching Blogger Template.

The 2 sites were Atheist Action and LowCards.com.

Atheist Action needs to convert their site’s design into a Wordpress Theme and LowCards.com needs to convert their site’s design into a Blogger Template. Both sites needed the conversion so that their blogs would look like their main site.

Consistency in design is important to a website. A consistent design or look and feel adds unity to the website. It makes each page or section a part of the entire website. A website with an inconsistent design will look very unprofessional and may confuse the average internet user.

So, if your blog’s theme or template doesn’t match your main website’s design then don’t hesitate to contact me. I’ll be able to convert your main website’s design into a Wordpress Theme, Blogger Template and even into a Blogsome Template.

As a freelancer, I do all my personal marketing. From writing articles, free designs, forum postings, classified advertising, guestbook and blog hopping, social bookmarking, tagging, pinging, web directory submissions and anything I can think of to promote and market myself and my service. The latest one is starting a small shop in Second Life.Second Life? Second Life or SL is a virtual world created by Linden Labs. It is very much like the real world where people can interact with each like sell goods and services, hold events, collaborate on projects, etc. It is also like the internet but instead of 2D webpages you see everything in 3D.

I saw this as an opportunity to further extend the reach of my website design service. With more than a million users logging in to SL each month, it is very promising. Of course, like with websites, you don’t build one and expect people to come. I must also advertise, market and promote my shop in Second Life. There are lots of ways to do it.

My shop in Second Life is not all about my first life profession, it also sells virtual items I designed. As of this writing, I have men’s undershirts for sale in my shop.

You don’t have to own land in SL to setup a shop. Rentable spaces are everywhere. I spent like an entire day shopping for one that is within my current SL budget. My current rent is 50 L$ per week and it is located in a very nice place above the clouds. LOL!

There are hundreds of shops in SL that offer both real life and virtual goods and services. Real life businesses are starting to take notice and have contributed in one way or another. Examples are:

• Sky News has a virtual newsroom, where vistiors can visit the newsroom and see how Sky News is made, reporters and presenters also can be seen from time to time. Also all visitors can take home a TV to watch Sky News
• Toyota have offered a virtual replica of the Scion xB
• MTV held a fashion show which was later broadcasted on G-Hole, a show on MTV’s IPTV channel, Overdrive
• MLB.com broadcast the Home Run Derby and a Red Sox-Yankees game into SL, with the help of the Electric Sheep Company
• ABN AMRO Bank has opened a virtual branch in Second Life
• click here for more

I find this new arena very interesting and it didn’t take too much from me to start one but starting was the easy part of it. The difficult part is getting noticed and eventually becoming successful!

The cost of designing and creating websites has gone down considerably in the fast few years. In fact, what I’m charging today for design was much, much lower compared to what I was charging when I started freelancing but $30 (£15) for a basic website is kinda hitting the ground, hard.If that price was for a design template then I can understand it because you’ll just have to provide the design and then the client will do the rest but for a website where you have to design, format/layout the content, create matching graphics, etc. on each page of the site, that’s like working for free. Heck, the stress you’ll get from working with a very difficult client is even worth much more than that.

Where did I get this $30 website info? I got it from an e-mail somewhere although I can’t verify the authenticity of the claim since I don’t know anyone who charges $30 or less for a website. I believe that the current on-going freelance rate for a basic website is more or less around $200.

Freelancers like myself charge lower because we are not burdened by big overhead cost but we still have to pay for our hosting and domain name fees and electric, telephone and internet bills. Don’t forget the fact that we also need to eat at least 3 times a day.