I’m not 100% sure when they’ll be released, but it’s coming – I promise

Want to see more of the stuff I’m doing? Check out my flickr stream – it’s the place I’ll be uploading sneak peeks until someone gives me a dribbble invite

Thousands of tweets, digg front page hits and thousands of comments come from the articles I write. Here are a select few from that ever-growing list that showcase the excessive amount of tweets, comments and digg front page hits.

Top 12 free Content Management Systems (CMS)
Comments: 177 | Tweets: 333

Biting the bullet: 5 reasons why arguing with unruly clients will get you nowhere
Comments: 47 | Digg: Front Page

20 do’s and don’ts of effective web design
Comments: 82 | Tweets: 971 | Digg: Front Page

20 ways to streamline your web business
Comments: 67 | Tweets: 241

Top 12 free Content Management Systems (CMS)
Comments: 42 | Tweets: 232

Writing I’ve Done Elsewhere – check out the full list and contact me if you’d like for me to write on your blog.

I knew the style looked familiar and reminded me of Abduzeedo, but I couldn’t find the tutorial with a quick search of the tutorial category. However, when I typed in the url from Grafpedia into copyscape, it brought up the Abduzeedo tutorial that was posted back in November 2009!

Check some of the screen shots below of the Grafpedia article in case they remove it and then I’ll discuss why this is definitely bad for business – coming from a site selling memberships for design related files.

Click the image to view the full, entire screen grab of the site as of 12:32am April 13th 2010.

Bad for business? I’d think so

Coming from a site who boasts a $49.95 per year membership fee to download thousands of stock images, icons and various other design resources, I’d say this is definitely bad for business. Who’s to say what in their membership section isn’t ripped off from somewhere else? Could you be paying $49.95 per year for files you may find free elsewhere at their original sources? Who knows. I for one won’t be paying the fee just to find out.

The question now is, where does Grafpedia go from here? Do they remove the tutorial and pretend it never happened? Would a simple apology be enough to make people forget? I know they can’t say it was a guest tutorial that they didn’t know was ripped off – it was posted by the site admin.

It’s bad enough there are 1,000+ different design blogs you can subscribe to which basically all regurgitate the same type of content, but now we’ve got to be worried the time and energy we spend on articles will be ripped off and showcased for the monetary gain of another person.

Thanks to everyone who has helped encourage me along the way.

If you haven’t seen the Giant Themes website yet, head on over and let me know what you think of it. Below is the iSocialize theme screenshot (demo is on the Giant Themes site).

I’ll be posting more info on the Giant Themes site here as well in the future, so make sure you’re subscribed

Goal #1: Generate $10,000+ per month in revenue

This is the big goal for me as of 2010. Last year, I made an average of $3,500 per month from my design business and various blogs ad revenue. This year, I plan on taking it up a step and focusing more on a couple websites (more on that below) and hit the $10,000 per month mark. In January of this year I hit $4,200 so I wasn’t completely to the goal amount, but I am headed in the right direction.

Goal #2: Get 10,000 subscribers on the Guerrilla Freelancing blog

In March, the freelance blog I started will be 1 year old and at this point, it has a little over 1,000 subscribers. The reason (I believe) it isn’t bigger now is because I left it alone for months at a time after I first started it. Last month I decided that a regular posting schedule would be in put in place (2 times per week) and since then, I’ve stuck to it and have seen the traffic and subscriber count grow. So, here’s one of my goals you could help me reach – subscribe to the Guerrilla Freelancing blog

Goal #3: Start a successful design blog that generates $2,000+ per month

In the past, I’ve done a lot of half ass things when it comes to starting a blog. I have a million ideas and only 24 hours in a day – so I’m in the process of consolidating my efforts into this project. It’s going to be big. I know I can do well with it because I’ve written articles before that generated around 100,000 visitors in a months time, so if I can do 2-3 of those a week, ever week for an entire year, I’ll be flooding myself with traffic, which helps ad rates. (more on this project will be posted soon)

So, what are your goals?

I’ve told you mine, now, tell me yours

Until today, that is.

I spent the evening last night (until about 6am) working and realized, what the fuck would I do if something bad happened and my computer crashed? I’ve got a few open client projects as well as my own personal projects that I don’t have any type of back up for, and would cost me a shitload of money if I were to lose the files.

Today I went to Wal Mart and bought the Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB external hard drive. No, that’s not my affiliate link. This thing is awesome, and knowing that my actual computer hard drive is only 40GB, yes, 40GB, I am happy to know that I will not have to worry about space any time soon.

My plan is to take the folders I need to back up (all on my desktop for easy usage) and copy them to my external hard drive every night after I am done, so when I wake up in the morning, the files are all there and saved. And for the items like brushes and fonts that I don’t update, I’ll make a copy of them and only back them up again when I download new items for those folders.

In the future, I want to get another hard drive and have it as an extra back up. You never know what can happen, and I’m just happy to know that right now, I’m taking steps to ensure my files are secure and safe from problems or random loss. If there’s one tip you can take away from this post, it’s that you need to back up your files. I just spent too long without doing it, so learn from my dumb ass and actually back your files up now

Wait, let me back track for a minute.

I’m walking through the grocery store and I come across the health food isle. Now, I normally do not spend much time there (if any) but tonight was a bit different. I took a stroll down the isle and started looking at all of the food and drinks they had. I came across the tea section and remembered reading somewhere that green tea was good for you. So, I grabbed a box. 48 tea bags in the box for $4.99 – if I was going to do something healthy, it might as well be cheap too.

But how did I end up here, writing this post and telling you all about my evening at the grocery store?

The experiment

Instead of just saying that I was going to drink green tea, I figured I’d challenge myself. Let’s see if I can drink this green tea for thirty days and then log the results. Do I feel better, does it help calm me down in the mornings, does it taste good, and so on. I like to experiment with stuff that’s a bit out of the ordinary, and this is definitely something I am not used to – you’re reading an article by a guy who keeps a case of Monster energy drinks in his house at all times.

So what I will be doing is drinking one cup of green tea every morning, for thirty mornings and then coming back here and logging my results. I’ve drank a full cup of it tonight as a test run, since I’ve never had it before and I was unsure if I’d need to put some sugar in it or something for flavor – yes, yes I do. I have to admit that this is not the most pleasant thing I’ve ever drank before in my life, but I am starting this and I will finish this. I’ll just try to drink it quickly until I get myself used to the flavor (or lack thereof).

What about you? Do you drink green tea?

I’d love to hear from some people who have drank green tea before, or currently drink it. Do you like it or are you a bit skeptical like I am? Let me know in the comments.

Here’s to an interesting thirty days. Cheers!

The simplicity of this web based to do app is what draws me to it the most, I think. It’s also free (they’ve got a paid plan for “extras” in the future, but what you use now is always going to be free) which is a plus for me as I’m always looking to keep my business bootstrapped where I can.

Once you sign up for an account, the to do list is clean and easy to read. It’s easy to add new items, cross out (or delete) finished items and you can also drag and drop the items at any time, across any date.

So head on over, check it out and if it looks like something you’d like to use – use it. It’s clean and easy to use, I promise.

The best part about the new site is that it features the gorilla every had grown to love (ok, maybe it was just me – but a guy can dream, right?). It’s getting a dominant spot in the design and that is what I’m showing you the sneak peek of here. Let me know what you think and if you’re as excited as I am (if not, it’s ok – I love you anyways).

Guerrilla website design sample