Just Creative Design

Bon Voyage + A Sneak Preview For The Next 2 Months

Tomorrow I leave for my super duper 44 day holiday / Contiki Tour around Europe and Hong Kong but never fear, Just Creative Design will be going full steam ahead during my time away. I have, with the help of you, made the blog self manageable for the time that I am away.

Sneak Preview

I have 12 EXCEPTIONAL guest articles and 2 of my own scheduled for you while I am away of which you can see a sneak preview of the headings below. Click here to subscribe to Just Creative Design so you don’t miss out!

• 10 SEO Rules for Designers
• Want to know how to design? Learn The Basics.
• Dudes and Dolls and Design Decisions
• A Guide On How Freelancers Can Compete Against Large Design Studios
• 6 Photoshop Tips and Tricks That You Probably Don’t Know About
• How To Spot and Work with Graphic Engineers
• A Passion For Paper
• FREE Lucky Dip Draw - Comment and Win
• An Ink Spot of One’s Own
• How to Talk to Non-Tech-Savvy Clients
• The Innovative One Page Resume & Portfolio
• 7 Female Graphic Designers That’ll Rock Your Socks Off
• Freelancers: Inspire Yourself, Vary Your Work Environment
• Designing An Accessible Website Without Losing Your Mind

Exciting huh?

Community Love

I am also going to be brave and leave comment moderation off and hopefully the community and authors will respond to each others questions while I am away. I just hope Akismet does its job, it has been pretty good so far - if you do notice any spam please email me using my comment form.

I will also be stopping by JCD every so often (maybe a comment or two) just to see how things are going and to catch up on important emails but this will be very limited - I am on holiday after all.

Anyway for now… over and out.

FREE Month of Advertising for All

As many of you know I am about to leave to go on holiday around Europe (want to guest write?) and this means that I will not be able to manage my advertising side bar. What does this mean for you?

If you buy one month of advertising, you get one month free! The deal is if you buy one month of advertising any time from today, your ad will stay there until July 21st! Click here to check prices and order.

Oh and for the continued support of my current sponsors I am giving them a bonus 2 months free advertising over the period that I am away. Maybe new advertisers could get a surprise like that some time in the future?

Why Advertise?

Apart from getting double the value, here are some more reasons why you should advertise.

• All money made from advertising goes straight back into Just Creative Design and is not profit. This will help JCD grow and get more exposure.
• With the cash I also plan to enter my work into design books and have recently just submitted some work into Wolda’s Logo Design Annual - Entries close 20th May so be quick!
• Cash also helps to pay server costs - Last month you guys used 200gb of bandwidth!
• Over the past 40 days we have received 200,000 unique visitors.
• We receive huge weekly spikes in traffic from Social Media Sites (ie. 10,000’s of unique visitors per week)
• We receive an average of 2500 daily regular unique visitors.
• We receive an average of 10 000 page views per day.
• We receive an average of 4 page views, per visitor.
• We are ranked 9,347 on Technorati.
• We have a traffic rank of 62,540 on Alexia.
• Our main traffic comes from the USA, Canada, UK, Australia.

Click here to check prices and order!

Win A Free Logo Contest + Our Achievements So Far

On June 6th, Just Creative Design is turning 7 months old, ie. 7 months since my first ever blog post and to celebrate I am holding a little contest. I know 7 months is a random number but I actually thought we were 6 months old (a bit more appropriate) but when I checked our archives to find my first ever blog post I realised we were actually 7 months old - Doh!

Oh and if you don’t get the joke in the geek cake picture above, I suggest you read about the 2001 Internet phenomenon All Your Base Are Belong To Us.

The Prize? A free logo design!

If you hadn’t already guessed it, a free logo design is up for grabs to one lucky winner. You can check out my logo design work in my portfolio.

How to win?

Easy. Leave a comment below with the reasons why you deserve / need / should win the logo - it may be as short or long as you  like -  try to tell me what the logo will be for if you can. I will pick the winner based on who has the best reasoning.

I will take entries up until 3rd of June and will announce the winner on June 4th AEST and I will design the logo after I get back from my planned holiday - aka middle of July.

You can comment now or you can read on to see how we got to where we are today.

Just Creative Design’s Journey So Far

Back in November I found out that blogging was more than just a personal journal and after finding that out I just had to start my own blog and I am SO happy I did. I have learned more about design from the blogosphere than I ever could in 4 years at University.

My main inspiration to start blogging was David Airey who started his graphic design blog much like me, without any knowledge of blogging. He now has over 4500+ loyal subscribers and his blog is a great promotional tool for his business. I believe Just Creative Design is following in his footsteps.

After only 7 months of blogging (of which I was on holidays for 2 months) we have grown to around 2300+ subscribers and I have generated upwards of $5000 from the blog so far through advertising (want to advertise?) and design work coming through the blog, gaining clients locally as well as clients in Malaysia, America and Canada. I am still available for hire.

Some Stats

Everyone loves a bit of stats so here we go.

• 10.5 new subscribers per day on average. My goal was to get 2.5 per day back in January so very happy with our growth.
• We average 8,000 unique visits per day.
• Alexa Ranking Of 62,540.
• 120 Posts (20 of them Side Blog Posts).
• Google PR of 3. Used to be 5 though.
• Currently ranked #1 on Google for “Logo Design Newcastle”.
• Technorati Ranking of 9,468 (Favourite Us).
• Average of 20 comments per blog post.
• 190 Followers on Twitter. (Follow Me).
• 80% of my visitors come from USA, Australia, UK and Canada together.
• Main traffic is from Google Organic, Stumble Upon and Design Float.

Achievements

• Interview with well known logo designer, Jeff Fisher.
• Just Creative Design wins Logo Design Love Award
• Jacob Cass Named #8 Top Young Blogger Under 21
• How Magazine - Listed in How Magazines Top 10 Websites For Designers
• Fox News, USA - Recommend on Fox News Website.
• The Herald Newspaper, Scotland - Article featured in Scotland’s leading daily newspaper.
• Layers Magazine, UK - Linked multiple times from the leading magazine on everything Adobe related.
• All Graphic Design - Many articles linked from the world’s largest graphic design related site.
• About.com - Featured on About which is a website sourced by hundreds of helpful experts, eager to share their wealth of knowledge with visitors. Quite hard to get onto here.
• Communication Arts Magazine - The largest creative resource on earth has linked to us numerous times.

Showcases

My work has appeared in many galleries across the net and below is a sample of some of the ones that I am aware of.

• Most Inspired
• CSS Collection
• Daily Slurp
• CSS Based
  
• LoopPress
• Logo Pond
• Design Related
• W3C Sites
• CSS Leak
• CSS Clip
• BlogPond
• CSS Creme
• Design Flavr

And there we have it, a small summary of our achievements thus far.

Want To Write For Just Creative Design?

Earlier this week I called for some guest articles to be written for Just Creative Design as I am going away for 6 weeks. So far I have only received 2 articles so if you want to get onto JCD please send them before May 21st either in a html or word document!

Don’t forget to comment why you should earn the free logo design.

Jacob Cass Named #8 Top Young Blogger Under 21

Ranked #8 Top Young Blogger Under 21

I was recently ranked #8 in the top young bloggers under 21 over at Retire@21. I think I am far from retiring but sure it was a pleasure to be ranked there.

Want to guest write on Just Creative Design? Now is your chance!

A guest article has not yet been published here on Just Creative Design but now is the time. As previously mentioned, I will be traveling around to 14 different countries in Europe (and Hong Kong) in June/July and I will need some articles to be published during the time that I will be away.

I need to get all the articles in by May 21st at the very latest so I can proof read them, add images (unless you provide them) and time schedule them to post during my time away. If you got some in even sooner it would be appreciated as I am in the process of moving house as well and it is a bit chaotic.

And for a little enticement you will get a link and a brief intro about you and your blog at the top of every article that you submit and it will stay there for the life of this blog. Oh and just so you know, we have been averaging 11,000 visits a day and have 1700+ subscribers - who ever thought?

What To Post About?

The underlying focus of any post has to do with design however it can vary… Think along the subjects of logo design, print design, advertising, web design, wordpress, social media, typography, inspiration, photography, poster design, creativity or maybe you could write a tutorial or a review of your favourite product - be creative. You could also check out the Ultimate List of Blogging Templates and Headings for some ideas.

You may submit as many posts as you like but please remember all posts will be subject to quality standards, so as a guide try to make each post around a page long.

How?

First let me know now that you are going to write one in the comments below and then after you have finished writing your post(s) when ever it may be, please email it to me in a HTML or Word document to jacobcass AT justcreativedesign DOT com. Don’t forget to replace the appropriate symbols.

Looking forward to reading some of your quality articles!