1. Have Confidence

This is a hard one for a lot of designers, myself included. Confidence in yourself and in your work is absolutely necessary. Without it, you’re left with the feeling that whatever you’re designing will not be good enough. Once you’re confident in your own ability to do great work, you’ll see your better work start to show up.

2. Never Stop Learning

In an overcrowded market where new techniques, technologies and design superstars come and go, you’ve got to try your best to keep up. Staying sharp with the web and design world’s current technologies and trends is very important. If you’re still coding in tables and using drop-shadows on everything, this step should be most important to you. Make it a point to learn something, anything, every single day. You’ll talent will grow faster than you can imagine, and you’ll feel better about yourself along the way.

3. Use the Pen Tool

The pen tool is the lifeblood of any great designer, whether you’re doing raster in Photoshop or vector in Illustrator. I could go on for days about the pros of learning the pen tool, but you should probably just figure this one out for yourself.

4. Be Non-Destructive

Have you ever been working on a project in Photoshop, be it a poster, brochure, etc. only to get 100+ layers in wishing you hadn’t merged two layers an hour ago? There are groups and layer comps for a reason. Name everything. Save everything. Organize everything. If you ever need something, you’ll be able to find it.

In conclusion, I can’t guarantee that following these four steps will get you the most appreciations on Behance, but if you’ve got the eye and the natural talent, they’ll definitely get you on the right track.