There has never been a better time to start a web design business. Although the western world’s economy is stagnant and demand flat the opportunities for entrepreneurs are enormous. If you have a passion and love for the internet, you can do it.
You don’t need a lot (in fact you just need a laptop, phone, electrical supply and decent internet connection) but here’s what I’ve learned in the last few years.
Business
In order to have a successful web design business you need to attract good clients. Trust me, the attitude of “any client is a good client” will not get you very far. By all means, give the same great service to all clients both big and small, but you will need regular and quality work and you are more likely to get this from quality clients. And “quality clients” are usually – but not always – from quality companies.
Either way, you need to look, talk and act professionally at all times. You will never get anywhere by being “cheap and cheerful”.
- Open your own business bank account with your business’s name. If you set yourself up as a freelance, you’ll earn a freelance wage. The bigger and more professional your company looks, the better it will be for you.
- Design your own logo. I’ve found designing my own logo to be one of the hardest jobs ever but it has to be done. Put this logo everywhere: on your invoices; your contracts; in your email signature.
- Purchase a domain and use it for your website and email address. If you want to be taken seriously you must purchase you own domain (from GoDaddy or NameCheap, for example) and then have an email address which is you@yourdomain.com.
- Build your own website advertising your services. You will need to spend a lot of time on this. I would advocate using WordPress for your business website and use a blog to attract business.
The paint is never dry on a designer’s logo or website. You should be continually looking for ways to improve your website as it is the hub of your brand. If you haven’t started blogging then start now. Write about what you do – it’s a fantastic way to get clients from long tail keyword searches.
How to get clients
Getting clients and establishing a steady work flow is the hardest and most important challenge your web design business will face. Your best clients are your current clients as you will find people will come back to you after you’ve done a good job for them. But, how do you start the ball rolling?
- Attract clients through your website. This is the best way to do it. Work hard on SEO and building links to your website with “web designer” in the anchor text. Make sure all your online activity points back to your website. Nurture your relationships with other designers as well as with potential clients online.
- Get work through social media. To be honest, I have never got much work from Twitter or LinkedIn, however I have found developing relationships on social media with designers and other professionals indispensable in terms of what it’s taught me.
- Meet potential clients offline by joining professional groups. As much as I’ve had great success getting clients online, you can never beat face-to-face interaction. It may take you a while to find out which where your potential clients will be hanging out but the Meetup website can help.
- 3rd party sites. I’ve never been a big fan of these sites and I certainly don’t use them myself but other people do so I will mention a few here. Try PeoplePerHour, oDesk and Elance.
The best network is your network. Most business comes from contacts you already have. But constantly strive to attract potential clients by performing well in the search engines for certain keywords.
You may like to read my survey on how designers work, how they find clients and how they get paid.
Skills
I can’t tell you here how to design a website. You do need technical and creative skills. But, surprisingly, these are NOT the most important skills you need.
- Listening to and understanding clients. The most important skill is your ability to master client relationships. You need to put yourself in the client’s shoes and deliver exactly want the client wants and no more and no less. Lots of designers suffer as they think they know what’s best for the client. The first rule of graphic design is to listen. Don’t ever get carried away with your talent and think that you know everything.
- Understanding the web and UI. The reason you are doing this job is because you have a love of the internet. Make sure you harness that love correctly. Always think of the users as well as the client when you are designing.
- Creativity. You shouldn’t only be creative in your designs to develop your style. You should be creative in your relationships, your marketing and every possible area of your business life. Don’t get stale and always look for fresh challenges.
- Ability to write well for the web. Another skill that is not often mentioned is the ability to touch type and write well for the web. Your clients will thank you if you re-write areas of their website so that they work better and you need to always write good English with correct spelling and grammar in your emails.
- Technical skills. At the very least you will need to master HTML and CSS as well as a graphics program such as Photoshop or Fireworks. HTML shouldn’t take you long to master. CSS will take a little longer. Use Firebug in Firefox and Developer Tools in Chrome and Internet Explorer to give you a start. You may like to progress onto JavaScript, PHP, or whatever you are interested in. Try W3Schools for tutorials. The trick is to keep learning. And not just about website design – it’s about designing email, mobile sites and apps for iPhone, Android and iPad.
Tools
I did a survey recently and discovered some interesting facts about the hardware, software and backup graphic designers use. Certainly everyone’s different. Don’t worry, you don’t have to use Macs but unfortunately most of them use Creative Suite.
- Hardware – The type of computer you get is largely up to you. I’ve been very happy using iMacs for the last few years. I also need a PC for testing. I would urge you to max out your RAM, disc space and broadband connection, but … we all have our budgets!
- Software – Although it is perfectly possible to run a design business with no software at all I wouldn’t recommend it. Most of us use some sort of text editor (Dreamweaver, TextMate), some sort of graphics program (Photoshop) and some sort of FTP client (Filezilla).
- Backup – Not strictly necessary, but incredibly handy. I would advise backing up onsite with an external drive and offsite with something like Dropbox.
Self motivation
Personally, I couldn’t think of anything better than working for yourself at home so I’ve never found motivation a problem.
However, for some people it is and you can learn how to work from home successfully by exercising and organising your time properly.
Collaboration
Since you are working in splendid isolation it’s always great to meet up with other web designers. You can moan about Microsoft together (very therapeutic), exchange jobs and help each other out with bugs and other problems. I have this relationship with Derek Kirk who lives near me in north London. Derek runs a couple of great sites called creative web design and web designers London.
It’s also good to form partnerships with all sorts of professionals and experts. These are great as a sounding board for ideas and to exchange advice and work. Try to network on behalf of your clients as well as on behalf of your other contacts.
Payment
Don’t forget at the end of the day you are running a web design business to get money. Whether you are charging fixed-rate fees or hourly/daily/weekly rates you should be charging at least twice as much as you would earn in a normal job to complete the same task. You will never be able to do web design for 8 hours a day so the charging structure should reflect this.
Make sure the price as well as the nature and extent of a web design job is properly recorded in emails or in a contract. You may like to insist on half the fee upfront with new clients.
Finding and developing your niche
As with most design work you may want to specialise into a certain type of client or a certain type of web work. This may come as a result of your passions or you may be moved in a certain direction by the tide of work that comes your way. Whilst it’s good to specialise you should always be alert to the new developments and opportunities within the industry.
Diversify and outsource
There are many ways to diversify your design business. You can offer your clients hosting, social media packages, email marketing, website maintenance, SEO services, copy writing, etc. you can branch out into a host of different directions. If you are asked to do something by a client it is usually a good idea to say “yes”. This way you can get paid to learn a new skill. Sometimes it may be possible to outsource new services.
You can do it!
I’ve wanted to write this article for ages and I’m very glad I’ve written it. I would really love to see you, the person who is reading this, try to earn money this way because it certainly beats working for somebody else.
You can start anywhere, anytime, anyhow. You just need a website. Even if you have a fulltime job at the moment or if not, you can start this work in your spare time (as I did) and take it from there.
I don’t want to make out that it’s easy. Of course, you have to work hard. But I have been getting paid to do something I really love so it would be great to see other people benefitting from this unique opportunity of our times.
If you have any experiences or you would like some help in this area, please leave a comment down below.
And don’t forget to click one of those nice sharing buttons too!
Super piece of information. I want to start my own web design business in order to diversify my original SEO business.
Best of luck with everything, Joby!
Hi Rob firstly thanks for the mention
I have to say this is an awesome post! I think you pretty much nailed it, you forgot to mention make sure they have plenty of aspirins and optrexs as this road is most definitely full of headaches and late nights.
Another way to generate income from this profession is to create templates and sell them on sites such as Themeforest but be warned the standard must be to a very high standard.
Hey Derek, thanks for leaving a comment. You’re right about creating themes and templates. That’s a great idea for a post: how a web designer can earn passive income. Of course, you don’t have to sell them through a 3rd party site like Themeforest – you can sell them yourself. But, I know you’re thinking of that
Yes, I agree about themes you can boost your income, but most would rather have a personal one that no-one else have therefore can charge more! I noticed that you used Theme by Genesis I used Canvas from WooThemes.
Yes, I always do child themes for Genesis now. I can get them to look exactly how I want and the code is future-proof. Thanks for popping by again, Simon
Under ‘Tools’ don’t forget some sort of project management software!
You can get away with spreadsheets and email up to a certain size, but once you grow you need to start looking at something more powerful.
There are lots of different free and paid solutions out there.
Hello Jason, that’s interesting, I have never needed project management software as I have never had such large projects to manage. I’ve only really heard about Basecamp. Feel free to recommend some and I’ll add them to the article.
Basecamp has excellent marketing, but is fairly expensive for what it offers.
A lot of smaller shops install their own open source tools like Trac, Mantis, Bugzilla or Redmine.
Popular paid solutions include FogBugz, JIRA, Assembla, Projecturf, and TargetProcess.
Really you could write a whole article about all of the project management solutions out there. Feel free to contact me if you’d like me to write a guest post.
In the interest of full disclosure, I founded PMRobot, which is a PM tool more for custom software developers more than web designers.
Interesting, Jason. Thanks very much for that information. As I say, I have never had need for PM software so I’m not sure if my readers here will have need for an article for the subject. But thank you very much for the offer. If I get contacted about this issue, I’ll get back to you about that. I really like your site and your personal story. Best of luck with PMRobot – it looks like a fantastic product.
Nice article, well written and informative, but I have to say a bit incomplete. Before you start a business you need to analyse the market. How many local competitors are there? What are they charging? How much business is there? If you’re not aiming local, do you really think a new business is going to ‘SEO’ and ‘Social network’ it’s way past the herds of established companies? If you’re aiming local, how will you compete against the established freelancers and serious 20-year old design agencies in your local market, who have strong portfolios, have already lowered their prices for this economy, and already have the networking groups tied up? I’ve noticed in the economy here a big drop in business, because companies already have websites and in a down economy they aren’t going to so readily drop money upgrading them. There are entrepreneurs who need new sites, but I don’t think any more than before, and they usually have very little money to spend and they can be very naive with their own businesses and knowledge about web design and spread problems back to you. Offshoring is a big issue especially now, people are looking to save money, and they will try and do that by getting one of the many India companies to do it. Have a look on elance and see the prices being charged are probably a quarter of just plain salary, when probably business costs mean even for a simple service in a 1-person business you’ll need to charge 2x salary. People often will use one of the latest generations of web builder to get their sites for free (e.g. Google Sites). I’ve written a number of articles on my blog about the industry that explain in more detail exactly how people are making decisions, problems the industry and buyers face, etc (http://ocportal.com/site/news.htm?blog=1).
The real money now is in work that is buzz-friendly, things that are new technologies that clients have not had a chance to implement yet (because they do all have websites already). Things like mobile apps (so learn objective c/java), Facebook apps, social media strategy, and the latest necessary techniques to compete on SEO.
Hello Chris. That’s interesting. Personally, I’ve found the opposite to be true. I’m sure if you have a product you need to analyse the market. But when I was starting out – all I had was myself and my skills – and if I analysed the market and found that people didn’t want me I never would have started!
I never wanted to specialise, as well, as I always enjoyed doing different types of design for different types of clients. When I started with this website I was offering print artwork and I now primarily do website design. I have found the demand through what my clients have been asking for. If someone asks you to do something it’s always a good idea to do it, if they’re a good client.
I would never suggest people should specialise on global or local – why cut markets off? I have a lot of clients here in London, plus others from America, Asia and Europe. It’s grown that way and I think my business has a more solid base from catering to client’s needs rather than analysing the demand because the demand in this business is huge and varied.
I would never worry about the competition and their portfolios, etc., there is absolutely no point. Someone could have a better portfolio, more years in the business and charge less but the client could still go for you if they like you!
I have lots of entrepreneur clients who have paid much more than a thousand dollars for websites. And I never worry about outsourcing. The one thing the low-paid Asians do badly is design.
It’s so strange we have had completely different experience. I do agree with you that tablet and phone apps are a growth area.
But I’d be really interested in your ideas in how you research the market when starting out in web design?
Hey Rob,
We’re probably coming from different environments. My company is a technical one, the people who do work have computer science degrees and have to be very skilled experienced engineers. (I came here from a link on dzone.com, so that probably coloured my interpretation of your post heavily) So that immediately raises the costs. A typical project will take us a couple of months, which based on fair market salary is about £7k [that's taking holiday/etc into account], but considering business costs, probably £14k [that's taking sales/marketing/R&D/training/risk-offsetting/office-space/management etc into account]. These are the kinds of sites that do quite a lot, e.g. complex property website, or custom video sharing community. People look at the low end design quotes, or the offshoring quotes, and think “£2k”, so that’s already an 8x difference.
I think if you’re doing the lower-end, purely design orientated stuff, it’s not so bad, because the clients understand it a bit better, there’s less work but they can see the work directly and hence understand the value, and designer salaries are about 35% less than programmer salaries (which I don’t think is entirely fair actually).
It probably also varies a lot by location. We’re in Sheffield, and I can tell you this place is pretty grim in a recession. I’ve seen a number of web companies go out of business here recently, and really there is very little local industry to feed a very large web design market that is pumped up by two universities. I imagine London is very different.
I suspect also we’re a bit constrained in what we do compared to you because if you’re technically focused in a company’s output you really need to do serious analysis into projects, it’s not so easy to chop around. And projects are longer term too.
In summary: simple projects are cheaper, have a wider market, require less skilled staff, allow more general flexibility for changing direction and juggling things, require less longer term technology investment, more relative value will exist in the happy relationship than anything else because not so much money is involved (of course relationship is always absolutely vital, but when more money is concerned people are going to assess a lot more than just that).
Actually talking about asian designers, I would generally agree, but we got an amazing design done by one of our guys this morning, it’s as good creatively as anything I’ve seen in the professional work I’ve done. It’s probably an exception though.
In terms of researching the market, a few suggestions:
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1) Identify all the competitors in your particular niche (e.g. if the niche is local, find all local companies).
2) Find out what they charge.
3) Go through their client lists, get a feel for what companies buy, and then try and work out what their market penetration is by seeing how many companies like that there are. If you can see a large percent of the market is already tied up that’s a bad thing
4) Talk to a few people, see what outstanding issues they have, whether they can be resolved by your service (sometimes competitors suck, but also sometimes clients expect more than they pay for), and very importantly – whether you can put that in a marketing message that people will believe and will reach the market.
5) Analyse some trends to some degree. Why do people buy what they buy, is it tied into any wider economic situation? Is that situation changing? Can you predict and preempt where things are going to open up opportunities or to avoid boxing yourself into a risky model.
Hey Chris, you’re right we’re probably coming at this from two completely different worlds but I’m really interested in what you have to say. Yes, I’m from a graphic design background and I’m found through this website for people wanting websites, blogs, simple shopping carts and membership sites (as well as other stuff as I also do print design). So our markets are quite different.
(I put stuff up on Dzone because some of the stuff I do is about WordPress and other tutorials and I can get some good traffic from there.)
As a designer you can optimise your site for “web designer London”, for example, which has about 1000 searches a month and you will get a fair amount of work. But, as you can imagine, someone looking for a freelance designer won’t want to create huge, complicated sites so most of our work is fairly quick delivery and for less money. However, I’m always looking for bigger and bigger projects.
And another great thing about graphic design is that you can be used by absolutely any industry and any sized company which is why there is so much potential when you set yourself up on your own.
I’m fascinated to hear about your work and the way you go about it, especially the research side. It would be great to see you here again. And best of luck with ocPortal in the future – it looks like a great open source CMS.
Thanks Rob. Nice conversation, it’s always good to see a different perspective and learn from it.
When I say ‘research’, I don’t mean it in the white-coat kind of way, but generally that it takes some doing to get an infrastructure and proper understanding for the technology of the day. For example, we recently developed a new phase of work for a client where their sports social network interacts a lot with Facebook. People can log in with Facebook, and then receive email updates, and updates are pushed back to their Facebook profile also. That’s a lot harder than we first thought, because you can grab their email when they login, but if they change their email on Facebook’s end, there’s a very complex inter-server communication process we have to do in the background to find out about it. Now we have done it once, we can do it again much more cheaply. In terms of pure research, well we’re always thinking about usability – the big ocPortal challenge has been how to let people build their own unique complex sites in an intuitive ways.
I think you clearly have a great skill not just in maintaining relationships, but also building them. I think it serves you well
.
I agree, Chris, it’s great for us here to get your perspective.
Funnily enough, I just did a Facebook welcome page for a client (they call it an “app” in Facebook but I don’t think that really describes it correctly). I provided the client with a jQuery image slider, a few images and a sign up form to their iContact account. And, just as you say, I can now offer that service to other clients now that I’ve gone through the pain that is understanding Facebook’s little ways.
But delving into these site’s APIs to make something work is a very specialist but, I should imagine, lucrative skill.
I’m not very good at specialising. I’ve tended to go where my clients have lead me in the past.
I’m not sure if I have a great talent for maintaining relationships but people naturally like to work with people they already know – or who are recommended by someone they trust.
Your tendency for going for the huge jobs works for you and I can see it has its benefits. As someone running a graphic design business I’m always happy to take on bigger and bigger projects and that’s probably something I should be concentrating on in the future.
Ok, I gotta to tell you, this is one quality article! I felt extremely motivated as I read it.
I want to start learning HTML, CSS and PHP for a while now but I always get stuck with my current IM jobs. I also discovered that I’ve got an eye for web designing and even though I don’t know HTML or CSS perfectly I can manage to turn around any wordpress theme for example.
My first passion is content creation, but I found that lots of the tips above are also applied in my field. Like having a portfolio website. That’s a really great idea….thanks!
Thanks Cristian, welcome to RobCubbon.com – getting a portfolio site up and running and getting on the first page of Google with “web designer [your town]” shouldn’t be too difficult for you. And, then you can see what happens! It’s a good way of earning income (although active) to supplement the IM passive income which can take a while to grow.
I’m really impressed with your website Rob and think, by the many thoughtful, well-written comments, that I’m not the only one who is impressed!
Hey, Mary, thanks a lot. Glad you followed me here from ThinkTraffic – which is another great site
Thanks for the article Rob.
I’m going to be made redundant in the next couple of months and I really would like start freelancing. It’ll be a new experience to me, I’am a bit scared but very excited too. I’ve my website already but it’s not finished yet.
Thanks for your tips!
Hello David, all I can say it all the best of luck to you! You have exactly the right attitude – as long as you keep excited you will be successful. Once you’ve finished the HTML site I would add a WordPress blog to it and write about what you do, you’ll be amazed at the amount of traffic it will pull in.
Thanks Rob for your up-beat and informative articles. I find lots of useful tips in them, plus confirmation of things I already know (for example your comment that people naturally like to work with people they already know – or who are recommended by someone they trust). This is very encouraging!
You make it all sound so easy!
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Hello Cos, I’m glad you find the articles upbeat and informative. In some ways it is easy as all I have done to run a successful business is here on my site. On the other hand, of course, nothing in life is really easy and you do have to work. But I’m sure you knew that!
Stunning lead photo and terrific design. I found the point on payment among the most helpful. When you are freelancing, projects always seem to take longer than you expect and, unless you’re getting paid by the hour, delays are coming out of your hide, not some company you work for. Make sure to bill customers immediately and request all agreed upon expenses. For some strange reason creative people tend to let these things go. I talked to an editor once who told me a lot of his writers never bothered to submit expenses!
Glad you like my little montage at the top, AstroGremlin. You learn over time when to charge by the hour and when to charge a price. Many clients, however, prefer a price for the whole job in which case you have to be crystal clear about the details before you start. But, common sense prevails. Most clients are good people and they don’t want you slaving away for nothing, but they want a good deal just like you do. Creative people do need to give their attention to this side of the business or else they won’t have a business!
Rob thank you for writing this post! I just started my very own web design/dev biz and I’m pumped. Having go-to resources like this is a key for learning from others who have walked this path before me. I’ve already found that it’s heaps more work than I expected, but that’s OK – it’s all fun and learning (and soon $ too)!
It certainly is an exciting experience to start your own company. Thank you for sharing that with us here. Plenty more articles to come on this subject so keep coming back to the site
– thanks for your comment, Hugh!
I think my first exposure to any of your writing came this morning. Since then I’ve read several posts on G+, posts on your blog, signed up for your newsletter and downloaded your ebook. I guess that means I’m impressed. You really walk the walk.
The only thing I’ve found that I didn’t like was being told not to use keywords instead of my name when making this comment. :–)
I’d like to buy you a beer some time.
If people put keywords in comments you don’t know whether they’re intention is to advertise themselves or leave a constructive comment like the kind words you just left, Bernie. Glad you’ve found something of use here.
Hi there,
Great article thanks
I am just getting into web design, learning the basics of html/css. Have made a few basic websites and am really enjoying it. I’m just a little confused as to what my next steps should be… should I start to learn an image editor such as Photoshop or make sure I have the code basics mastered first? I hope to do this as a proper job one day and you are a great inspiration!
Regards
Dan
Thanks Dan, you seem to be doing great anyway. Maybe it would be good to try to make graphics with an image editor similar to Photoshop at this point, yes. But just carry on creating the websites you want to create. And explore websites you admire and work out how they were created. That’s what I do. Thanks for your comment.
Thank You
That’s what I’m nervous about because I am useless at making decent graphics. I’m sure it will come in time. Have you found the best way to learn is from online tutorials and books? I’ve heard of people making their site in Photoshop then converting it to html or something, is this standard practice now?
If you love graphics you will eventually be able to create them well. Making a site in Photoshop first and then converting to HTML isn’t standard practice but I would advise it.
Ok I’ll look into that – nice article you have written. I like your style, very easy to understand. So basically the best way to get into web design is to keep making those websites and keep learning from those mistakes !
I would say so Daniel. And keep blogging, because the process of running your own website and blog teaches you how to do it for other people. You may like to download my free e-book How To Market Yourself Online which goes into this in more detail.
What do you think of creating a portfolio and ‘learning while your earning’ or is it best to just work on getting a good portfolio and wait until your fully confident in all areas?
Ok thanks for that I will check it out. Keep meaning to create a blog too I’m just worried I wouldn’t know what to write about hehe
Hello, Daniel. I would “learn while you earn” as you put it because you’ll never stop learning. Obviously don’t embark on a client job you have absolutely no idea how to do. But it’s always good to push yourself.
Everybody thinks they don’t know what to write about before they start a blog. But once you start writing you’ll get better at both writing and thinking of articles that will be useful and therefore popular.
Daniel, whenever I’ve built a website for an organisation, they’ve given me a PDF mock-up of their intended website that their graphic artist created from his/her Photoshop (or InDesign) design. i.e. first the organisation worked out their design in collaboration with their graphic artist (either a freelancer or in-house) and when they’ve been happy with the design, they’ve given it to me – the web developer – to build.
Often-times I then need to make a few tweakes to the original design – which I do in collaboration with the organisation themselves – in order to make the design work as a website. e.g. I was recently given a design that included a panel that had an embedded Google maps iframe. The graphic artist designed the panel way too small for the map to be legible online, so we all had to get together again (me, the organisation and the graphic artist) and re-jig the website layout so that the map appeared on its own page rather than a tiny panel off to one side, and the space allotted to that panel got used for something else.
I think if the one person can do website design AND development, it saves a good deal of to-ing and fro-ing because they won’t design something that they know doesn’t work online. On the other hand there’s a helluva lot to learn in each field to be able to do them both well. e.g. I can design a functional site for people/organisations that looks perfectly OK, but if they want something that looks truly professional, I always advise them to engage a professional graphic artist in the first instance. And if they don’t have one on hand, I always have a list of options to offer them, or I sub-contract the designer myself (which is actually preferable!)
OK thanks for that, I will look into creating sites in Photoshop and mocking up. I think first it is best for me to master html/css first and then get to grips with logo/banner etc creation using Photoshop. What would you recommend after that? what’s the best route into this business?
Kind Regards
Daniel
Hello again, Daniel, I’ve got to say that I agree with everything Cos says. He’s right that having the same person designing and developing the site makes things so much more simple and, if the site requires more than one person, recommending another person that you’ve worked with before is best.
As for where you should go after CSS/HTML/Photoshop/graphics – it really depends on what interests you. You may be interested in JavaScript or JQuery, PHP, or WordPress or some other CMS. I have found WordPress very useful to work with.
If I may add my 2-bobs’ worth again … I think what you need to learn next depends very much on what your customers need you to learn! …and that depends on who your customers are, or are likely to be. That’s hard to pick sometimes, but here’s where I think there is another skill-set that web designers/developers need – soft (people) skills.
i.e.
* communication/customer liaison
* networking
* marketing / entrepreneurship
* business analysis (for yourself and your customers)
* information management
* designing effective and accessible user interfaces (e.g. http://www.useit.com/)
Other technical skills I would add to Rob’s list would be search engine optimisation and SQL or MySQL.
There’s obviously no shortage of learning opportunities in this field!
Good points again, (Ms) Cos. Lots of designers are drawn towards certain areas of design by their customers and by their interests.
I completely agree with about the importance of people skills.
MySQL along with PHP will be incredibly useful for CMS work for years to come, I’m sure. Never stop learning!
In the early stages of considering starting webdesign business. I have learned some html, but I have little/no graphic artistic talent. Do some design firms use temlates as a starting point (from something like dreamweaver) and tweak it to suit – or is that generally not a way to go.
OR alternatively can a creative design aspect be outsourced ? – any thoughts/comments on that. Thanks Rico
Hello Rico. This depends entirely on the type of business you are starting up. If you have little interest in the graphic side then you can certainly outsource this. Although you have to offer your clients something. Try to offer them a great SEO service or email set up or some other fantastic service – as there has to be a specific reason to hire you. Does this help?
yes somewhat, thanks.
So how does one go about starting a business like this from home? is it as simple as creating a portfolio site and advertising yourself? do I need a business plan?
Regards
Daniel
It’s not quite as simple as that, Daniel, there’s a lot more information here on this site. Feel free to ask any questions.
OK thanks I will have a look round I am doing a business plan at the moment and I am increasing my html/css/graphics skills. I have also decided to use my name on the website instead of a company name.
Hope it owrks out and to everybody else who is trying this, good luck!
ps Could you please Remove my surname from the site, I’ve decided I want it private , thank you
Sorry that was me by the way!
Dan
Do you want me to remove the ‘N’, Daniel?
Yes please and the whole surname
Thanks Rob good of ya
Do you think I should start off with a business plan?
Well, it’s always good to have a plan or a definite niche or selling point to aim towards, but when you’re just starting out it’s good to try get work somehow and work on your website, etc.
I wrote about my business plan for this year this time last year.
I hope this helps. Business plans are dependent on your niche and how far along the line you are with your business so it’s hard to advise about it.
Thanks for the advice Rob. I’ve decided to put the business on hold and continue building sites until I am 100% ready to start charging, think I’m getting a bit too ahead of myself. Hopefully in 6 months/a year I will have advanced enough to start charging for websites. Until then I will continue to progress and learn thanks to great helpful sites like yours!
Regards
Daniel
That’s great, Daniel. Obviously, you should only start charging when you feel comfortable. Glad you find the site helpful. Please come back and ask questions.
As you take on a serious career in web design, it is always safe to get the highest training possible: this will not only give you the skills and knowledge that you need, but it will also give you an edge over the competition, as web designers are a big demand in the web industry today.
You’re right, Stephen, you need the skill and knowledge to be able to do the job.
Great article Rob, really inspiring for me as a start-up web designer, I agree with pretty much all of it. I like your conclusion saying ‘You can do it!’ brilliant. I’ve also read through some of your other articles, well done!
Ant
Thanks a lot, Ant. There’s going to be lots more to come here about starting up a web design business.