Remember that there are a lot of things on this world, but if you provide with the best service that will atract new customers. if you start a service try to do it your best and this will make you diferent from others and help you..

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do you aim on developing the whole websites or templates for lets say Joomla?
i ve seen your "aero" styled template and i think that you did a great job.. ever thought about creating the templates for joomla?

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True there are a lot of web designing firms today and I must say most of them are wannabes!
But you do stand out from the rest if you are good.

My only suggestion to you is to put up a good team because you can't have flurishing business without a good team. Especially when you are in the thick of business you'll find that a good unit is all that makes the difference.

Web Designing is such an industry that does not require much capital to start. You could always start a new company, try your luck for a few months and if it doesn't work out(God forbid), shut shop and come back to regular ways.

But do try your hand at it. Give yourself a change to succeed. Don't backout just because you have tough competition. Our best wishes are always with you. May you succeed at whatever you do..

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I'm aiming to work on all sorts of design related work, let it be site layouts or templates for any CMS.

but to make efficient templates for CMS's you need to be well versed with the taxonomy of the particular CMS's template syntax.

I currently design themes for Wordpress, planning to design templates for other popular CMSes too

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Here is a little topic for you delivi.. if you are interested in knowing joomla better..
Joomla Template FAQ

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Heh, i have nothing much to say except this few words:

-Your designs must be something that cannot be found or felt elsewhere, which goes to show your unique design identity and this will trigger people to start taking a liking to your style of designing.

-You must emphasize with the fact that time and logic helps alot for you need to innovate existing ideas to help make your customer's website look unique for this includes simplicity and ease of use.

I would like to cite this inspiring words before closing my speech: "Success is not about luck, but instead, it's is by through your efforts".

Just my 2 cents worth.

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Web design is a great job that's fun and easy! The only problem is - it doesn't pay you very much! There are thousands of growing web design jobs out there, because of the easy conditions. Therefore, due to that fact, the jobs are paying less and less. I would suggest that if you go into that that it wouldn't be your main salary, just your side-job or teenage job. If you do that, it would be a lot better for you.

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Yeh, indeed. Unless you are able to come up with a marvelous business plan where you offer in pakages that are affordable. Pakages as well, prolly because you can offer a higher reasonable price though you'll have to fork out abit more time on the more features. Heh, once again, good luck in your venture.

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One of my RL friends is self set up in web design, and he's been successful by having drummed up a client base before starting up his business (e.g. was designing for people he knew through friends, business colleagues and people who'd seen his other sites) while working at a mobile phone company (so no conflict of interests! ).

He advertises the fact that he does it all in one package, but places particular emphasis on SEO, and explains why that helps clients to gain more customers.

He's a flawless self-publicist (not arrogant, but you know what I mean - I don't have the bottle to just wander up to people and say that I noticed their website is looking shabby!), and that goes with what emzsquare said about business skills. He gets paid pretty well by what I make out, since he tends to make it clear to clients why they pay him more than a web-template site, and they only work together if they are happy and understand that.

I know that people emphasise having a portfolio, but he still hasn't got an up-to-date one set up (think he's working on it ATM), instead drumming up business through word of mouth.

So, if I go into that field at a later date (we'll see how my course goes ), I'll be looking to model myself on that kind of business model - make sure people know why I'm better than the competition, not be afraid to get business in the real world (rather than relying solely on a portfolio), and ensuring that my marketable skills (which in my case will probably be e-commerce and more functional aspects, plus copy-editing) are forefronted rather than the design aspects.

It's not that design isn't important (far from it!), but that it's much harder to point out how much time and effort went into good design - which seems to be the key problem with getting people to pay for any design work, especially web design where 'anyone can do web-design from a template and a design program' (as I've heard from people at my current work - who seem to flounder when I ask where I can find a package that produces non-proprietary code that isn't table-based...heck, I'll settle for one that consistently produces designs that render correctly in Opera...). When you can rattle off a list of functional aspects (SEO, user-details for e-commerce sites, accessibility, validity, usability...) that are directly targeted at increasing a client's customer-base, they are happier.

Oh, and living your subject (cliche as that is!) seems to work too - if you can explain to a client why validation and accessibility will save them money in the long run, that's better for them (and your wallet) than simply making sure your sites are valid and accessible. Giving solid examples (like, to pick one out of the hat, how table-driven design will usually put off users using non-visual browsers, losing you customers...(I know some people don't agree with this - not trying to hijack the thread!)).

Usual disclaimer: this is what I've gathered from the outside, looking-in. Perhaps some people in the industry can chime in with whether they agree?

 

 

 

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Starting your web design company always makes sense and can be very profitable if you know what you are doing. It takes very little time to create a simple, static page for a company (or organization) and you can be paid a few hundred dollars for it. Since the large companies charge over $500 a month to maintain websites, yo can undercut them and as a long as you are reliable and efficient, a good $300 can be made. Currently, i do a few websites for organizations and resturaunts in my area. Utilizing php, it takes me no more than 1 hr a week to maintain their site and perform updates. However, i get paid about $200 a month to do this. Therefore, if you know what you are doing, market yourself well, and can work with companies, your own web development company can be very profitable.

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