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[toddthegeek Profile Website]

So I've dabbled with websites now throughout college so I would say I'm an average website designer. I know HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, MySql, ASP etc etc.

I'm wondering where is the money is designing websites? Do all website designers do it as a part time job? To me it doesn't seem like for the time spend designing webpages it is worth the effort.

Here's my breakdown. Lets say we design one site a month (this is reasonable seeing that the average person starting this careers doesn't have clients all around asking to design websites and he/she also has a full time job). If you make a website they can edit, it has a form, maybe a blog, yada yada I say it'll cost around $1500 to $2000 roughly. At 1 per month that's only $18,000 to $24,000 a year.

Am I missing something here? I like designing website, but I'm almost considering stopping it cause it just doesn't seem like the time is worth the money.

Give me your thoughts...

[jbullard]

I am not a website designer, but I do website development which is completely different as this is normally considered the heart of the website. However, though my experience, and through you gaining more knowledge and faster techniques, one website per month is not even tipping the iceberg. Normally, designers can do multiple sites per month by simply gaining more knowledge in the design process.

On the flip side, $1500-$2000 for an entire site being developed is a low cost site. I have friends who have charged people nearly $25000 for a site that took a month to do. Once again, they have been developing sites for a very long time and have their process down. But it also helps when a company says here is all of our information, this is what we want, how much is it going to cost.

So, if the customer has all of the plans laid out (i.e. mission statement, slogan, about us, etc...) it makes it that much easier to do. If you are having to do this or even bug someone about the information then the prices normally start to go up from there.

There are multiple sites out there that you can do freelance work which you can make tons of money from. One weekend I worked an hour on three scripts and was paid around $500. Sometimes the smaller jobs are where the money is at until you get yourself as an established web developer/designer.

HTH

[toddthegeek Profile Website]

jbullard do you work for a company and do website development or do you do it all on your own?

Yea I figured for what I was doing that price had to be low, but then I considered the customer, and I don't think they would want to pay anymore than that. My main customer base right now are local politicians in my area that have old sites from the early 90's. So yea I'm basically doing the whole site, and I can't charge too much because it's politics and I'm kinda connected into it through family. haha. I know, not your problem, but I thought I'd add that in.

So you kinda reassured me that there is good money in it ($25,000 a month is not too shabby given that you don't pull that in each month but still not bad). I think my frustration is that I'm trying to do it part time, and there just aren't enough hours in the day to design a site, meet with customers, find new customers, etc etc... I think you def need a team. Atleast 2 or 3 people to keep on cranking on the site or doing customer support or whatever it may be.

Very interesteing...

So how long have you been doing website development? Have any shortcuts that I don't know about yet?

[jbullard]

Well, I actually don't do a lot of website development. I am what you could call and open programmer. I have one specific language that I like the best but for the most part I don't do hardly any web development anymore. I realized that I am better at application development and there is much more money there, also many more risks.

Shortcuts can be saving your scripts into a folder. For instance, I have a programming folder and sub directories like PHP, ASP, Javascript, C#, etc.

In each of these directories I have more like Arrays, Regular Expressions, Mathmatics. Then, I just have text files in there with the best descriptive name for that particular piece of code. So instead, of constantly trying to remember all of the code, I have one central location that I can refer back to to insure that I got it correct.

But, I would definitely take a look at some freelance work. I am a member at Elance and they don't take a comission unless you use their Escrow payment system. That is the system that keeps users honest and if work was performed then they have to pay you or Elance will take action.

Yeah, part-time does suck. I have a full-time job, go to school full-time, maintain/developing my personal website, and help develop applications here. So my schedule is pretty busy but if I had the money and could quit my full-time job I would be able to push out a lot more than I do now. It just takes time is all.

[kanaloa]

$25,000 per website? Wow, maybe I need to do freelance after all.

Jason does make a really good point about web development now. It's a lot more than just design or layout these days. It's about the application development and advanced functionality you can build in as well. I would love to know more about this - right now I'm more of a hack and make it work the way I want type of person. I can rarely pure script advanced code in php or cfm, etc.

Usually it's nice to hire a webmaster with several sets of skills, where as it used (and in some cases still does) require a whole team. I am a professional webmaster for a state agency, but we actually have a whole team. At my last job, where I also was a part-time webmaster, it was just me. For my freelance projects (which are actually this site and another business my wife and I run) I tend to be the sole-guy as well.

Best skills overall to have obviously include graphics (I'd be bold enough to say this is 30% of it), layout and design, encoding (for when you work with video or audio), and advanced coding (php, asp, cfm, jscript, etc).

And maybe it's just me, but having the skills to do web work has really been an asset to fulfilling larger dreams I've had career wise. My joy in life isn't my full time job, but rather the two side businesses. Neither would be possible without the web skills. Consider that when you weigh your options.

[toddthegeek Profile Website]

That is true that there's alot to it. I mean you can't just know how to write HTML and make a whole website. And those skills def are good computer skills to know that you can apply in other areas. Good point.

That eLance site seems like a good idea. I hadn't heard of anything like that before. I am going to try that out.

Well I am just getting started really in making dynamic websites. I dealt with it a little last year using ASP and an access database but really just hacked around. I got another job a month or so ago and have been starting to learn PHP and MySQL, and now I can really see how powerful website programming can be. So I'm going to keep at it and build up my code base. It's def something I enjoy and would like doing for a living.

Thanks for the advice guys.