Quite a few aspiring website designers have been
asking me for advice lately. Why me? As you can clearly see from this site, I'm
no design expert. Perhaps it's because they've noticed that website design
is now a service offered at my site.
For starters, let me clear one thing up. Although I personally tend to this site
(you may be able to tell from the simple layout!) I do not personally handle
client sites. I have a website
designer who handles those accounts. And yes, offering this service has
forced me to learn quite a bit about the subject. Today I'll share that
knowledge with you.
Here's a step-by-step guide to starting your own successful web design
business...
Step 1: Get the Tools
Before you can offer web design you need to fill your design toolbox! While you
can spend a ton of cash in this phase, the best strategy is to acquire the bare
minimum, at least until you have a few clients under your belt. When we decided
to offer web design, it took about $2500 to get started. That covered a new iMac,
(while many designers use a PC, we went with Mac since we do both web
and print design) a scanner, and lots of software.
As far as software goes, we went with the Adobe
suite of design tools. This included Adobe Illustrator, PhotoShop, and Quark for
print design jobs such as book covers and catalogs. While Adobe turned out to be
a solid choice, many other designers work with straight html or WYSIWYG editors
such as FrontPage, HomeSite, HotDog and more. Whatever tool you are most
comfortable with will do.
Just be prepared to make ongoing purchases. Since we got started, my designer
has invested in lots more software such as BBEdit, Mac FTP software, DreamWeaver
by MacroMedia, a high end printer, a drawing tool and more. Remember, being a
web designer means keeping your arsenal of design tools current.
Step 2: Practice, practice!
Before you open for business, you need to put in some serious design time! Start
by putting together your own website, where you will offer your services. Use
all the tools at your disposal and make sure you know how to perform every
service you plan to offer.
While your own site should be simple enough to navigate quickly, you should also
show off some of your skills. Post some sample logos or sites if you can. Rather
than "tell" prospective customers what you are capable of doing, show
them!
Step 3: Decide on Pricing
How much should you charge for your design services? Well, the answer to that
question really comes down to two equations; your skill level and the amount you
need to make.
As to the skill level, you can get a good idea where you stand by surfing the
web a little. Go to your favorite search engine and enter "website
design". You'll find designers that charge anywhere from $25 to $250 per
web page and a few hundred to tens of thousands for an entire site. Check out
their work. Is yours comparable?
Next consider the amount of time it will take you to design a basic 10 page
website. Remember to factor free consultation with your client (this can take
hours), the design of a basic theme, buttons for navigation, and a logo. These
are the items usually included in a basic website design package. Once you've
figured out how many hours it will take to put all this together, figure out how
much you need to make per hour. Too many would-be designers do not take this
step and end up doing their first few jobs for less than $10 an hour. If you can
pay the bills with that, then by all means, go for it. But more than likely
you'll need to make much more than that.
Also remember that design jobs can take up to 50% longer than originally
anticipated. Factor that in too. You are better off starting your pricing a bit
on the high side. You can always have a sale when things are a bit slow.
Also, don't forget to set up pricing for extras that can take a bit longer to
complete. Things like rollover buttons, popups, fill out forms or other cgi
scripts can lead to hours of tweaking. You may find that an hourly rate for
these extras is the best way to go.
Step 4: Prepare Your Contracts and Open for Business!
Since website design is a time-consuming task, you are going to need to protect
yourself. I know of one gentleman designer who received payment for only one of
the first five websites he designed. We too have been the victim of a non-paying
client. It's not fun.
The best way we have found to guard against problems is to require pre-payment
of at least a 50% deposit before any work is started. You should also require
each and every client to sign a contract. The contract does not have to be
anything fancy. It just needs to protect you from liability and clearly state
what your client gets and for how much.
Once you have all the components above in place, you can open for business. And
remember, don't forget about your local market. Many designers find that it is
far easier to get clients locally than on the web, where competition is fierce.
Put together a small brochure or even a business card. Offer discounts to
residents of your state or town. Show them you appreciate their business and you
may be surprised how many jobs can come from one good local referral.
Step 5: Offer Web Hosting and ongoing site maintenance to your design
customers.
If you are serious about your web design business, this step is the key to your
long-term survival. The fact is, a good percentage of your design clients will not
want to deal with the technical aspects such as uploading and maintaining the
website you designed for them. This is where your expertise can translate into a
potentially lucrative residual income stream. Here's how...
Find a reliable web host that offers "virtual hosting". In a nutshell,
virtual hosting means that you can add domains to your web hosting account for a
very small fee. I use Virtualis
for this. When I started offering design services I was already hosting this
bizweb2000 site on a Virtualis
Mega account. With that package I could add additional domains for just $5
per month. So offering web hosting to my design clients was simple.
I have since upgraded to a dedicated
server and now pay just one dollar per month for virtual domains. While the
expense of my dedicated server is higher, it gives me a ton of space for my own
site and nearly unlimited growth potential.
Over the next year I anticipate adding an average of two design/hosting
customers to my server each month. While that may not sound like much, a year
from now I would have over 30 virtually hosted customers. And each one of these
design customers is happy to pay from $29.95 to $89.95 a month for a rich
feature set that would cost them hundreds of dollars a month elsewhere. With an
average of $50 a month coming in from these design customers, that's 30 X $50 =
$1500 per month. Of course my designer gets half of that for maintaining the
websites, but in your case you may be doing it all and earning it all. Now
stretch that out over 2, 3 or 4 years. Can you see the profit potential of
hosting your clients sites and maintaining them?
Just be careful about offering too much in the way of maintenance/changes over
each yearly period. Limit the number of hours you'll spend on each site. We do
this by offering different hosting/site maintenance packages. Customers who
anticipate lots of changes basically pre-pay by opting for the higher priced
hosting/site maintenance package.
OK, I'm probably getting into far more detail than most of you need at your
early startup stage. I'll cool it. The bottom line is this... when starting your
own web design business, think about where you want to be in 3, 4 or 5 years.
Rather than just working from design job to design job, open up some back-end
revenue. Hosting is just one way to do it. Use your imagination and open more.
Consider offering monthly marketing packages to your design clients. These can
include regular search engine submissions, ezine ad campaign management and much
more.
As you can see, web design is a great way to open up multiple income sources.
You truly are limited only by your imagination. If you've ever considered
starting your own web design business, you now have a step-by-step tutorial on
getting started, and getting creative!
Tips by Jim Daniels, owner of bizweb2000.com.
Did you like this lesson? Then you'll love Jim's catalog
of books and software, guaranteed to increase your online income.
* Article by Jim Daniels of JDD
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