How are people making money doing this?

Hello,

I'm wondering how people with poor design skills make money in this business. I'm looking to get into this, but need some direction. My strongest asset is as a programmer, but I'd also like to be able to create web sites for people. I'm just wondering if any of you make money doing this, and how you go about doing it.

Thanks for the input.

Well, those people that aren't very good at what they do, but are still making a lot of money, are most likely very good marketers ... either that, or they know people who know people ... but I'd put my money on them being good marketers, they have the skill to convince someone that they are the best there are ...

about learning to create websites, in this same forum, there are heaps of threads containing the greatest advice ever ...

Keep cost low, resell multiple times, profit !

I wonder this myself - at least 2/3 of the businesses in my home town have ridiculously awful websites that they keep current.

haha, same thing here. A friend of mine and I are going into a business this summer, we are going to try and pick up some local companies, I'm a fairly good designer, but I don't have much business experience so its going to be interesting.

The general population is ignorant, rarely knowing or caring about the difference between poor design and good design or even the benefits of the latter. Also there are a massive number of people with poor design skills who don't realize that they have poor design skills.

Combine the two and you have a money making enterprise that produces a horrible product without anyone to call them on it. This is why so many people in this industry are behind a certification body.

I looked around a few template places and a few web design portfolios awhile back when I was thinking of getting someone else to do a website, but miost of what I saw with either nothing special at all or just bad. It seemed like they made one base template and just tweak that slightly for each customer, adapting pieces of it. Fair enough, you must make things easier for yourself, but sometimes it felt like they were just turning out the same page over and over with a different logo and colours.

I'm not a web designer in any sense of the word. And I wouldn't insult the people who are good at their craft by calling myself one. Pulled off two one page info sites once years ago and then did one a few nights ago thats still killing me slowly and painfully. But my design was better than most of theirs and I#m not even a designer.

It smacks of a rip off. But then again you think about how many so-called webdesigners are out there and they VASTLY outnumber the actual webmasters who know what they're doing.

A while back, when I was still learning the basics, I borrowed a book from my local library called The Non-Designer's Web Book by Robin Williams (a lady, not the comedian). I can't remember the exact working but there is a quote in it that goes something like:

"Even though you have never designed a website before, you are already a better web designer than 80% of the people who have."

The fact is, and it's really sad, marketing counts for just as much, and very often more than, actual skill. Just look at the most classic example: VHS versus Beta (or, for that matter, DVD versus Laserdisc). Beta (and Lasserdisc) was better, but VHS (and DVD) won, because it (they) was (were) better marketed.

Have any of you resold a template and configured it for a client? If so, what is the going rate for this kind of work? I see that the templates, on average, are around $25 - $100.

So, how does this whole business of reselling and configuring templates work?

Also, I've seen plenty of places on the net advertise for professional websites for $100 - $300. That seems awfully low for a website considering all the planing, revisions and hand holding the go along with it. What gives?

Thanks yall!

There are many different ways you can make some extra money in web design. It's all about marketing your skills well, and getting your name out there.