Website Design Business

In a Nutshell

If you enjoy doing graphic design and are comfortable with computers and Internet, then a website design business may be the thing for you. Businesses, organizations and private people are all potential clients who could pay you good money to design their websites for them.

The Longer Version

Website design can be enjoyable as well as challenging. There are many aspects to web design and many techniques of achieving a functional site. You don't actually have to master them all to turn web design into a profitable business.
Professional website design could mean working with image processing software such as PhotoShop to produce clean images, and incorporating them into hand-coded pages. Template based designs are often required on large scale sites and can be managed through working with certain software.
But you could actually opt to do "low-end" web design, where you can create your pages with website generators such as FrontPage, or the more advanced DreamWeaver. Using those you don't need to know how to code html yourself. You just work with a handy WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface to quickly produce pretty websites. Most clients won't be able to tell the difference between a hand-coded site and software produced one.

You can find potential clients online and offline. Every business in your area that doesn't have a website yet is a potential client. With work being done online, your website design business can grow to include businesses out of your town, and even out of the country! If you opt for high-end web design, you will soon find that many businesses could use your services to upgrade their existing websites and bring them to a higher level.

What Do You Need?

To start your web design business, you don't need anything but to know how to code. Your own website does help, serving as your online brochure, but if you know how to code, a website won't cost you much (with domains available at under $10 a y

So... How Much will I Make?

Website design rates vary according to the size of the project and to how much you can charge your potential clients. Small businesses often look to spend up to $500 on a basic, well designed website. These projects usually take a few days to complete, as you often have to work with the client until you reach a design that meets their wants and needs.