Web Designer

Key

$ Avg $500-2000 for small business site, $1000-$4000 for medium businesses. Earnings between $50,000 and $100,000 per year

.Professional Web Designers build and create websites for their customers. They design the layout and create the content. They may do the backend programming themselves, but more often will outsource this to script programmers or use pre-made scripts. Most web designers do not maintain, host or promote the websites they create, that is the job of the Webmaster.

Obviously the first thing you ought to do if you want to become a designer, is design a website. If you have a friend or know somebody who needs a website, offer to do this for free or for very low cost. What you are looking for is the learning, the example to put into your portfolio to show potential clients, and testimonials. The more of theses sample sites and testimonials you have, the better!

Follow-up
Great tutorial on learning web design: http://www.pagetutor.com
Great articles on web design: http://www.bignosebird.com
Web designer survival guide http://www.creativebehavior.com/index.php?PID=171
Salary charts http://www.sessions.edu/career_center/earnings_opportunities.asp
About Going Solo http://v1.garrettdimon.com/archives/about-going-solo
Steps to Becoming a Freelance Web Developer http://v1.garrettdimon.com/archives/steps-to-becoming-a-freelance-web-developer
Planning to become a freelance web designer http://www.outfront.net/tutorials_02/business/firstclient1.htm
Freelance job site: http://www.webdesigners123.com/
Freelance learning guide http://webdesign.about.com/od/jobs/p/aa031703a.htm

Proposal Kit

Goes beyond just making proposals and is a real project management tool. Will repay you time and and again in properly costing your projects.
http://www.proposalkit.com

A List Apart
A good explanation of how to differentiate between billable and non billable hours and set fees that take account of your overheads
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/accounting/

Sample Contracts for Web Designers
Downloadable sample contracts for Web Designers. Very useful.
http://www.webprosnow.com/html/boilerplatecontracts.html

Sample Contract
A straightforward sample contract. I have obtained permission form the owners for you to copy and customize this contract.
http://www.glassbottom.com/contract.html

Freelancing in the Web World
Excellent article which takes a realistic look at the pros and cons of becoming a freelancer.
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/98/44/index4a.html?tw=jobs

Our BizShop CD on Internet Retail covers what makes an effective website http://bizshop.com/description.php/pubs//155

Your level of success in attaining the results in our materials depends on the time you devote to the program, ideas and techniques mentioned, your finances, knowledge, market conditions and various skills. Since these factors differ according to individuals, we cannot guarantee your success or income level. nor are we responsible for any of your actions. Any and all forward looking statements here or on any of our material are intended to express our opinion of earnings potential. Many factors will be important in determining your actual results and no guarantees are made that you will achieve results similar to ours or anybody elses, in fact no guarantees are made that you will achieve any results from our ideas and techniques in our material.

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Low startup

Computer based
High Power Computer