web design business

[megawhat]

Hi i am a designer and thinking of offering a basic cheapish web design service. Just wondering if people would use this, or does everyone find it easy enough to set up their own websites these days?

I think that anyone on a restricted budget will be using an 'off the shelf' website solution (there are lots of these around these days), and won't be able to pay you adequately for your time.

How much do you need to make a day to survive? Salaries for web site staff have dropped through the floor since the dot com crash.

It is possible to make good money from new media design, but you need a team of people, with a wide range of specialist skills- all the one man bands I know have gone under.

If you're a designer, then maybe you could freelance for New Media companies- most of them like to have a pool of people they can call on for differing styles/feels to sites. If you can get in with a couple of companies who like your work then you're set really.

I'm a freelance web developer and many of my clients are on tight budgets. They all use out-of-the-box systems like Wordpress, Magento, OpenCart and most use free templates.

However, I do have clients with slightly more flexible budgets and they've been known to buy premium templates, so that's possibly an area to look into if you want to aim for the 'cheap & cheerful' market!

The added advantage of developing templates for these types of systems is that you can sell the same product over and over again and it keeps making money for you :)