Why Most Freelance Web Designers Fail or Work 60 Hour Weeks for Peanuts and Why

Posted Thursday, December 9, 2004

This article is aimed at web designers who struggle to find enough work or just have the occasional quiet period. It shows how you can make money with your web design skills any time you want.

Whilst planning this article, I visited numerous message boards where web designers congregate. I was shocked! Success did seem to be coming to a few posters, but struggle seemed the plight of most. Leaving design college and still being unemployed after a year was one common story. Beginners to freelance working for next to nothing or not working at all was another. Most web designers will experience dry periods when they just can't seem to get any work. But what do you do? Complain? Become frustrated? Become depressed? That's why I decided to write this article, to let web designers like you know that it doesn't need to be that way, and that you can make money with your web design skills, even when it seems like websites must have gone out of fashion. And how can you do this wondrous thing? By designing in-demand turnkey websites that you can sell on eBay and elsewhere on the Internet. Turnkey websites allow your clients to start making money as soon as they get their hands on them. Tremendous competition exists for web design work, whether as a freelancer or with a company. Unfortunately though, ever since the 'dot com bust', there just doesn't seem to have been enough work to go round. Creating websites to sell on eBay provides a perfect stopgap for anyone going through a dry patch and struggling to find work. Simply find out what type of sites currently demand high prices, then design and set up a site to fit and list it on eBay... Whilst using this system may prove very fruitful as a stopgap, plenty of people also take the opportunity to make selling turnkey websites online their living. As you may well have realized already, it can be very difficult to get started as a web designer. The old 'can't get experience without work and can't get work without experience' vicious circle applies as much here as with any other job. This often results in desperate for work web designers taking jobs for a fraction of what they should get. Once you get started working every hour available for next to no money, raising your prices to a reasonable level, and convincing people to keep coming to you, can prove troublesome. That's why many struggling web designers find the opportunity to create turnkey websites such a lifeline. As long as your work's up to scratch, experience need not matter. Rather than experience, you just need the right information and a system that will allow you to succeed. Still want to be a freelance web designer or apply for a web design job? What do you think your clients or future employers will value more? A fully functional web site you designed for a company in college? ("Hmmm...not bad"), or a string of satisfied clients who have paid good money for websites you created totally by yourself, from scratch with no professor to guide you? ("OK, now I'm impressed"). Now, I'm not suggesting that you can create a site about your favorite comic book character and sell it on eBay for $1,000, but your level of creative control will rise significantly above that of your freelance work. At any one time, you will find certain types of site that people want, whether it's a pay-per-click search engine, proprietary product site or even a joke site. But, you can decide which of these to create, and create it your way. You can design it for the client you want to target, rather than the client that happens to pay your fees at the time. Many freelance web designers find themselves spending more of their time going around, meeting clients, working at keeping them and marketing themselves offline, than they do designing websites. That's all very well for the highly sociable, $100 an hour types out there, but most designers would prefer to sit at their computers, designing. Selling websites on eBay will require you to market your business online, but you can achieve this in a far more effective and time efficient manner than you would struggling to find clients by advertising in your local paper. To market online, the right information is essential. For anyone just starting out marketing online, or even a seasoned pro, I personally highly recommend 30 Days to Internet Marketing Success, available here:
(http://www.smallsiteseller.com/30days.htm). One thing that stood out from those web designer message boards that I visited, was the negativity of most of the posts. Many designers become disillusioned and even discuss such conditions as anxiety and depression. This does make sense if all you ever wanted to do was design web pages, but now it looks like working in a supermarket is your destiny. Sound familiar? STOP! You can make a living doing what you love and get paid what your skills are worth...when you create and sell turnkey websites on eBay. So there you have it. You no longer have any excuse for not making money from your web design skills. Forget moping around the house or office wishing someone would give you a break, or taking a job for less money than you'd get cleaning toilets. Simply look at what's selling on eBay, come up with your own super improved version and start making the money you deserve.

"Ensure Your Success with the Covert Secrets of Creating an In-Demand Website in Just a Few Days, and Selling it on eBay at an Astounding Profit!" (http://www.smallsiteseller.com/d/t/6/)

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