i see people who work by creating sites/writing/SEO etc. but how good is the pay doing this from the hours spent? say someone here offers services to build templates for people, on average how many templates do you think hes working on and how good do you have to be to make great money? I am a photoshop noobie right now, in terms of how to do things, i could create some pretty nice stuff that i think up in my head but i don't know how to turn that into actual work through photoshop tools. if i learned some tricks of the trade in photoshop do you think it would be possible to make a good living building sites? right now my sites arn't doing very well, i make about 1,000$ a month from selling proxies and making money off them and im trying to fund real website projects. I have so so skills with template building but i call myself a "lazy coder" meaning like i put everything together with divs and just throw in pixel numbers to align, im not very professional or i don't know the secrets to doing simple stuff like that. So what im trying to so is, if i put time into learning how to do better things in photoshop and buy a book or two on brushing up my coding and learning like php or something, do you think it would be a good income bringer? i always wanted to sit on my butt and have an auto run website like proxies which has earned me 1k this month which is pretty good to some degree but i want to be in the 3k-4k montly range. will this help me or will it be like a desk job where i sit at the computer for 10 hours a day trying to complete templates? which i really don't want to do since there is already more skilled people and a lot of them charge pretty cheap which is like 5$ an hour for some simple templates which is pretty low for me.
It is certainly possible to get rich doing websites, we arent there yet unfortunately, but as much comes down to your sales/ marketing abilities as it does your actual technical skills. We dont do templates so cant say what the market is truely like but I would imagine that if you are talking about stock templates (eg what you get at templatemonster etc) then the money wont be that great. Looking on the above site the most downloads for a single template I could see was 11 @ $55 a shot. Given that many people on the likes of Guru or Elance are looking to pay up to $250 for a simple HTML site it does beg the question on if it is better to sell templates or create a template and then spend the extra hour simply plugging in their content and get the extra pennies.
Designing is poopy now to many snoty kids who under sell there work leaving less work for other people
Yeah, but those kids don't keep clients. And the clients they do get, are the ones worth avoiding. I've got a handful of clients that basically keep me alive. It's just a matter of being persistent in finding the right people to work for. I 'click' with my return clients - I like them, and they like me. I start as a simple website designer - but I've learnt to operate like Costanza. I weasel my way into their lives - I'm the hosting company, the print designer, the photographer, the tech support etc. I could probably make more $ by designing/coding for a 'real' company, but I wouldn't be remotely happy doing it.
Not only that, freelancers from poor and underdeveloped countries will work for much less and end up eating up most of the clients that are always looking for the cheapest prices.
I learnt very quickly that any client who's only concerned with "how much will it cost" ends up being more trouble than they're worth. They squeeze and squeeze until you as a designer/coder/whatever just don't care anymore. Then it all becomes about finishing the work asap and getting rid of them.
Agreed. Most clients still do not understand that you get what you pay for. Anyone can throw pennies at third world workers and get a design made from a template or cheap labor. Most clients throw money away with these so called design shops to come out wanting a better design, its when they wake up and realize a good design costs a lot more that they are client worth having. High end custom design work is billing at a rate between $125 and $225 an hour right now. Set a price for your work and dont come down cause a client thinks your too expensive. They will come back to you later anyway.
thanks for the information but thats what im trying to figure out. im not exactly the greatest designer, mostly because i don't know how to transfer my ideas to photoshop the way i vision it. So what im asking is, is it worth me buying a few photoshop books and coding books? can i make it happen for me and earn good money?
You can if you can get clients to buy your service. I know a lot of good designers but do not have the people skills to land a job. As a freelancer you would both be a designer, developer, marketing manager, and a salesperson. Also your expense will not be in the training books, but in the software. You will need at least (if your going to use Adobe products) Photoshop and dreamweaver. Another avenue for training would be lynda.com. They have good video tutorials and you could just subscibe for s few months to get you going. But you can make it if you have the desire and drive to do so.
yeah right now im doing proxies and bring in anywhere from 1000-1500 a month so im wondering if this would increase it
there are hundereds of great FREE photoshop tutorials around . . check them out before buying anything. Freelancing - online at least - is going to be very difficult. You'd be competing against people who are prepared to work for a few $s a day. By far the best way to get work is to target businesses in your local area, people prefer to deal face to face with their developer - and you'll get a decent wage (hopefully).
I've just started writing, and its been so - so for me. One person said they didn't need the article anymore, and the other took it. So out of a possible $7 in my first 2 articles, I've only to recieve $3.