Drupal as a career

What should one know and learn to earn money with drupal or any other cms?

 

Be able to write your own theme and also be able to edit already existing theme or templates.

 

Theming and developing modules is widely asked.
Working as a freelancer and building websites, but here again you need to design themes in most cases.

 

Thanks for the replies! Really appreciate it!

 

Developing modules alone will get you quite a bit of work

 

Just understanding very well Drupal could bring you some developing work. Drupal is huge and powerful. You can hire other people to write php if you can't.

 

One can make Drupal career even being a php noob, like me, with some skills in theming (HTML, CSS). jQuery is highly appreciated, perhaps will be the key skill to trade in 2011.

 

Yes drupal has very fortune career. If you are well good in drupal you can do freelancing

 

Try to write your own theme and also be able to edit already existing theme or templates.

 

Themes or providing support/admin services.

 

I've been freelancing with Drupal for many years now, and have built up quite a lucrative career.

Currently, there is a drought of Drupal developers... so if you have or can learn the skills, you should have no problem finding work or a job.

Your best bet is to look at your skillset and see where your strengths are and what you enjoy doing. You will be able to find the most stable work by "specializing" in one niche or another:
- theming
- module development
- performance & migration
- site cloning
- project management
- maintenance
- basic drupal management

You will still want to become familiar with all areas above, but your going to be best served by becoming more focused in one area. Why? Because its not only more efficient to do work in a single field, but you will become known by others as being an expert in your area. You will also want to become involved in the Drupal forums and other forums like this one to share your knowledge and let people know what you can do.

The best way to learn is to jump right in and start doing it... build a site in drupal, and then another, and then another. If you can find some paying work for this, even better. You will need to charge less and deliver more as you establish your portfolio, but the investment is worth it. I started out charging $30/hour a few years ago and have been able to raise my rates each year. I am currently looking at raising my rates again to $75/hour.

At this point, I could also give up being a freelancer and go get a job doing Drupal for $70-90k including benefits.

So really, its up to you...

Final piece of advice - just do your best to take care of your clients, do professional work and go the extra mile every time. Eventually you will have tons of repeat work, referrals and a solid reputation.

ron