Ok my biggest fear is that I will get in trouble with the IRS, I dont want this. I am unsure if its true about 6k a year after that pay taxes. Do you need to do anything else? Im just looking at making some money at the moment get a portfolio going and then make it a business. If this is a possible idea where could I find my clients? Please let me know. Thanks
You could find your clients on this forum easily enough (depending on your price and how good you are)
Just try the buy/sell/trade section for clients. Most will ask for a portfolio or at least an example of what you are capable of doing though.
If you are only starting out - just dipping your toe in the water then you shouldn't have to worry about the IRS - if you decide to make it your career then they might be a little upset if you don't file your tax returns.
Would check properly - in the UK if you fail to inform the HMRC (equiv of IRS) of it within 3 months then there are fines to pay even if your earnings are below taxable rates. As to how to win clients, to be honest this is what differentiates an employee designer from a business owning designer. Most businesses fail not because the people arent good at what they are doing but that they arent good at business. It is a very different skill set in getting business to delivering designs. If you are willing to design sites for a few bucks then you can try on here, alternatively there are plenty of sites like elance where suppliers bid to win client business. The most lucrative market however is going to be your local market but to make significant inroads into it you will need to invest in appropriate marketing and consider joining local business networking events/ associations etc
Hi azbusiness I'm in the same boat really, just a little further along. I make a few hundred a month at it now in my spare time, I've been at it for 2 years. I can relay the things I have done to get going with the hope that they may be of some help to you. The first thing I did was switch from a typical shared webhosting plan to a cPanel reseller plan. This opens up a number of potential avenues of income immediately but most notably the ability to sell webspace to your clients as an ongoing revenue source. It also makes website construction itself more efficient simply because you will be constructing most of your websites on a Control Panel you are familiar with. To rustle up some business, I bought a website template package on eBay for $2 and whipped up 3examples of my work, modifying them slightly to enhance their appearance. I then took screenshots of them and began posting the images on some of the big free classifieds sites such as Kijiji and Craigslist. At the same time I approached a few local business owners I knew who were considering having websites constructed. The few initial clients were guinea pigs as I improved my product offerings, learned more and simply got the hang of the business. The beauty of cPanel is that there are a number of routes that can be taken from its auto install script library (which is called Fantastico), that can be good sources of income. I've made a template for osCommerce as an example that I resell a couple times a month fully installed as well as selling copies of it to others. Eventually word of mouth will begin to garner some business for you and you will also be able to evenutally charge more. As examples, I worked for nothing putting up a few templates, I worked for peanuts while using my first few clients as guinea pigs, I moved up to pocket change as I received a few enquiries from Kijiji etc. My osCommerce template and raising my prices has bumped this up to grocery money. Now I have 4 websites to be constructed ahead of me, ongoing sales of my template and the residual income of providing webhosting. Now it's time to get started.