Being a web designer, you are exposed to different people wanting to have different websites to be designed and built. You come into play to bring out the image of the company from mere description into a reality. But these are not only the things that web designer can do, in fact, web design is a way of learning and web designers are learning from each client they work with.

I have been an adult web designer long before and during those times, I was curious how adult web masters do their business. During the course of my working days, I have come to find out how an adult webmaster work, how they promote, what are the trends in design that converts, just by chatting them up. Though I have no experience doing things by what they say, but it’s better to have an idea of things than to be totally clueless. It’s a learning process for web designers and that’s what makes web design job rewarding.

For example, the time that I was curious about affiliate marketing. I have no one to teach me, how would I learn? I figured, if I promote my service to affiliate marketers, I can get a glimpse of how they do business. And so I did. It took me months to get an idea of how the whole affiliate marketing goes by talking to affiliate marketeers and asking questions. They wouldn’t really mind answering most especially if you did a great job. Most clients will come back for more and its a great chance to ask for even more. Plus, it builds rapport because you wouldn’t be talking about small things with them, you are actually trying to learn things that they are passionate about thus trusting you even more. Building relationship which gives a win win situation to both parties.

A friend of mine, a web developer came up to me and asked if I have any idea on how to start a business online. I, a web designer for one can not believe that I’m making a business of the internet much so that I got intrigued and excited about him making an effort to start an online business. He already has a very high salary already, working as a head web developer of a very known company. So I already have an idea that my friend wouldn’t quit his job anytime soon. But I’m quite happy for him for making the effort of starting his own business and earn an income online.

He was my professor back in college, having the same passion for learning, he is very successful with his career and so am I on my chosen path. He asked me, “What’s the best blogging platform?”. I said wordpress, 99% of blogs are wordpress. He already have an idea on how to get started but really have no clue of the process of actually making money. I asked “What’s cooking?” he said, “I went up looking at an entrepreneur magazine looking up for a business to start, then I realized I’m a fucking web developer. There must be some way to make business out of it. Then I remembered you. You are the prof now. Can you help me?”

Of course I can. Here are some of the tips that I said to him.

• Blog about your passion if its profitable - Many people will say that, blog about your passion. Well it depends, you don’t want to starve do you? You must take priority of your needs first so you can quit your job early. If you can blog about your passion and there’s a market for it. Go for it. That’s 2 birds in 1 stone. Know if the topic is profitable first then make a site around it. Personally, I’m a believer of delayed gratification. The first things we have to do when making a business online is to get paid and not starve. Blogging about my passion may give me the joy, but its useless to continue if I starve. What’s the point of doing business and quitting your job then if you can’t make a living about your passion?
• Invest in yourself - The reason why most people fail in business, especially making money online is that not many people are willing to sacrifice and spend some money to learn. Bloggers are known to be tech savvy and will do anything to get things for free. But real entrepreneurs know the value of knowledge so much that they are willing to spend time and money to attain it. I had an experience wasting 10000 pesos trying to learn PPC. Did it really went to waste? No! I learned PPC a little bit and might take more money to get a grasp on it. But I’m willing to spend to educate myself.
• Stop reading make money online blogs - The best way to make money online is to go out there and try it yourself. Shed some money if you have to. That will be your foundation. Just stop reading make money online blogs. No offense to the make money online bloggers, I know its their passion to blog about making money. But being a newbie once in this field, make money online blogs didn’t really help. Its better to read SEO blogs for SEO, affiliate marketing for making money as an affiliate or self improvement blogs for your business mentality. If I have found a good make money online blogs and teach people the truth and really make money, I would gladly advertise it on my site.
• Learn SEO - This is the bread and butter of online business. Learn real SEO from keyword research to promoting a site. Stop reading make money online blogs. Learn from the real experts in SEO read SEOmoz, or ask at webmaster forums.
• Choose only 1 type of monetization - If you’re going for adsense, go for it and no more. Do not put competition on your page. There is the thing we call in business “Diversification” this is true as to not put all your eggs in one basket. But it doesn’t mean put all banner ads or adsense on the page that you can fit. In reality, what it means is that, don’t put all your effort into 1 site. Putting thousand of ads in your site will not only make your site look desperate, it will lack the credibility for affiliate offers and direct advertisers.
• Choose a niche - Blog about a specific niche. Do not blog about anything under the sun. If you’ll be monetizing the site with direct advertising, you know that these companies only want people that are viewing the ads that are related to their interest. Would you sell a guitar to a piano player? Having to blog anything without any specific topic will give advertisers the second thought of advertising with you. Its because your viewers and traffic are junk that came from different sorts of life.
• Quit your job when you’re making twice as much online - This should have been my goal back then when I quit my job. It could’ve been a lot easier. It took me about 3 hard and sleepless months stumbling and starving to get my passive income as much as my day job and another 3 months to double it. Well its a good strategy to quit early though, for me, I had fun, if I didn’t make money within this certain period of month, I’m gonna fail my parents and die hungry.

Sorry for posting about affiliate marketing posts this past few days. I have been excited by it and would like to share. Regular posting about web design will be up in the following days.

-Jeff

Web design is a very saturated field. But still not enough to take on all of the web sites being made everyday. There’s enough work for all web designers in the world. Now who wouldn’t want to be in this lucrative and creative business. I’ve been a web designer for quite some time and the development of the design on all niches and types of websites are fast changing. We are now on the 4th stage of the internet called Web 2.0. Why have we’ve come to this internet era and how did I know we are in Web 2.0? One thing for sure its the design of the website.

Although it might not look like it by the look of my site, I’m really a web designer and I just recovered from my site losing all my files. If you would like to know more of me and see sample of my past work, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Tips On Being a Web Designer

Inner Game

I call this inner game. How you view this business and work. Your work will reflect on what’s going on your mind. One thing to never forget is that, a web designer is always creative. And creative people never say never and do the impossible. Creative people are genius in their own little way.

One time a client wanted me design a site that is fun and looks like an under sea fun party. They gave me sample and its all full of vector art. I don’t know shit how to use illustrator. But I got an idea and a clear picture of what they wanted. So I still went on. I messed around illustrator and my creativity never failed me. I came out of a design that’s one of the best I’ve done. I could easily get away and say, I can’t or I can’t use illustrator. But hey, if you want it, you can get it. All you have to do is close your eyes and have a clear picture of what you want and it will come tru.

Business Relations

If a client wants to revise something with your web proposal, don’t take it personally. I know sometimes when you worked hard for a project and the revisions are as big as just make a new one. You really have no choice and don’t take it personally. Appreciate the clients effort on pointing out your weakness and thank them for being open and honest. Build a lasting relationship with them so they know that they’ll get the highest quality web design service from you. This is the key to referrals and loyal clients.

When You Say It Do It

Integrity… That’s the word, if you say you can do it. Do it. If you say you can finish this at this time. Finish it at that time. Your clients will love you for your reliability and will trust you more.

Now that’s been taken care off… On to your arsenal…

Web Designer Skills and Tools

Photoshop

I can’t live without this tool. Graphic application is the bread and butter of a web designer. I am using Adobe Photoshop for all my web designs and will never trade it for anything else. This is the only graphic application I used since I first started (except MS Paint).

Adobe Photoshop is used for retouching images, improving the quality of pictures, web layouts and web designs, maybe some graphics and logo, but there is a more powerful tool for that, which brings us to the next,

Illustrator

The most powerful logo creation, vector creation and print creation software to be added on your arsenal. With Photoshop, you can do any kind of web design work.

Flash

Motion is the future. It is expected that when the internet reached the age of web 3.0, all websites will be a moving media. Videos and graphic animation. And today, its one of the most appealing piece of work in a website to catch the visitors attention in a little time.

Dreamweaver

For HTML and CSS coding. If you can do it in notepad, by all means, help yourself. I love Dreamweaver for the fact that its so easy to add code snippets and makes it a lot faster to work with codes.

Pizza, Coke and Smoke

With you’re skills and tools, you’ll find yourself piled with web design jobs. So pamper yourself with the best combination of every computer programmer and internet savvy professionals — Pizza & Coke. If you’re stuck and have no ideas, you can take a quick smoke and get back to work. That’s the life of a web designer.

Where to Learn Web Design

That’s easy, just type in google web design tutorials and you’ll find yourself with tons of tutorials. Or, if you want a suggestion Pixel2life is my favorite.

There’s a lot of sites to be made. Good luck on your web design career.