website business thought...

[jibby06]

hey guys

this is just a thought, but i was thinking about making a website business where i could design websites for local bands and/or small businesses where i could earn some extra money since i can't get a job yet. I already have my own personal site, but i'll make another site for my business.

I have some ideas on how to get started, but if you guys have suggestions, that'd be cool. What are the pros and cons of doing this? Yup, i think that's all i have on my mind so far. Any questions, just ask. :-d I hope i didn't miss any other points.

[ric449]

well, depends how skilled you are. To do that business you will really need some skills, the last thing you would want is bad PR. I think the hardest part of it would be getting noticed.

[discodanman45]

This reminds me of a funny story of a kid that built web pages. His name was Mike Rowe and decided to get the website www.mikerowesoft.com which by the way got him into a lawsuit with microsft. So just be careful what you name your sites!!! My advice is if you do this work extra hard on the first few web pages and make sure they are perfect. After a few satisfied customers you should be able to get rolling on this. Go to small local businesses and meet with the owners. Tell them stats on what percentage of people surf the net and if they had a site to just tell people they existed how it could help them financially. Don't start any sites that require sales yet, get experience first with just publicity sites.

By the way if you mess with microsoft you get your web pages taken down, see above!!!!!!

[ZeratulsAvenger]

By the way if you mess with microsoft you get your web pages taken down, see above!!!!!!

If I recall, he did just change it and get stuff from microsoft in return, so personally I would be fine with having them boot my site for an XBox and some other stuff

Back to the topic though, just make sure that your site is nice. Don't have one of those sites that I run into every day that have horrible layouts, or only work in IE(I hate this the most actually), or have some lame banner add's. Try to just keep it clean and neat and pleasing to the eye. Possibly test it out on some friends or some webboards prior to telling the vast majority of others.

Oh and the cons of it are people are probably more interested in professional page makers with experience and will discount you as a possibility because of lack of previous works to show them(apart from your page). Might be hard(or very difficult) to start off, and may fail altogether. Not trying to bring ya down, but the possibility is always out there. Although for a cheap, more town based solution, it may vary well work depending on the people in your town .

Good luck and I hope it works out

[james8547]

I already started a gig like this. I setup/configure online shopping carts. I don't earn alot from this but it does pay for my DSL. It's just something that I wanted to do (like a hobby).

I got started by doing 1 site for 1 client. Then the rest are word of mouth.

This is hard work (for me anyways). No one will pay up front. A couple of times I didn't get paid for the job that I did. So now I started putting backdoors on the coding so I can easily disable the shopping cart if I don't get paid. Some people will pay dirt cheap and expect a site that is something like msn.com in 2 hrs.

Other people will give vague ideas on what they want and then complain later on saying that the site is not what they wanted.

My advice is to setup a few sample websites so that a client can see what you can do.

[jibby06]

hehe thanks for the advice...ha yea, i heard that story too about mike rowe. i'm still thinking about it...though..i'm still undecided...

[peter8d9]

actually he only got about 6k and an x box. He donated all but 750 back to the non profit org that gave him money for a defense. he used the extra money for college. all in all less than a grand isnt much to brag about getting from the giant M$

[Jaggannath]

I have a few mates who actually do exactly what you're planning on doing... if you pm me, I'll send you their emails and you can drop them a line and see how they do it.
I'm not sure they'll reply though, but I can only try