Web Design is a job, not a career, and it is not a good one.
In 5-10 years the web design field will be drastically different and most of the people doing it now will not be doing it anymore (since they can’t get paid to do it).
The cottage industry of web design will vanish, replaced by big companies (many of which outsource to places like India) and automated servers. Your website will be included with your hosting and thats fine for small business. There aren’t enough large businesses to keep everyone else employed.
If you want long term career stability maybe get a degree in IT management or in graphic design if you’re more a creative person. A Graphic designer can always do some HTML markup, but with the traditional design and art education you’ll have more to fall back on. Additionally mastering some programs like photoshop can provide additional job security.
You could always try being in house - I work for a company which has several subsidiaries. I do all their websites and maintain them. My secondary duties are to do posters, greeting cards and make their powerpoint presentations “nice-looking”. It’s a semi-fulfilling job, but they let me freelance on the side as long as the company is given priority over the projects I personally handle. Heck, the CEO recently referred someone else to me - that was a bit surprising.
Maybe he purposely made it atrocious so that the person paying for it would be like, woah look how much coding that took! I’ve gotta pay this guy some good cash!
I think if you want to survive in IT you have to be a jack of all trades and willing to learn everything. You also have to enjoy doing it because it will burn you out. I do a ton html for my job but I also do hardware, servers, and erp software.
I’ve always considered web design/development to be a bit like playing chess. It’s easy to learn the basics, but can take many years to master. (oh, and the rules constantly change hahaha)
If you want to make good money doing this you have to master it. You’re in for years of learning to get there tho.
If you’re not willing to pay the dues (and I don’t think they’re worth paying at this point), there are far too many beginners/wannabes/idiots willing to do this stuff for $5 an hour. You’ll run into them everywhere, and they will eat your lunch because many potential clients don’t know any better.
We’re partly to blame. The web design community as whole hasn’t done much to establish the value of the work we do. We could use something like the AIGA, which (among other things) tries to raise public awareness of the value of graphic design.
Having done this since 1995, I make a decent buck. But I also spend a great deal of my time when you figure that in addition to the eight hours a normal job takes, I still spend an additional few hours learning new stuff and keeping up with what’s going on in the industry, plus doing side projects.
Knowing what I know now, I would choose another career path if I had to start from scratch today.
Long ago I gave up fighting against the $5 designers and cheap/ignorant clients. I let them fight over the scraps. Sometimes I clean up their messes, and charge heavy to do so. I land less projects, but they pay well enough to make up for skipping the small ones. However, the only reason I can get away with that is because I’m experienced and established.
Web design is really a challenging field and when I say that I mean designing web sites with real design elements, with the understanding of what the web is, web development and web promotion.
But the reality is that there are some people who are not designers and have put a lot of discredit into the field. And there are those who don’t understand and who don’t care or want to understand. For instance, I have seen some of them in top positions saying a discussion forum is not an important part of a marketing element…
As to the idea of making real living from it. I now conclude that It can be added to other sectors such as graphic design, documentation, technical writing, translation or journalism. There are opportunities in the web agencies? and one survey concluded that within the EU only 50% of companies have web sites?
it depends
if you do Online marketing then you will not make liven since there is alote of competetor and cheap price
while local marketing is kinda better
Web designing has been on for a very long time, but people seem to be gaining more awareness, expecially now that you can do almost everthing on the net.
The rate at which people are now rushing to web designing is however alarming. hence there are a lot of competition amongst web designers. the sad story is, everybody has different reasons of going into web designinig. So, you that want to make web designing your career will probably be disadvantaged because your charges will probably be higher than someone that’s just doing it for the fun of it or as a part time.
you can only thrive as a full time web developer, except if you are very good and ca create a nitch for yourself, aside that am sorry…
It used to be, but if you’re looking for a career that has security, Web design is NOT the way to go. There are so many competitions out there now and even if you have a handful of clients, you’re not sure if they will continue to be there. More people are now learning web design and pretty soon, instead of hiring their web designer, people will start building their own sites.
I’m not trying to turn you off…but that’s just the fact, it’s not a stable job. If you’re really into web design, go for it! But it’s always good to have a backup skill or some stable job.
It all depends how you market your business. I’ve had a large client that paid me near the equivalent of some of the salaries people have been throwing around in this forum.
That’s for ONE job. I think as Brendon Sinclair points how, it’s not nesc. how great you are - the business side of things is also very important.
I don’t think its out of the realm of possibility for a web developer with a good personality and marketing plan to score a few $15,000 sites a year. I’ve done it, and hope to do it again.
And why stop there? With the right infastructure, you could handle several big dollar sites a year without being overwhelmed.
My experience with creative website design as a career tells me it’s becomming much like painting, graphic design and fine arts in general. This means a hundred million people do it, of those millions a tiny handful get to do it professionally and of that small professional group very few are excited about their careers and their standard of living. Paycheck to paycheck, old car and cheap apartment rent (life with roommates for many) is considered “financial success” in this field. Job loss will come suddenly and worries of uncertain future for you individually and for your entire industry will always lurk in the back of your head.
In a career field where anybody anywhere in the world can compete with you as long as he/she has a cheap computer, Web access and some stolen software, your career opportunities are limited and you have to make sure you understand that before you commit.
There was a period of euphoria and very high salaries that ended rather abruptly, but the sad finale was probably a good thing. So much money was being wasted on foolish Web and IT initiatives that it actually increased the damage caused by the recession and caused even more folks to lose their jobs.
Also, I second the suggestions that website design should be combined with other skills such as programming or graphic design. As a rule, an old-fashioned graphic designer with a bit of website design experience is more likely to have a good job than a champion website designer (databases and all) who has limited graphic design knowledge. Never forget that graphic design as a career has been with us for a couple thousand years while website design is still searching for direction and is under the serious threat of outsourcing.
It’s a tough industry, tough and violatile. I didn’t make it despite a dedicated 4-year degree, good corporate resume and 3 years experience. I’ve been out of the industry since early 2002, currently taking classes and training myself for a totally different career field. Corporate website designer was the most rewarding job I ever had but it was just a job. As a career this is not for me, I see too many things that from my perspective are wrong with it. It’s not that I couldn’t go on, it was the realization that it wasn’t worth it for me to go on. The time has come to catch up with my friends who are very successful and NOT working in the IT industry. My priorities have changed.
Of course, individual results vary. I never tried it myself but I always thought if somebody has problems getting a dedicated web design job he/she can get a low-wage part-time job with health benefits (e.g. packing groceries or as a bank clerk) and then use free time to freelance websites. This may actually work out for some folks as long as they’re good and know how to charge proper fees. At the appropriate time when you feel like a champion can cut the umbilical cord and go 100% freelance or small company with the help of others.
Over the last few years, there’s also gotten to be this almost “stigma” type of thing associated with the profession. It’s hard to put my finger on it.
When I go to a networking event or especially a social event, and someone asks what I do, I tell them I’m a computer geek or programmer or something, because there are a dozen unemployed/hasbeen “web designers” at the same function.
Basically, any unemployed dork can load Dreamweaver and Paint Shop Pro on his computer and bill himself as a freelance “web designer”…and as there get to be more and more of people exactly like that, it’s getting harder and harder for them to convince people that they’re something other than what they really are, and they’re giving “web designers” a bad name in general.
I noticed it when one friend pointed out that the term “web designer” had become code for “unemployed loser” LOL
That’s putting it harshly but you’re right to some extent. But here’s one good thing to remember: there is life after leaving the IT industry, plenty of opportunities for a fresh start without them computers. This is especially true for folks willing to invest some money into re-training and education. Never met somebody making above average money and complaining about his job, even if it involved defusing landmines. Money is…well…you guys know the temptations of having steady injections of fat checks.
It’s curious that no one has mentioned a Business Plan as an essential part of running a web business?
I’d wager that fewer businesses would fail (or fewer would be started!) if the time was taken to draft a good business plan before any attempt at running a business.
I’m leaning in the direction of competition (rather than business plan quality) as the prime factor that decides whether you guys succeed or fail. In all areas of business enterpreneurs try to come up with something novel and in demand for. Competition is incompatible with the survival of an idea or a business. The rule of supply and demand. In contrast, you guys are saturating a market that’s already saturated beyond capacity-hence the struggle, the financial woes, the joblesness.
Some excellent points brought up in this forum. However, one point that seems to be glossed over is the difference between building web sites and building web applications. To clarify, websites are static marketing tools that put a web based face on an entity. They do nothing more than provide static content that may change occasionally. For many businesses this all that is needed to build some sort of web-based brand awareness.
However, as stated previously in this forum, a vast majority of them (but not all) are built by incompetent people who have copy of Photoshop or worse FrontPage. They have learned how to ftp and register a domain name and as such call themselves a web designer. One has only to look at the cheesy sites built by some incompetent without a clue about the differences between graphics for the web and graphics for print. Not to mention the sites built to look busy by putting up any and every unrelated affiliate banner under the sun. Spelling errors, incorrect grammer, and layout nightmares abound on these sites.
On the other hand, there are web applications. Sites that actually do something more than use the overrated and over used flash animations. These sites do take some expertise to build (though some are built by incompetents as well, many built by someone with a copy Visual Basic). It’s the guys that are writing the code (not html) behind the scenes in the middle and backend tiers that make these sites work. They are also, the most in demand and receiving the highest salaries…still. To really stand out from the rest, get some formal training in Computer Science and get a serious programming language or two under your belt (and no I don’t mean Visual Basic). You’ll also need to be familiar with one or two databases as well. Java, C++ and C# to some extent will ground you in the basic tenants of Object Oriented Programming and proper structure. There are is also python, and a slew of other open source languages and technologies that can send you on your way. For Databases, Oracle, Sybase, SQL Server, and many others are industrial strength skill sets to be taken seriously. And lastly, get familiar with php or ASP.Net for the front end. If you can add these to your existing design skills, or focus on them exclusively, you should have no problem getting work and at a higher than average rate as well.
And don’t let the media hype concerning outsourcing concern you. Statistics show that due to time zone differences, communciation problems, and bad coding, over 70% of these (and I use this term loosely)money-saving outsource projects are failing miserably. Not to mention, that India to some extent is experiencing the same sort boom we experienced in the late 90’s. Meaning job hopping to highest bidder. The bottom line, a good US based programmer, coder, software engineer or whatever you want to call them versed in a variety of the above technologies and adept at building web applications will carry much more weight than the title “web designer” and will always be in demand.
I’ve found almost the opposite to be true. Sure enough, you can make a lot of money as a programmer doing back-end and middle-tier type work, but a good designer (by “good” I mean somebody who has capacity in not only graphic design, but also user interface design and business analysis) can make tons of money as well in the right setting. If somebody is more user-centric, they probably shouldn’t go into programming because odds are they will hate it. Then again, one should never choose their lifelong career just by looking at salary surveys. If everybody were like that we’d have no teachers or chefs. But hey, maybe that’s why the average person has 11 distinct careers in the course of their lives.
Your point is well made and I agree. Their is a difference between the “learn web site design in 21 days” designer and the ones who have formal training or are just plain gifted in this area (I don’t happen to be one of them). And a good designer is worth their weight in gold when you consider a market saturated with infererior ones. I have worked with designers who were good at what they do and were compensated handsomely for their skills. In my subjective experience however, this seems to be the exception and not the rule (I am not saying this is the case everywhere). As a software engineer myself, designers are an integral part of building a world-class web application. And I have yet to find a good engineer who is also capable of learning and applying proper UI design. On the other hand, I have worked with several designers who were more than capable of learning how to code. I was speaking only on ways to possibly set yourself apart. As far as looking only at the salary, you are absolutely correct. If you are not happy in your job, mounds of money will not make it more enjoyable. However, I was speaking to the first post in this thread which specifically asked about where all the high paying projects were.
I am going out on limb and say the odds of becomeing a fulltime web desiger in this present economy in the states is extremly small to pretty much none
I guess it could happen, if you have the right connections
The price on web design and computer programming in general is getting lower and lower
I would love to see the site that one guy said he got paid 15,000 for , is it one of the ones in your portfolio?
The problem with web design by itself is people have no confidence in it there are so many people who have bought websites that have made them no money.
I personally can design , program and optimize websites with out one of those I wouldn’t be doing so hot.
Actually who am i kidding I’m not doing so hot with all of them
I am certainly glad I tried interactive multimedia as a career even though eventually I will end up doing nothing “creative” for a living. My biggest problem as a 20-something college student was lack of real-life experience with different careers. In college I had whatever lame part-time jobs fit my schedule. Those taught me virtually nothing about the possibilities and limitations of being a pro. I held onto the idea of IM being a ticket to professionalism and to middle class standard of living. But it’s not, it never even came close for most of us, but now at least I know why.
