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Anyone A Web Designer Here? Need Career Advice Plz . .
10-19-2012, 04:00 AM
Keep in mind that web design and web development are two different things.
Web design --> HTML, CSS, Photoshop
Web development --> Java, PHP, etc.
There's far more earnings potential in development than in design, but clients are harder to find.
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Anyone A Web Designer Here? Need Career Advice Plz . .
10-20-2012, 08:45 AM
I have a couple web sites. They are linked to merchant accounts.
In high school I was part of "web design" career track, basically to keep us (potentially good students) out of the gang bang streets of the bay area. I've always been proficient at web technologies, but now getting into more corporate hard infrastructure stuff (routers, servers) as career. I loved CSS.
If you want to make remote money, then consider skipping the web site creation process, and get straight into marketing and selling the site or the product. SEO should be your target. You can seriously pay a low price for high quality web design work by outsourcing to Manila or some other high skill low pay country.
If you want to get a stable income in US dollars, then learn the web technologies and start designing. It will take you 6 months to get to an ok grade if you work a lot. There are a whole bunch to learn jokingly called the acronym-soup, and you will most probably set-up an Apache server for testing. If things fail you will default to an IT career, at the least.
IMO, there's money to be made in web security. Say, these third world websites that sells to us gringoes are usually insecure as fuck. A good idea would be to hustle the certificates and become merchant service provider on a per region basis. Bah. Anyways, have fun!
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Anyone A Web Designer Here? Need Career Advice Plz . .
10-20-2012, 01:05 PM
Learn how to design great WordPress websites, site migrations from existing CMS to WordPress, and most importantly, learn effective site architecture for SEO purposes.
Then, learn how to build links.
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Anyone A Web Designer Here? Need Career Advice Plz . .
10-21-2012, 12:05 PM
Quote: (10-21-2012 12:04 AM)Rah Wrote:
Quote: (10-20-2012 01:51 PM)FretDancer Wrote:
Quote: (10-19-2012 07:00 PM)Rah Wrote:
Quote: (10-19-2012 05:16 PM)FretDancer Wrote:
Quote: (10-19-2012 04:00 AM)Andy_B Wrote:
Keep in mind that web design and web development are two different things.
Web design --> HTML, CSS, Photoshop
Web development --> Java, PHP, etc.
There's far more earnings potential in development than in design, but clients are harder to find.
True. However, if you are skilled at both of these fields and have a business mindset, you will kill it.
Why? The only way being skilled at both design and development would be a major advantage is if you insist on working by yourself, which is self limiting. You just need to be really good at one or the other and let someone else handle the other part. Companies only hire for a jack of a all trades "web guy" if they're small. The old school notion of "webmaster" is dead. Typically, you're getting hired to do either design or development. And I say this as a jack of all trades guy who is pretty good at both design and development, but not exceptional in either. But I hire guys that are exceptional.
If your intention is to go solo and start a business then save yourself some time, don't learn either, and hire other people to do the actual work.
True, but you are missing a key point here. Its all about the portfolio. If my portfolio displays without any doubt my skills at both of these fields, people can pay me to work for them in either of these fields, maybe even both. Its just about expanding your knowledge and opportunities.
And about the business mindset, well you already know these are the people who eventually make it and have more potential to live the life they want depending on the actions taken in the future (like hiring people to do the work, like you said.)
When you're trading time for money directly, I don't see the advantage in trying to appeal to a broad range of job descriptions. I see the best ROI in being exceptional at one thing and maximizing value creation per hour. If you're exceptional you'll get more business than you can handle and get paid more per hour than if you diversified your skill set.
Plus, like I mentioned, the website creation market is completely swamped with intermediate level do-it-all designer/developer extraordinaires. If you can't rise above that muck you're competing with a ever larger number of third worlders who will undercut you until they're making minimum wage in their own countries.
Ideally, I would love to focus on only Graphic and Web Design. But, isn't it prudent to be a Jack of All trades to get one's foot in the door? Then, when one is establishing his reputation a bit, can he focus on a specialty?
Or should one just become a specialist right off the bat, even before looking for an internship/job?
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Anyone A Web Designer Here? Need Career Advice Plz . .
10-27-2012, 12:42 PM
" most programmers can't design and most designers aren't good at programming. " ... so true... . try telling this to the HR manager I had an interview with. It was with a pretty well known company so i was pretty stoked. Very few people are kick ass on both ends. if you want professional and quality-top tier work, not going to happen..he told me "everyone who works here does both" meaning desingers develop and developers design. i was thinking "BS" .... yeah good luck with that. thats a good recipie for a fuck up. i told him i wasnt interested in developing and excused myself and ended the interview. now that i think about it, he prob was just testing me to see my reaction and if he was spittin truth then i wouldn't want to work like a slave, i should of just kept saying yes, yes, yes, and told him what he wanted to hear... lesson learned. thoughts???
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Anyone A Web Designer Here? Need Career Advice Plz . .
11-13-2012, 01:37 AM
Go into marketing for the big bucks. Forget being a programmer.