Archive for the 'Business of Web Design' Category

Setting the Price for Private Web Design Training

Published on November 2, 2007 in Business of Web Design. 1 Comment

Many of my best articles come from email questions put to me by readers.

In this case, we have someone asking what to charge for private web design training.

The email:

i’ve been a member of your newsletter for years .. BIG FAN!

i recently met a guy that owns/founded an SEO company here in New York that works from home and is VERY successful/wealthy… he asked that i teach him photoshop and flash cs3.

i have NO IDEA what to quote him.

He wants to learn basic image manipulation in photoshop and then learn buttons, headers, and small PowerPoint like presentations in flash.

So minimal actionscript, tweening, and movie clip galore!

I assume i would charge him hourly….

i have an associates degree from WEA in interactive media about 5 years web design experience, and have been a flash developer for a fortune 500 company for just over 2 years now…

Can you help me come up with a good price to quote…keep in mind he may outsource work to me in the future so i need a strong price now so i can make real money later on, but not scare him away..

PLEASE!

THANK YOU!
Tina

Continue reading ‘Setting the Price for Private Web Design Training’

Your First Web Design Contract

Published on October 31, 2007 in Business of Web Design, Professional Web Design and Web Design. 12 Comments

Recently someone asked me a bunch of questions related to getting their first web design job as an independent contractor - and so I figured an article was a good idea.

Tim asked:

Stefan,

With me being a newbie in the web design business, I have some questions. Long story short, I was talking with my friends wife one day and mentioned to her that I had thought about doing some web design on the side to make some extra money.

I live in a small town, with a lot of small businesses and I figure these businesses would have a use for a simple web site to help promote their business.

… So I’m thinking this would be something I could start within the next year or so, … two days ago I receive a call from my friends wife and she asks if I’m interested in doing a web site for her brother, who is a dentist in our town.

So, I say sure and she tells me that he will probably contact me soon to set up a meeting to discuss.

Now, this is great but I haven’t got a clue where to start. Hers’s my thought:

1. Meet with the client to discuss the site. How many pages, the content, etc. Maybe show some of my work.
2. Take the info from the meeting and come up with a quote.
3. Present my idea’s and the quote.
4. If he agree’s and accepts the quote, draw up a contract for him to sign.

Continue reading ‘Your First Web Design Contract’

The Business of Web Design - document for download.

Published on August 21, 2007 in Business of Web Design and Professional Web Design. 0 Comments

Hi,

As some of you may know, I’ve been slowly working on a new set of video tutorials that teachs you how to start and run a small web design business.

You can find the videos posted here:

Business of Web Design video tutorial

I have had a few request for more details, so I decided to release a PDF document that outlines the videos. This is still a work in progress … any comments would be appreciated.

PDF: business-of-web-design-project-plan.pdf

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

Failure: why it’s a good thing … in the Business of Web Design.

Published on July 23, 2007 in Business of Web Design. 5 Comments

Stefan Mischook

I don’t want to go on too long on how you should not be so concerned about failure … for fear of sounding like one of those self-help ‘gurus’. Ack!

But it needs to be quickly address anyhow …

Why are people so fearful of failure?

… Wait a second, that’s a really stupid question!

People hate to fail because we’ve been conditioned to think it’s terrible:

  • You can’t fail a test - your parents will punish you.
  • You can never fail a class at school - your whole academic career will be damaged.
  • You can’t ever get rejected - because you’ll never meet someone new!

The problem with this FALSE belief is that it does not reflect reality and the patterns of the most accomplished people.

… To get anywhere, you have to try and fail. And then try again … and fail. And then try again.

WHY FAILURE IS A GOOD THING

When you fail at something, you can be sure that you are moving towards developing a new skill. If you’ve never failed, it is probably because you never challenged yourself - that’s a bad thing.

CONCLUSION

As you travel on the road to developing your web design business, you will undoubtedly face a few failures along the way.

… Don’t get too down on yourself when you do hit the expected road-blocks! Just recognize where you messed up and try not to do it again, and move on.

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com
www.studioweb.com

The rules of risk and the business of web design.

Published on July 23, 2007 in Business of Web Design. 2 Comments

Stefan Mischook

In the business of web design (any business really,) there are two fundamental rules of risk you can use to evaluate whether or not you should take a particular risk:

  1. If what you are attempting do does not work out … will it kill you?
  2. Does the potential gain justify the risk?

THE FIRST RULE OF RISK

There is an old gamblers expression someone taught me years ago that sums this up nicely:

‘Don’t go to the track with money you can’t afford to lose.’

This rule tells you, that you should not take any risk that would kill your business, if the risk should prove unsuccessful. Keep in mind that most business projects fail; yep, most business ventures, new products whatever … fail!

All-or-nothing type gambles may work once or twice, but eventually something will screw up. If you are one of those guys/girls who puts it ‘all on the line’ everytime, you are doomed to struggle the rest of your life.

As a web designer building a business, you need to learn to take calculated risk that if they should fail, you will be able to continue along as you did before.

For example; lets take a look at a classic situation: the big contract.

Many times when people start a new business, they want to go after the big contract with the big clients right away.

… This is a fatal mistake because of a few things:

  • Big business will almost always only deal with big companies … not small start-ups.
  • Big clients and big contracts will cost you a lot of time just to make proposals and bids - this cost a lot of precious time where you could be earning actual money doing work for small clients.
  • Big business can be tricky to deal with: they know they’re big and so they have a tendency to push their weight around.

Trying to take on a big contract is a high risk decision because chances are you will not get the contract. Also, the process of trying to get it will cost a lot … possibly your business. It is not worth the risk.

You are better to go after byte-sized contracts and slowly build up a stable of clients that will help you develop your web design work-flow and your financial base. In time you will be able to tackle the larger projects knowing that if you don’t land them, it won’t sink you.

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com
www.studioweb.com