What's the market like for self employed web designers?

jsmoke

jsmoke

jsmoke

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I have some programming skills, not to good on the graphics side though, just wondering what kind of work there is out there, is it still regraded as a specialised job or is the market flooded with people.
 
It really depends on the client, but if you're self employed then you're much more attractive to smaller clients if you can design, build and implement an entire web solution. If you're only good at a specific part of that solution then you'd be better off trying to do some freelance/contract work. This way you're hired to fill a specific roll.

But yeah, just to add.. the market is flooded with designers and devs. Its more about who you know than what you know.
 
How would you define 'some programming skills'?

If you're really good, know your stuff and have a decent portfolio, you shouldn't have much of a problem. If you're just kind of okay and don't have much work to show, you're going to find it difficult.
 
There's a lot of contract work about for experienced ASP.Net MVC devs at the minute - I'm getting 2/3 emails a day from recruiters. To be a good web developer you need to be multi-skilled though, impeccable knowledge of Javascript/jQuery, SQL and C# are an absolute must.

Also, as has been alluded to earlier in the thread, a web designer and a web developer are very different roles.
 
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Spunkey said:
To be a good web developer you need to be multi-skilled though, impeccable knowledge of Javascript/jQuery, SQL and C# are an absolute must.
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C#? Really? Ruby on Rails is where it's at.

Anyway, my brother is a free-lance graphic designer/web designer. He doesn't do much website development but he gets enough work to let him take the odd month off. He works for a variety of smaller clients. I'm not sure how mmay of these would want just the devopment doing though.

You could just give it a try OP. nothing wrong with working on the side whilst you have your day job. If it works - great, if not move on to something else.
 
Mr^B said:
What sort of programming? ASP.Net, php, javascript, html5, silverlight/flash?
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I can hack away at all of these, but hacking it would be, not much experience of OO PHP for example, mainly because I've never had the motivation to go that extra step. I can hack away at HTML/CSS, jQuery, ASP.NET and have dabbled in Actionscript.

Spunkey said:
Also, as has been alluded to earlier in the thread, a web designer and a web developer are very different roles.
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Yes I know that, I regard the designing as the more difficult job.
 
So your saying you can set yourself up as a web designer/developer, get the work and outsource to a poor country and rake it in, so why isn't every man and his dog doing this, or are they?
 
There's a few that do. However generally speaking the work is of **** poor quality, based on requirements gathered which have been passed across third hand which mean it usually ends up taking longer anyway.

I can get someone re-pave my driveway for £20. Doesn't mean it's a good idea.
 
jsmoke said:
So your saying you can set yourself up as a web designer/developer, get the work and outsource to a poor country and rake it in, so why isn't every man and his dog doing this, or are they?
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""The story goes a little something like this. A developer at a US-based critical infrastructure company, referred to as “Bob,” was caught last year outsourcing his work to China, paying someone else less than one fifth of his six-figure salary to do his job. As a result, Bob had a lot of time on his hands; in fact, during the investigation, his browsing history revealed this was his typical work day""

http://thenextweb.com/shareables/20...so-he-could-surf-reddit-and-watch-cat-videos/

You can indeed !
 
oneale90 said:
""The story goes a little something like this. A developer at a US-based critical infrastructure company, referred to as “Bob,” was caught last year outsourcing his work to China, paying someone else less than one fifth of his six-figure salary to do his job. As a result, Bob had a lot of time on his hands; in fact, during the investigation, his browsing history revealed this was his typical work day""

http://thenextweb.com/shareables/20...so-he-could-surf-reddit-and-watch-cat-videos/

You can indeed !
Click to expand...


So is it illegal in this country also?
 
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