So how easy is it to make money from web design these days?

[Participant]

Firstly, I'm aware that this is somewhat of a 'how long is a piece of string' question...

But subjectively, what's the market like for freelance web designers these days?

- Are you employed in web design?
- Do you work for yourself, or are you embedded in a firm?
- Full time or contract work?
- What field of web design?
- How did you start?
- What coding languages would you say are a must these days?
- Do you think it's better to specialise in a niche aspect of web coding, or to try and be a jack of all trades?

I'm a management accountant by trade, but I'm looking to supplement my income by picking up another professional skill to diversify my marketability and just generally further myself, even if it gets me nowhere. I really enjoy the creative aspect of web design but also the logical side of the coding etc. I know it will take me years and years and years to get anywhere near good enough to get people to pay me proper money for this, so I'm currently just looking for people's stories and experiences really.

Discuss!

 

[Participant]

Good info here guys, thanks. Interesting to hear what people do and how they got into it too. I'm determined to do something with this, so now I've got my learning list, it's time to get some books and start practising! My dream scenario is basically to stay within my current job, whilst starting off with low key low pay / voluntary projects here and there on the side until I build up some knowledge. Then make it into a weekend / evening profession, then if I love it, who knows.

The reality is that it's most likely that nothing will come of it...I'm not sure my brain can cope with coding languages! I'm ok with fairly complex nested Excel formulae etc. but I do that day in day out every day, so it's hard to forget anything.