Is it possible to make a living off designing CSS layouts?

[K-Star]

That seems to be all I'm good at as far as things I've learned here in college...

Here's an example, minus a proper header and footer since I haven't gotten around to making those yet:

http://babbage.cs.missouri.edu/~ljrckd/cs2830/Project/

Eventually that site's going to be turned into my final project for Intro to the Internet.

 

[Vance]

Make a living off of it? A little tough, as the skills are like any other 'artist-based' skill set, really depends on the amount of demand and how competitive you really are. There -are- CSS sites out there that seem to be doing okay, and so long as you're modest in your expectations, you can probably earn a wage on it.

Just don't expect to be buying a Ferrari any time soon.

 

[Mr. B]

I think it's pretty hard to make a good living doing websites as there is so much talent for hire. I once thought about this career path too but there are so many people so much better than me. Here's some idea of your competition... http://www.simplebits.com/

 

[plague]

Well there are a lot of web sites, and most look like crap and need a redesign. If you're a good designer, you can make a living out of it. If you're a good designer, a good CSS/HTML/javascript coder, and a good sales person, you'll have a better chance, though.

The CSS and HTML don't validate on that page, and I think it could look a lot better. Hopefully you still have some time at college. Since this is "Intro to the Internet", I'm assuming you'll learn more later.

 

[K-Star]

Well there are a lot of web sites, and most look like crap and need a redesign. If you're a good designer, you can make a living out of it. If you're a good designer, a good CSS/HTML/javascript coder, and a good sales person, you'll have a better chance, though.

The CSS and HTML don't validate on that page, and I think it could look a lot better. Hopefully you still have some time at college. Since this is "Intro to the Internet", I'm assuming you'll learn more later.

They don't validate? What do you mean? (Also, the header and footer haven't been added yet... It'll look loads better once they're added.)

 

[Chakoteya]

The best way to make a living is to get hired by a company to build and maintain their site for them.
Going freelance and hoping you can get business is hard. And everyone wants something for pretty much nothing these days.

 

[Mr. B]

They don't validate? What do you mean? (Also, the header and footer haven't been added yet... It'll look loads better once they're added.)

http://validator.w3.org/

 

[plague]

And this:

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Making a living doing freelance web design is very tough. A company of any decent size will have their own staff for such a task, or will hire an outside company. Freelancers are pretty much left with the scraps: what you might find on a site like Elance or RentACoder, or doing sites for local businesses who just want simple brochureware and nothing fancy.

 

[K-Star]

They don't validate? What do you mean? (Also, the header and footer haven't been added yet... It'll look loads better once they're added.)

http://validator.w3.org/

HA! One error, easily fixed. Much better than the number of errors I get on my first site (which was written before I learned proper XHTML.)

And this:

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Two errors there. The background color one can be fixed by having me switch it to a hex code. I dunno how to fix the smallcaps one though.

Seriously, that's way better than what I USED to do.

http://bengal.missouri.edu/~ljrckd/awesomeness if you want to run that through a validator

 

[plague]

The "smallcaps" should be "small-caps".

Although a lot of designers can get away with code that doesn't validate because they're selling to customers that don't know any better, those web sites are great tools to check your code for errors.

Much improved from the old one, like you said. The old site looks almost like a wordpress layout.

As others have said, it's hard doing freelance work, but it's the right choice for many and can help you get that corporate job after you've increased the size of your portfolio and improved your skills. I think you'll want some graphic design classes too, if you're serious about doing the design too, and not just the coding.

I think it's great that you're already networking your job skills. I'm sure you'll do fine.

 

[Seraphim]

That seems to be all I'm good at as far as things I've learned here in college...

Here's an example, minus a proper header and footer since I haven't gotten around to making those yet:

http://babbage.cs.missouri.edu/~ljrckd/cs2830/Project/

Eventually that site's going to be turned into my final project for Intro to the Internet.

If you are good at what you do the world needs you more than you know. Case in point: http://www.woothemes.com

 

[chi]

there seems to be a market for good layout artists that can do templates for Wordpress and Joomla, but i don't think as a regular web developer there's a market in CSS. it's too easy for the normal joe to just setup wordpress or joomla and apply a template. JMHO. i do web development for a fortune 500 company and i can see the writing on the wall. i don't expect to have my job for more than a few years though there has been no talks of layoffs... yet.

 

[K-Star]

Alright y'all... I've implemented all sorts of PHP and fun stuff in here, and finally finished up the CSS. You can even sign in! (But only under two different usernames/passwords, and I'm not giving y'all the admin one. I haven't figured out how to implement a registration feature.)

http://babbage.cs.missouri.edu/~ljrckd/cs2830/final

Please feel free to add funny captions for the screencap if you log in. Just keep it somewhat tasteful since my professor will be seeing them (I say this... after a bunch of my reviews contain adult language...)

 

[SeerSGB]

Making a living doing freelance web design is very tough. A company of any decent size will have their own staff for such a task, or will hire an outside company. Freelancers are pretty much left with the scraps: what you might find on a site like Elance or RentACoder, or doing sites for local businesses who just want simple brochureware and nothing fancy.

I do, did, however you want to put it, the freelance thing. It's hard in the best of times, in a recession-- with frivolous spending cut back and companies looking to cut corner or in house what they can-- it's a fucking nightmare. I'm down to one client at the moment-- local company. Ever job I bid on, where I was one of maybe 8 or 9 in the local area a year or so ago, I can easily say there's 2 or 3 dozen for even the shit jobs. This time a year ago, I banked easily a few hundred just on piss away projects-- shit I could knock out in a hour or two-- this year, every one of my former regulars is either in bankruptcy, cutting back, or in housing (ie getting their spouse, kid, or niece/nephew, etc to do it for nothing).

I like the flexibility of freelancing and I know I couldn't handle the 9 to 5 gig doing for a company, but if things don't pick up by this winter I'm going to have to get a "day job" (graveyard shift somewhere) to start picking up the slack in the household budget.

I feel sorry for my cousins: 1 a single mother with $$$ in her eye thinking she's going to get rich by retraining from a receptionist to web design-- and the most she can grasp is using a WYSIWYG editor and using premade template kits, she can't long-hand a single line of script; another who's coming out of a tech school with a degree in web design and talking about he'll be a millionaire by the end of this year just building personal homepages for people.

 

[Hitman]

I worked as a freelance web-designer at the begining of the decade. At that time, it was easy to get clients with loose wallets. Still, I spent most of my time getting clients rather then working on their projects.

As time progressed, I became specialized in certain areas of web-design and development, like Flash animations and content management. That eventually led to my present place of employment, as a IT consultant for a megatonic consulting corporation.

 

[SeerSGB]

The recession aside, I think two thinks have killed the market for freelancers:

-- Availability of people who can build a website. I don't mean kit-kiddies, I mean folks that can long-hand HTML, PHP, etc. Now a days it seems as everyone has some younger member of the family that is a "web designer". So the market on the low end is flooded with talent, and on the high end-- the long term and company gigs-- the market is flooded with people who have experience and contact from freelancing back when the times were good.

-- The novelty has worn off. At one time it was a novelty, something to talk about, if a company got a homepage or someone built one for their family. Nowadays, it's just expected. I've actually seen on a couple of jobs a space for applicants to put in a homepage or social networking URL.

If I was doing it over again today, I would (1) diversify my skill set more-- if not change my primary all together. (2) Would likely not pursued web design as a career choice; as a hobby fine, but trying to contribute and keep a family up and going on it no way.

 

[jamestyler]

-- Availability of people who can build a website. I don't mean kit-kiddies, I mean folks that can long-hand HTML, PHP, etc. Now a days it seems as everyone has some younger member of the family that is a "web designer".

Thats something that used to really get on my nerves. I had a client drop me (and try to stiff me on the bill) when he decided his 13 year old could build the site for him. Three years of a crappy site later, I was politely asked to come back.

It's also annoying to have people say things like "Can't you do it for £50?" when you're talking about something that'll take weeks to develop.

Over saturation, and in my experience severe bitchiness, from others made me switch off and only do private/specialised projects. Even then it's more for my own amusement as I probably couldn't make the money I used to when I used it to pay my way through uni.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I've found that there isn't a lot of decent-paying work in web design, but rather in features that help make a site interactive.

I've had people pay me to install things like Joomla, Drupal, and other frameworks, and get them set up to their specifications. One of my specialties is "gluing" systems together--say you have a content management system and a message board, and you want them to use the same user accounts for both. Stuff like that.

Being able to dabble in PHP doesn't require a strong programming background, either, as PHP is pretty simple and straightforward for anyone with HTML and JavaScript experience. It's why so many things are written in PHP, even though there's nothing really special about it as a language. It's just a good utility language that does what it does without a lot of frills or extraneous functionality or weird syntax.

I've found that if you can add some basic development skills to your repertoire, you open a lot more doors and can almost immediately do more than a 13-year-old HTML wizard. Knowing how to properly install, set up, customize, and modify web-based programs is a very worthwhile skill and one people will pay for, certainly more than they will pay for a mere stylesheet or layout. Not saying you'll make a fortune or even be able to live on it, but it definitely has better prospects.

 

[jamestyler]

Agreed with that as well - I tend to do that on the side now compared to when moeny could be made in websites many moons ago.

My only complaint is with one guy... I made a community based website, it grew to ridiculous proportions, made a lot of money and got more attention than the other sites in the market and he *still* needs the whys and hows explained to him every second month.

I'm determined to get one CMS to bridge with phpBB. They're in no way shape or form compatible on any level. But.. it's too good a challenge (and it's the easiest thing to teach technophones)