How to Make a Career of a Web Design Hobby

When you are upgrading your web design hobby into a career, you need to look at the big picture. How do you get paid for doing something you already do for free? You can work for another company and get experience, or you can begin right away with your own business.

Instructions

1. Create a business plan. It should detail specifics about your career plans: customers and potential customers, competition and their rates, your rates, your advantages over the competition, taxes and salary, and expenses. Add as many details as possible. Seeing your plans to turn your web design hobby into a career will motivate and help you stay organized and focused.

2. Polish up all your skills, not just the ones you use the most for your web design hobby. You should be able to create graphics with Photoshop, be able to write and read HTML codes, have decent writing skills, know at least one type of programming like PHP or Perl, and have a working knowledge of the principals of design.

3. Build an impressive website for yourself. How can you except others to pay you to design web pages for them, if you can't create a professional one for yourself?

4. Stack your resume and portfolio. Keep track of all the hobby websites and designs you've created and have them available for future clients to reference. Ensure you have a variety of options to meet the different interests of your potential clients. Do a little graphic design, some web page building, some technical writing, or all of the above to show you are a well-rounded designer.

5. Practice. Do jobs for friends and relatives for a discount, if you don't have enough for your resume and portfolio. Non-profits could use your services as well. But always charge something for your work. Giving it away for free will only lead to frustration. If you don't have confidence that your work is worthy, you're going to have a hard time landing that big gig later on.

6. Advertise your services everywhere potential clients could be. Post your resume to online job boards like Monster. Use your local newspaper classifieds and your phone book.

7. Join an online forum for web designers. You'll find advice from people who've already been where you are--transitioning your web design hobby into a career.

Resources

• Web Page Design for Designers has forums and help topics.
• Post your resume at Monster for potential employers to see.