Web design is a career of now. It encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. If you wish to become a freelance web designer, well do I have some designs for you? Read on and find out how some designers freelance all the time and still manage to make enough money as their corporate counterparts. The arrow on the graph knows only one direction, and that is up.
Many people have begun taking up freelance work as web designers. It is a cosily lucrative lifestyle. You can work from home and if you are good enough, make more than enough money to lead a comfortably lavish lifestyle.
Freelance Web Designer Job Duties
Freelance Web designers need to be equal parts creative and analytical. A balance of these two abilities is the perfect ingredient for a prospective web designer as you.
Most of you will liaise and work remotely with marketing teams, product teams and content teams to understand the service or the product offered by an organisation, the importance of the product and its value to the organisation, and finally create a website that can imbibe qualities of the organisation.
Some of your job duties as a web designer may include:
- Continually liaising with clients and managers to determine the objectives and requirements of the job
- Accurately creating website designs
- Producing sample sites
- Demonstrating and receiving feedback about draft sites
- Be updated with latest technological and software developments
- Develop skills in software programming languages like Html, JavaScript etc.
Web Designer Skills
There are many skills that you must develop and or hone to be able to land some decent freelance projects. Many people can code in JavaScript, but the ones with deep pockets are people who have mastered them. If you wish to count yourself among the latter bunch of well-to-do web designers, here are some skills that are absolute cornerstones for a career in this industry.
- Imagination
- Creativity
- Patience
- Attention to detail
- Analytical skills
- Communication skills
- Independence
- Self motivation
The internet provides many websites for budding web designers like you to develop and hone the skills you need. Lynda, Develop PHP, w3 Schools, Allison, Code Academyand Home and Learn offer many free and paid-for resources to study web design online.
Being Successful As A Freelance Web Designer
A web designer’s success is measured by the functionality of a website, the innovations in the work and the functionalities you add to its code, and how it finally performs. However, employers usually measure your success in much the same way that they measure other freelancers: ratings and reviews.
There are many other aspects to being successful than simply a review and a rating. Some of the ways you can get on the path to success as a web developer include:
- Building a technical portfolio, contributing to open source projects like GitHub
- Brand yourself
- Being an algorithmic, analytical thinker
- Understanding a technical problem and trying to overcome it, and not simply modifying the code until it works.
- Networking with people, leveraging your network to find work
- Being able to develop a good working relationship with employers
- Create an effective online portfolio, where employers can look at the kind of work you have done in the past
- Network with other frontend designer, potential employers and even friends who work in related fields like website development, or content creation
- Practice and continuously keep up-to-date with technologies like Acrobat, Director, Dreamweaver and Flash
Web Designer Salary
Having determined that web design is one of the most handsomely paying freelance jobs today, you must be now wondering what kind of money are you looking at, and what kind of payment models exist in this sub-sector of freelancing.
Usually freelance portals offer two generic kinds of payment models to freelancers. Fixed-price, where the price is usually pre-determined and a budget is sanctioned which you can bid for, and the hourly payment model where the employer decides on an hourly pay.
A fixed-price model may range from $50-500 upwards, while you have to pitch for hourly projects, which usually range from $5-30 an hour, with average payments at $22 per hour.
Finding Work
There are hundreds and thousands of jobs available to web designers. In an age where businesses are rated on whether they have websites, you will not find it impossibly difficult to find work as a web designer. If you are good enough; chances are that you might face an onslaught of offers for work.
Some websites and portals you should consider looking at include Elance, Odesk, Freelancer, Peopleperhour and Getacoder. These websites offer many jobs for Freelance web designers and are just the sort of places you need to register with to be ahead of the competition.
Resources:
Web designers have loads of information available to them online and there is no shortage of websites catering to online courses for them.
Of the many websites available some of the important ones include websites like Lynda, Develop PHP, w3 Schools, Allison, Code Academy and Home and Learn that offer many online and free courses on most aspects of web design.
For more information on Freelance Resource please visit www.careerlancer.net
