24 and falling fast!

legoman

dukesy wrote:

Hi

I am a sales director for a comapny who (amongst many other things) design/develop websites.

My advice is merely that (not a guarantee !!), BUT

Learn Coding (php,asp,css,html etc) ASAP. Simply put, there are a million graduates out there who can drag and drop stuff into WYSIWYG driven GUI's (such as dreamweaver). What differentiates the successful companies is having the additional understanding of code writing ASWELL.

Once you have this ability, you will be able to offer a much more complete package (why would a client choose you to design a site but then have to pay someone else to code it ?). A good example is search engine optimisation.

Please dont take this as a critiscism, but as the help it is intended as !!!:D

If you have design skills, then use them. NOT as a website designer but involving your self in more niche markets (Direct marketing for eg) where competition is less fierce (as I said. If I want a website designed in Dreamweaver, there are about a million students who will do that for £20 per page)

Any qeuestions/further advice, PM me

i see your point. i understand that you can pay a kid £20 to what i do but for some reason these people dont. they seem to like me! I do litterally build the sites in dreamweaver in the design view and the code makes its own way.

i know very little html and css (the later being my favourite) but haven't got the cash to learn this stuff. unless you can do it somewhere for free but it's still no help teaching yourself. i kind of need someone to point out whats going on etc.

i have an artistic quality but cant find the right place (locally) to express that and receive a handsome wage for doing it...

JoeyG

Hi Mike

I too am a self employed web developer, been doing it for about 3 years now

My only advice is dont expect too much overnight... I sent a standard email offering my services to every local design/marketing company (about 150 of them) and kept sending follow-up emails every month... like someone said, you have to be aggressive with it! I kept pestering companies until they either gave me some work or told me to f*** off!

Also be prepared to diversify if you can, my main skills are php/mysql programming but I also offer things like: html, graphics, css, javascript, css, e-commerce... if you can blag it, stick it on your portfolio, it all helps.

I'm not sure where you are... I think you said west country, i'm in Cheltenham so you may be not too far from me... send me a pm if you need any advice

Storm

Looking at your SoA quickly - are you being fined each month for being over your O/D limits? If so you need to start claiming your charges back - there's a thread somewhere, hopefully someone will post a link as I've no idea!

Can you get a better deal by combining your phone & internet?

Any chance of getting a 0% deal for some of the CC debt - the Aqua one especially is astronomical!

dukesy_2

legoman wrote:

i see your point. i understand that you can pay a kid £20 to what i do but for some reason these people dont.

But I thought you were saying they dont ? (at least not frequently enuff!)

legoman wrote:

i have an artistic quality but cant find the right place (locally) to express that and receive a handsome wage for doing it...

In that case, register with all the local agencies for f/t work, draw up a "imaginative" CV ( no lies , but embelish a little to "get you through the door"

There is very little profit in web design as it is such a competetive market.
However, contact local web comnpanies (even thought they are your competitors) and discuss taking overspill design work

I actually have a number of projects at the moment that I currently subcontract the design element out for, but keep the "nitty gritty coding" in house (we are search engine optimisation specialists), perhaps some people local to you do the same ?

Another thought is to build a number of affilaite sits (casino, poker, !!!!!!, whatever !) which will cost you nothing to build but will generate an income for "nothing" other than the domain (pennies !)

Rgc_3

Hi again Mike

had a quick look at your SOA

on a positive note your monthly outoings non debts are fairly(everything in there??) low but some of those APRs are really naff

My advice is to get a day time job ASAP which leaves the evenings to build the business up to be self sufficient and takes the initial pressure off you.

Then its a case of snowballing the debts when you ve got a bit more money and less stress

Plenty more options out there i guess but thats how i see it

good luck and keep going on the board as you ve done a great job so far in getting started:T

dudleyboy

legoman wrote:

I do litterally build the sites in dreamweaver in the design view and the code makes its own way.
i know very little html and css (the later being my favourite) but haven't got the cash to learn this stuff. unless you can do it somewhere for free but it's still no help teaching yourself. i kind of need someone to point out whats going on etc.

Hi Mike, i'm a web designer / developer / programmer too and can only reiterate what others have said about furthering your skills. Dreamweaver is a useful tool and knowing it inside and out is good to have on your CV but it doesn't make you a web designer any more than knowing how to use MS Word makes you a professional author.

There are plenty of free resources on the web from which to learn, but it will take commitment, time and effort to work through them to learn your trade. If you can't afford to have paid tuition then it's your only option - and to be honest, I think it's the best way of learning - at your own pace and through trial and experimentation.

Learning XHTML and CSS is paramount and understanding the underlying code makes all the difference. Once you're confident with how a page is built and functions, you can start experimenting with interactivity by learning JavaScript and from there I would recommend PHP and MySQL.

To start you on this long journey I would recommend designing your next few pages in the split design/code view and with every change you make, view the source code to see how it was achieved. It really isn't hard to learn and will make you far more attractive to potential employers. After this check out the following free resources:

http://www.w3schools.com/
http://www.sitepoint.com/
http://www.kirupa.com/

Learning all of this will take time and you may well find yourself working 40+ hours a week temping or working a FT job that you don't like doing, and has nothing to do with web design, just to pay the bills, keep a roof over your head and keep the debt monster at bay... but needs must...

Doing this may also mean sacrificing your evenings and most of your weekends - i'm talking from experience here - (the more time you put in, the quicker you'll learn) but if this is your dream job then it will be a sacrifice worth making. It all comes down to how much you want it. The jobs are definitely out there but only the best will actually get them. Check out fish4jobs, monster and the like to see what employers are after. When you've identified what you need to learn, the tutorials are only a Google search away.

Best of luck mate.

dudleyboy

Hi again,

You may want to check these out:

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/html-css-beginners-guide (although you may want to skip page 1)

http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/boxes.html

Also, if you don't have Firefox already, download it and install the following, invaluable, add-ons:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/60/
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/684/
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/539/
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/271/
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1843/

I wish they were available when I was learning!

Dud

legoman

I just wanna say thanks to all the friends who have posted in support of my situation. It's been one day and already i feel like a changed man. I actually want to be debt free. i have a huger for it now!!!


DUKESY
p.s. Another thought is to build a number of affilaite sits (casino, poker, !!!!!!, whatever !) which will cost you nothing to build but will generate an income for "nothing" other than the domain (pennies !)

where do you get your content from? in particular the !!!!!! sites. if you say it will cost you nothing then this must mean you 'pinch' the content? and casino site would involve a great deal of maintenence right?

thanks again people!

david_hellier

Hi and welcome. According to my calcs you have £71.54 per week to spend on anything else including food, clothes, going out, etc. I suggest you write this amount in a little book each Monday and keep a note of what you spend by subtraction. This should halt immediate overspend. The real problem will start when the business loan kicks in. Then you will be overspending by £4 per week. You will need a part time job to subsidise your business by about £100 per week. I presume the £15k has been spent? Do you need to use all this money, can you renegotiate the loan? Please look at my figures as I have assumed some repayment levels and OD payoff, so you need to ignore your bank balance.

Good luck, the figures are as follows:

income weekly monthly
self 600.00
partner







total 0.00 600.00 divide by 4.33
£138.46

£138.46 total weekly income

spend weekly monthly
rent/mortgage 0.00
council tax 0.00
elec 0.00
gas 0.00
water 0.00
secured loans 0.00
TV licence 0.00
fines 0.00
bb 12.99
bt 13.00
ins 19.00
OD1 payoff 5.00
OD2 payoff 5.00
bc 175.00
aqua 42.50
cap one 10.00
cap one bus. 7.50













total 0.00 289.99 divide by 4.33
£66.92

£66.92 total weekly spend

Start= income - spend = £71.54 per week

CFC

Dukesy is dead right. Legoman, if you don't even understand how affiliate sites work, you don't understand the workings of business on the web. You need to be master of all of it in order to make any serious money on it. It's such a competitive market. As for 'doing the artistic bits' and letting the code take care of itself, there are people with full on qualifications in Graphic Design to compete with.

Really running your own business is not for everyone. I'd suggest, if you haven't already, that you learn the basics about how to do your market research, how to do a business plan and forecast etc, before you consider trying to keep on in this way. Your previous business opportunity dried up - do you know exactly why? Have you analysed the weaknesses? At what point in the life cycle was the product? How could you have predicted what was likely to happen? Etc etc.

I agree with many of the other posters. I think you need to find a job somewhere, doing something, that will pay the bills. Further your personal development towards your dream during the evenings and weekends.