FocusMinded.com

Three weeks ago I celebrated my first wedding anniversary and we had a wonderful celebratory night out. It was, however, a really rough year for us. We’ve commented to several people, how we are just grateful to be alive!

Last year I made the choice to go full time into website design and suffered all year because of that decision. You see, I am not really that good of a designer. My strong suit is programming, but I lack patience, in fact I am more of a business man and a visionary than a website designer or developer. Yet, I learned some very important lessons along the way and I want to share them with you.

Enjoy What You Do

Listen to me. You might be a good designer, programmer, or whatever but you will have a very hard time succeeding if you don’t really truly enjoy what you do. If working on building a web design company or doing websites gives you the same excitement as grinding your teeth, then you need to be in another industry, and fast.

I loved website design when I started, but not enough to do it professionally. You need to make sure you enjoy it enough to grind through it on a daily basis (even when it doesn’t seem particularly appealing) and depend on it for income. In fact, you should enjoy it so much that you should be making plans to quit your day job and laying down a plan to make your business successful to a point where you could do web design full time.

So enjoy what you do before deciding to do it professionally. I recommend making one or two fully complete and successful websites as an initial step. Here is a quick barometer test on whether or not you have the passion to take it to the professional level: Do you enjoy the process of building your own website? Do you enjoy the entire process? Do you have time to actually complete the site? If you answered yes to those questions you just might be ready.

If you want to see an example of someone who loves website design, then just take a look at James Mitchell, FocusMinded.com author. I have had the pleasure of watching him go from nothing to the amazingly professional designer he is today. All along the way, I’ve heard nothing but excitement from him. I recall hearing of some frustrating moments as well as mountain peak moments, but he has been a shining example to me of someone who truly loves website design.

Design for Success

One of the biggest pitfalls that I have fallen in (and see other designers fall into) is designing for perfection. As a designer you can’t afford to make the best possible designs on the planet. You should instead work on banging out fast, successful designs. Perfect doesn’t mean that you will succeed. Successful designs actually rarely have to do with the quality of the design. Instead they have to do with working out the path of the people visiting the site and making everything as accessible as possible.

Don’t hear me saying that good looking designs are bad. What I am trying to say is that your time and effort are at a premium. If you can’t suck up your own perfectionism and make a functional design that isn’t quite as good as you wish it would be then you might want to consider another business.

Don’t Drive Yourself Out Of Business

“Hahaha” you must be thinking. But this is what got me. Undervaluing myself to the point where I couldn’t make a living off of website design. I am not sure how much this plagues other designers but the large difference in website prices caused me to seriously undervalue my work and eventually drove my website business under because I simply couldn’t keep up all the work I was doing to keep the business alive and kicking.

So make sure that the rates you are charging are fair to yourself first and to your customer second. Your customers are important, but if they won’t pay you enough so you can survive then they aren’t customers worth keeping. Simple as that.

If you can’t make sure that you are being paid a fair amount then you might as well quit now and go do something where the prices are more stable.

It All Comes Down To a Choice

It really all comes down to a choice. You can either improve or you need to find another industry. I am telling you this because I made the drastic mistake of trying to keep my business going without having someone around to point out these mistakes. Because of that, I failed to improve before it was too late.

I am still “in business” but for all intensive purposes my web design business tanked and I found that I really enjoyed working with computers instead (PC repair and computer training).

I firmly believe that website design is a sustainable business. I have been prodding James with questions since he focused this website on website design business. He is on the path to really help all of you website designers to overcome many of the challenges that really threw me out of the game.

So make the choice, is website design really for you? Or are you better off doing something else? No one should fault you for shutting down a web design business if you feel that you might enjoy something else better. You will be best at doing what you are passionate about so make the choice to follow your passions.

Finally I will end with this note. If the Lord is your guide then you will never be lost. Follow His leading and He will not leave you alone.

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