How Successful Are Part-time Website Designers/developers?

I have been createing websites for a while now. I use HTML, Javascript, just added PHP, and starting MySQL. I'm thinking about trying to start createing website partime. Any of you guys ever tryed it? If so how well did it go and how should I start?

Well I am about to start a site where i develop the templates and sell them for really cheap for around 10$ each. Maybe we can combine. My creations are pretty well done you can see my current site
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/
Its about to open almost everything is done just browse around and maybe we can work. I am good at Photoshop and a little good at HTML but with the help of members here we can manage.

Well if you look at the professional web design companies, they charge anywhere from $200 - $6000 depending on the site. They are of course full teams of college educated, special training web designers, now naturally, just designing websites as a part time job with little or no college training in web design won't be as profitable, it could still become a very nice supplemental income.

I did a Web Design course at college, although i knew most of what was taught i still learnt new stuff.I have since then made websites for people, but i was never sure how much to charge seeing as i didnt know anyone else in the business.I thought it would be like charged for hourly work or something.I'll try and find a site i made so someone could tell me how good i am. (Not really that good i dont think)Also, anyone with some good Dreamweaver tutorials would be ace!

It really depends on the job... To be good at it, you'd have to be pretty dedicated, because you'd be the one that would have to tell yourself to get to work and keep at it, unless you happened to find some part time work with a company. Plus, from my experiances it's rare to get hourly pay as a web designer that works for themselves, because most often you'll be creating up a contract for the finished site... for instance, you offer to do a site for $500 or whatever the price, and then you are expected to do that, regardless if the work takes more or less hours to finish than you expected when you came up with the original contract.Also, programs like Dreamweaver can make websites that look rather well, but most professionals would need to know the coding that goes into the background of it as well... because it tends to write some pretty nasty code. I do use dreamweaver myself for my projects, but I always have to go in there and hand code (or re-code) most of it myself, because if I didn't, the pages wouldn't be using valid code that would be cross-browser compliant, plus, there's many other languages that I use along side of what Dreamweaver does for you, for the added functionality of the websites I create.By the way, I've gone to college and taken a web development course full time for a couple years, and though it did give me a nice basis to start with, there was no way that they could even teach you a fraction of what there is to know about web design and programming in that short time. Since leaving, I've had to spend countless hours teaching myself (and re-teaching in things where the teachers failed miserably!) and I'm still just scratching the surface. My teachers were very right about one thing though - there is no one in the business that knows everything. There are just people that know everything about a few things, or people that know a little bit of a lot of things.I'm just a beginner myself, so, I know that I'm not all the greatest at what I do, but as I continue to work and learn more all the time, things will only improve from where I am now. I've certainly gotten a lot farther than where I was when I started this (and a lot of that came from the years I spent in college, because it's helped me to find the things I enjoy and the things that I'm good at). Plus, I learned a lot of things that I'd never even heard of before college while I was there - even though I'd been 'dabbling' with web design before then.Anyway... since I do my jobs on a contract basis, before I start, I try to make a plan of the things that I'll need to do, and determine around how long it will take me to finish them (leaving room for testing and error correcting - cause that can often take more time than the initial work itself). And once I count it all up, I aim for $20 - $25 per hour to get my total. Like if I suspect a site is going to take me 20 hours to complete, I offer to do the job for $400 - $500 dollars. As I get more experianced and more busy with work, I can raise my prices. (Seeing as I was working for $15/hour (again, estimated through contracts) while I was still a student in college.)Though, my teachers (mind you, some of them I'm sure were liars, because it begs the question 'Why be a teacher, then?') but I had some tell us that they won't even take on work that works out to less than $100 per hour. If I had the chance at a teachers wage, or $100 per hour, I don't think I'd be teaching anymore... I also had another say that it's not rare for him to earn $20,000 in two weeks of serious working. Again, why are they teaching then? They didn't seem to like the job very much lolAnyway, I hope that this gives you some sort of insight... and I would love to see what your sites look like.

I agree those teachers say some things that will make you wonder about why they are teaching. The same thing happened to my dad in med school. They say o youcan make this much money over this amount of time, but sometimes they are completly wrong.Anyway I would gladly show you my site but I'm currently recodeing everything so that I can use PHP and MySQL instead of just HTML, Javascript, and CSS.

You're right about Dreamweaver and its code. Alot of the time it is wrong, and its sometimes a pain in the *bottom* to go back when you realise it is.They could have added some more things to dreamweaver too...i like to make websites with two side frames, a middle and then a top as well, but you have to code it yourself otherwise it messes up :S.Thanks for the tips btw, methinks ima try site developing again xD

its very profitable when you have clients, otherwise its dead. me and Tramposch have a business, but shortly after we started, our host started getting messed up, so we switched to here and now we are re-doing our website. so it depends on how many clients you have. our prices are cheap, and we have like 2-3 services and are adding more.

Well what kind of legal work and preparations would I be looking at if I wanted to put together a group of 2 or 3 people to design, develop, and sell websites. Would I have to get some kind of license or anything like that? Also how much time should I look to devote to working on sites. I'm concered that when school starts I may not be able to keep up. Unless I can just sell templates and take fewer custom website request.

The amount of requests you take is up to you.As for legal stuff, absolutely no idea. Would be best to find out on teh internet or ask someone who has their own business type thing.

I don't know that there are any legal requirements for running a web design business or not. I know someone who runs one, and I could ask her if you'd like, but I'm pretty sure there aren't any.By the way, this is a good question (the original one, about how successful are they), because I've been curious about this too!