[SEOLover]

Is it me or is it getting harder for web designers to make a living? Nowadays it seems the market is saturated beyond belief. With everyone looking to make a fast buck it seems that quality designers are being muscled out by inexperienced new comers. Is this the case? or are quality companies charging less aswell? With inflation I thought prices are meant to rise!

Am I alone with this worry? Personally I do worry for the future and how the market will be in 2/5/10 years time. And how I can continue to make a decent living.

[BabyBen]

It does depend on the client, many are willing to pay much less for a 'newbie' who has a ripped copy of photoshop and dreamweaver and still uses tables and 'slice and dice' methods. This is thanks to how simple it is to become a "web designer".

I think the 'web design profession' has a wider problem, the lack of professionalism and standards. I quite often see "designers" (and I use that term loosely!) who charge for work that went out of date eight years ago and is frankly appalling. The people who are more successful (in the small pondend of the market) aren't web designers primarily, they are salesmen first and this is what is lacking from many decent designers skill sets. You may be a far better designer than Joe Bloggs, but he's got a better 'pitch' and sadly can win work.

It's also a number game though, if Joe Bloggs targets 50 businesses he'll win some.. as sales can be a number game really.

Want to survive in five years time? Become a sh**-hot salesmen! The amount of people wanting websites isn't doing to go 'down', as the constantly demand for new or redesigns will always be there - it's the amount of designers after the work that'll rise.

As a sidenote, I had a phonecall from a friend last year who had a 'web designer' contact her and offer to redesign her site..and to make it easier for her, he'd set her up a yahoo email to use rather than the domain one she uses now.. "but what about my business stationary?", "that'll still work, but the yahoo email is much easier to use..."

I wish I was kidding.

[Dave]

I think more designers in the work place is nothing but a healthy thing. It drives us all to maker a better product and surely thats what were all here to do? Imagine if AMD was never born - We'd probably all still be using Intel P2 333mhz's with Intel saying "It's the greatest processor ever made". With more competition in the marketplace everyone's looking for the next big thing. That's why services like Digg and Wordpress have come along.

It does bug me that crap designers with great sales pitches are still getting work and giving web design as a whole a bad name.

This is my opinion.....

Dave

[Eskymo]

As a freelancer it is hard - especially when there are so many so called web designers out there who do not care about legislation regarding Accessibility / Usability and do not even bother to think about web standards either. There are also so many bad products on the market that allow anyone to create a website themselves and get it online despite the fact that it will be badly coded, won't validate and be totally in-accessible, not to mention ugly! I find I have to justify my services a lot of the time - but as I'm proficient in Accessibility/Usability issues and I code to web standards - I have this on my side and reassure clients that they are gettinga good service - most of my work comes from recommendations and so I must be doing something right.

[Cromo]

i like what u guys are saying. and babyben makes a good point about the fact that web designers are not not going to be able to find work.

but if u were going to do it for a living i think u need to no your stuff for sure.

yes the internet at the moment is filled with amateur web designs (such as myself ) that use html and imageready to make websites (i dont use imageready btw ) but if i was a client i'd want the best and i'd research web design first to make sure i was getting the best thing out on the market, to say as such. so that the right people get the job.


i dont no if that made any sense but i have a clear vision in my mind, im just no gd at expressing things in words. lol

[liquid]

I think there are problems at both ends of the spectrum with people on one end producing low budget websites using pirated software etc. but at the other end of the scale you have companies who are just taking the ****

I know of a company that paid a few thousand for a fairly ordinary website and when I looked at it I saw there were no metatags, title etc.

I pointed this out to the owner and made a few suggestions along with a couple of tweaks to the text to get the best out of the page. The design company (grudgingly) said that they would add the tags but there would be an additional charge as this was an "extra".



Can this be right??