How did you get started in the business?

notarypublic

notarypublic

New Member
Hello,

This is my first post on this forum but I'm excited to be a part of the community. Web design has fascinated me for some time, and I'm glad to finally have a job pursuing something that excites me.

Just curious for those of you out there, though: How did you get started making websites? As a hobby turned profession? Through a 2 year program? 4 years? I've met people who, new and old, have chosen to make this their career. How we all decided to take that step interests me.

I myself was studying Computer Engineering, then MIS, and finally decided to study something I actually enjoyed doing, instead of something people told me I should. I worked as a freelance designer over all that time, and decided getting an AAS degree would help legitimize my standing as a professional designer.

That said, it's nice to be here and I look forward to discussing all things web-related with all of you in the future :)
 
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jrecinto

New Member
Just like most people here..YouTube!

I didn't take up web design as a course or anything. I chanced upon an instructional video on YouTube and I got interested. I've always thought that web design is hard with all the codes and what have yous. When I saw that it's easy to get started, I immediately tried it out. I'm still in the process of learning, though and I'm not really making a lot of money out of it. You can say that it's a hobby as of this time.
 
Phreaddee

Phreaddee

Super Moderator
Staff member
Just like most people here..YouTube!
Click to expand...

well I must be part of the "minority" because, you see when I started you tube, didnt exist. in fact google didnt exist. (I believe the search engine of the day was called altavista) and I was also part of the "minority" then too because I preferred netscape navigator over ie (think it might have been v3?)
how times have changed!

then it was a hobby. it became a business in 2001. I was on the dole and needed some work so stopped making "hobby" sites, and started coding some really horrible sites for small local businesses. no one seemed to care back then about table based layouts and LOADs of bad CSS within the document.

In 2004, I had an epiphany and began really changing my style and professionalism towards correct coding. havent looked back since!!
 
M

mrandrei

New Member
Hey welcome! Well it started as a hobby of mine. My previous work was copywriting and I only learned designing pages by looking at our web designers. From then on, I started playing with Dreamweaver. I'm a self-taught web designer.
 
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dianabarone0127

New Member
Starting a business

I'm planning to start a business sooner or later. I'm here to look for some ideas to do for my future business. Thanks to your ideas. it's a big help for me how to start it.
 
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Timothy Scotch

New Member
When I was bombing out of uni, I thought about opening a ecommerce store. It failed dismally because I was such a noobie back then. In the beginning It was more or less fun, and as one does the deeper you get the more you learn and things just go on from there. Now 10 years later, because I know so much stuff, I am good enough to sell my services to other people.

I usually recommend they don't go into e-commerce though :)
 
ronaldroe

ronaldroe

Super Moderator
Staff member
I started messing around with it in high school, around 1997. I learned a little HTML, but never went anywhere with it, and actually had no clue what CSS was. Fast forward to 2006, my wife was finally ready to start selling her artwork, and I had the bright idea to make the website myself. It was terrible, I mean embarrassing. So, I sat down on w3schools, as well as a great guide I found on compass-designs.net, and learned. I discovered from there how much I enjoyed doing it. But, I kept my day job, just in case ;)
 
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wulaishiwo

New Member
I am attracted by computer since I was 14 years old. And I find internet amazing after I entered college. I played the role of a webmaster in College and it's great fun.
 
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Ennesus

New Member
I started to study at Mediacollage Amsterdam, after a while my brother and I started to work on some projects together.. and after my study I took a job at a travel agency/tour operator making all the designs.. and i'm loving it.

There's no better job in the world :p
 
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thomas206

New Member
Yeah, usually like everyone else, starts off as a hobby then realizing it is your passion and maybe you can actually make money off something you love to do! From there, you start building a clientele and start to learn the aspects of running a business. It's a very challenging job, but it's what you gotta do to do what you love!
 
leroy30

leroy30

New Member
Like most I started as a hobbie I guess. I was about 12 years old and only just discovered computers. The internet was fascinating but back then I had a hard time finding free games - which is what this internet was for, right?

So at 12 I decided to create my own website. My mums boyfriend (who introduced me to computers) had adobe pagemill (v3 i think) so I got my head around that and made a really crappy website with about 10 games that you could download. Except I never actually published it to the internet.

I think the next tim I visited it was when I was about 17 or 18... By that stage I had plenty of desktop programming experience so HTML seemed easy to me.

I never really took it seriously until about 3 years ago I started doing website work for my boss... then I landed a small part-time contract to design www.securedsigning.com and it's just progressed since.

I've actually only done about ten websites all up but I do a lot of different IT stuff for clients (graphics, documents, programming etc).. but trying to specialise in web development!

Well that's my life story lol :)
 
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