Lots of people want to be web designers. In fact, web design is very likely the first (and maybe only) thing that everyone thinks of when asked how people make money online. Tell someone you meet on the street, when asked what you do, that you work on the Internet, and I’ll bet that person will assume you mean you’re a web designer. Now you and I know that’s only one of many ways to make a living online, but just because it’s not the only way, doesn’t mean it’s not a good way. It can be lucrative, and I encourage anyone who has some design skills to consider it. Just one thing…don’t assume there’s only one way to make money as a designer either! You might have clients; you might do design work for the corporation you work for; you might design and sell templates; you might teach design; etc. The best thing to do is find out what the options are.

DIY Road Map

One option is to learn on your own. There’s a good chance you learned how to design sites on your own (if you’ve taken that step already), and you may want to learn how to put those skills into action as a business on your own. If you have time to do it this way, it can work, because you’ll probably try out different methods – making mistakes along the way – until you settle into what works best for you. In fact, no matter how you decide to start a web design business, you should do some research for yourself. I suggest starting here with The Roadmap To Becoming A Professional Freelance Web Designer to get an understanding of some of the basics.

IRL Training

If you’re not flat broke, however, you might want to invest a little money in some kind of training so you can get a jump on earning from your new business a lot quicker (and probably with a lot fewer mistakes). If you’ve got enough money to invest in some kind of hands-on real-world curriculum, like your local ITT Technical Institute or community college, then that’s probably a great thing to do. Hands-on training with a face-to-face instructor is usually best, but it’s also pretty costly. (You’re also limited in that you don’t have a choice in who is teaching you. Hopefully the teacher at your local community college is talented).

Online Training

The next best thing to real-life training is a web-based training program. Usually you can find these at a much more affordable cost with the trade-off being that you don’t have that face-to-face interaction with a teacher. Still, these days, online training can come pretty close to live interaction, so it can be well worth the much lower cost to ramp up your training this way. And, of course, the selection is much broader, so you can shop around for someone with real talent to help you learn the ropes.

Naturally, finding the right online training program can be difficult. Who can you trust? Who really has the skills and who is just a poser? Again, research is key here, as is word of mouth. Does the trainer have some kind of verifiable portfolio or background that you can check out? Also be sure to check your social networks for advice. Do your Twitter peeps or Facebook friends have any recommendations? If your social group is clueless about such matters, then you should probably join groups or forums where the design types hang out.

I Recommend

Here is one recommendation I can make based on my personal experience with one of the co-founders.

WebDesign.com is a fairly new training course by some really well-established players in the design field. Cory Miller is one of the co-founders, and he’s the guy behind iThemes.com. One look at iThemes and you’ll see he knows what he’s doing – both from a design point of view and a business point of view. WebDesign.com offers training in more than just web design; they cover various aspects that you’ll need to know, including the business of web development and social media training. Here are their current courses and the ones coming soon:

Currently Offering:

• Web Design with WordPress
• Starting a Successful Freelance Web Design Business
• Blogging Your Way to Career Stardom
• Design Hacks Workshop
• Project Management for Web Designers

Coming Soon:

• WP Developer Course (Certification will be available for additional fee)
• WebDesign.com Consultant Course (Certification will be available for additional fee)
• WebDesign.com Designer (Certification will be available for additional fee)
• WordPress Analytics
• SEO Implementations
• WordPress Optimization
• Setting up a SandBox Working with WP Plugins: PODS
• Working with WP Plugins: Gravity Forms
• Working with WP Plugins: WP Touch
• Working with WP Plugins: WishList Member

Obviously, you can learn a lot from Cory’s team, so it’s definitely worth checking out.

The Premium Template / Theme Business

The next thing I’d like to throw out there is that some designers are making some pretty incredible money just by selling premium templates and themes. In fact, I just read a case study on this recently. This guy made $22K in four months by selling JUST ONE premium theme. Think about that for a minute. What this means is that designers don’t have to be bogged down by client whims or unreasonable requests, nor are they creatively hampered by what their clients want. Instead, they get to be as creative as they’d like, creating templates that fit their own style, and then sell those templates – over and over and over again – to people who appreciate what they’ve created. Of course, a template or theme usually sells for less than $100, which compared to a client fee is quite small. But if that template sells multiple times, sometimes hundreds or thousands of times, then it far outperforms most client work.

Take a look at ThemeForest to get an idea of what can be done in the business of selling premium templates and themes. And of course, the real precursor is the well-known Template Monster.

Those are just some of my thoughts on getting started in the web design business. I know a lot of people think about going down this road at some point, and I figured a little guidance might be useful.

By the way, if you are a budding designer and think you might be interested in getting some free publicity and recognition, take a look at my free HTML5 template site. I’m offering free publicity to you in exchange for contributions to the site. More info here.