Posts Tagged ‘Open Source CMS’

Website Designer

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

You too can become a professional website designer. Website designing (also known as website developing) has become one of the most lucrative online business opportunities that many online entrepreneurs are using to earn money online. Professional website designers are very much  in high demand especially in the developing countries located in Africa and Asia.

Benefits of a Website Designer Business

The beautiful thing about website designing business is that your geographical location doesn’t matter. You can easily set-up shop and operate from anywhere in the world! For example, your clients can be located in a remote village in Uganda or Benin Republic while you are staying with a laptop at a resort hotel somewhere in Bahamas, it doesn’t really matter.

Also, as a website designer, you can easily generate multiple streams of income by adding other services that are related to website designing. For example, as a professional website designer, you can offer the service of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Website Traffic Generation, Article Submission and other website promotion services. When you client base is yet small, you can even offer to be the pioneer webmaster for your clients until they are set to get a dedicated staff for such duty.

Skills Needed by a Website Designer

In order for you to become a professional website designer. You need to acquire some skills. Some years back, that would have been a great discouragement for those that are not technically oriented. If you were to be a professional website designer in the early 1980’s you would have needed to learn how to design a website with some complicated HTML codes.

In the 1990s, great stride was made to make the lives of website designers easier. Some sophisticated website design software such as Dreamweaver, Microsoft Front Page etc. were introduced. The software helped to cut the work of website designing to about half of what it used to be. But then, the software were pretty expensive and many could not afford to purchase them. The few free website design software were not able to produce the same result. Beside the high cost of buying the website designing software, a newbie website designer still need to spend hours learning how the software works.

That is no longer the case now. Instead of a website designer struggling to learn HTML, CSS, DHTML, Ajax and other website development tools or spending a fortune to buy Dreamweaver, there is a cheap alternative. A newbie professional website designer can now use any of the free Open Source CMS (Content Managment System) tools to design professional websites. Some of the most popular CMS that any determined person can easily learn are WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.

Content Management System for Website Designers

The beauty of a CMS  tool is that the program already has a well designed website-skeleton that keeps the entire structure of a website together. You do not need to break your head worrying about  how to pull together the various sections of a website and ensure that they work in harmony. Also, many of them takes care of compatibility of your website design with different internet browsers.

These benefits makes CMS the best launch pad for a website designer career. If you learn how to use a CMS program to develop a website, you can later add to your knowledge and develop your skill by learning HTML, DHTML, CSS, Ajax etc. This is not an afterthought, it is recommended. You can’t claim to be a real professional website designer if all you know is how to use keyboard and mouse clicking at widgets 😉 It is ok to start that way, but you must add to your knowledge if you really want to be competitive in your online business. If you are scared of that, then be ready to outsource some complicated jobs you get to well tested website design professionals (at least you will still earn some profit from the deal).

WordPress 2.7

WordPress 2.7

Why start Website Design with CMS tools?

The reason why I recommend starting your website designer career with CMS is because you can actually create a website from scratch without any prior knowledge of website designing by using such tool. For example, WordPress 2.7 is so simple that the only pre-requisite skill it requires for you to design a website is the ability to use a keyboard and mouse while following step by step instructions written in English (or any other human language).

Website Designing as an Online Business

If you have been looking for online business ideas that you can safely implement without spending a fortune, website desining is one of such. It is cheap to start and yet it has great earning potential even for a newbie online entrepreneur. I can easily prove that to you.

Take a look around your locality, how many of the small scale business owners have their businesses online? Too many small scale business owners are still internet shy. The situation is worse in developing countries. If you package a presentation and you are able to convince them to give you an opportunity to take their business online and manage it for the first 3months, you will have enough client to get you busy earning money online. You may actually end up firing your boss and hiring some staff 😉
Beside those entrepreneurs that have no web presence, (as you master the use of CMS tools for website designs), you can take a step further in your business by contacting those small businesses whose website are so poorly designed that they look like scrap books made by a five year old. You will be able to convince them by showing the previous jobs you’ve done.

I guess you no longer have an excuse for not starting an online business. I have just giving you an online business idea that is both easy to implement and yet lucrative. Go start a website designer business now! Your future is bright.

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