Scotalia

Thanks for the reality check FreeWeb. I don't wear rosy colored glasses, so I understand starting ANY business is a steep uphill "battle". I also, understand that any industry is rife with continuing education (or at least should be if you want to excel), so not put of by that. I even understand that I probably am not that good at this yet and have a long way to go with learning how to create a "good" site for clients. And I know that most people will look for a free alternative to hiring a web designer - that's how I started.

However, I'm a firm believer in doing what you love and eventually you'll make money at it. Ideally for me that would have been European Travel and Tour Organizing but traveling to Europe for 3-4 months per year is not conducive to a happy family-life. So although keeping my day job is good advice, I find myself without a day-job at the moment and a confusing inability to find one, so I'm looking at an alternative to earning a living as opposed to endless submissions of resumes to positions I have no interest in. If I can spend as much time aggressively hunting for clients as I do hunting for jobs, I think I might start to make enough to pay bills (I'm rather optimistic in that regard), but I am not deluded into thinking this would be an overnight million dollar success...no new business is. It's hard work, and the design aspect is the easiest/smallest bit of it. Prospecting is the most important - my career in sales as shown me this, and has given me a VERY thick skin and a deep appreciation for patience and criticism.

So thank you once again for you reality check, I appreciate someone giving me an honest assessment of my chances, but everyone starts somewhere, and without the difficulties involved the industry would be saturated with EXCELLENT designers. However, I still see a LOT of (in my opinion) crap websites out there - thats the market I want.

Craig