Comment by PaulRobinson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PaulRobinson | Hacker News Reader

There is a comedy show on in the UK the moment called Bad Move in which the central character (played by Jack Dee), is a web designer.

His father-in-law enjoys pointing out that this is today, a rather absurd career. Anybody can go online and create a website using a builder in an evening and get near professional results.

I don't wish for a moment to suggest that this business is up against it, but I will be curious to see how businesses will react compared to some years ago: most people who want an online presence, are either happy enough with nothing more than a social media presence, or are able to get something together that's good enough in wix.com or similar.

Of course for premium brands, they will hire in marketing agencies or even in-house staff, but that's not this niche market approach.

It could be a challenge to make a profit at this sort of gig soon!

I love it when competitors think this way. They are basically giving away a potentially huge comparative and competitive advantage.

That said, there are a few questions:

1. Do the gains of getting a professionally designed website offset the costs in some way? It should, but in many cases it does not.

2. (Mentioned elsewhere in this thread) The market has a lot of participants (saturated?), and the median end user is not good at differenting quality other than by personal reference (kind of... sort of...). As such, being a provider in the market can be a bit sketchy.

3. Anyone who is really good at web design (esp. if it extends to other aspects of the digital experience) will quickly realize that they can make a lot more money (and consistent money) by owning one or more businesses and crushing the online presence aspect of those markets. The startup costs are higher, but the ROI is really good.

HaHa, I must watch that show :D

Yes, the surface of Web Design market has changed a lot in past few years. But I still see lots of people making good money with this. I do not want to earn money by fooling customers tough, I will continue this only if I can make my customers at least 10x their investment in a year.

I also don't know how this journey will turn out but I want to give it a shot. I have dropped a lot of ideas previously in middle due to self-doubt, this time I want to give this one 100% effort and see what happens.

The cookie cutter web builder has been around for years. There are and will be plenty of companies desiring custom solutions. The challenge is saturation, not need.

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