Would love to know how many web design company owners are reading this article and thinking "Could I?"
I've run a web design company for 13 years (currently a team of three) and it's tough work. To your friends, you're the guy who can work anywhere and at any time, charge a decent hourly rate, etc. Reality is you're juggling hosting and domain invoices, maintaining decade-old sites, having your designs ruined by weird requests and on it goes. For every gem of a client, there is a difficult project that was tough to foresee or avoid for whatever reason.
My problems are never contract-related (I don't bother with them at all, figuring that if a relationship ever needs to refer to the contract, it's as good as lost) and rarely about being paid (the money gets there eventually). I also don't worry about competition from smallfry (rarely unhappy to lose a job because I'm too expensive). Yet even without such critical issues as legal, billing and competition, it's still a difficult line of work.
Why don't I experiment with products more? Since I am the client, I can't give myself a serious must-hit deadline and that final 10% never gets done. I also get distracted by the next idea before I finish the last one.
I've run a web design company for 13 years (currently a team of three) and it's tough work. To your friends, you're the guy who can work anywhere and at any time, charge a decent hourly rate, etc. Reality is you're juggling hosting and domain invoices, maintaining decade-old sites, having your designs ruined by weird requests and on it goes. For every gem of a client, there is a difficult project that was tough to foresee or avoid for whatever reason.
My problems are never contract-related (I don't bother with them at all, figuring that if a relationship ever needs to refer to the contract, it's as good as lost) and rarely about being paid (the money gets there eventually). I also don't worry about competition from smallfry (rarely unhappy to lose a job because I'm too expensive). Yet even without such critical issues as legal, billing and competition, it's still a difficult line of work.
Why don't I experiment with products more? Since I am the client, I can't give myself a serious must-hit deadline and that final 10% never gets done. I also get distracted by the next idea before I finish the last one.