Community Forums › Forums › Archived Forums › General Discussion › Is Custom Web Design Dying? My rant for today
- This topic has 2 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 10 years, 6 months ago by Summer.
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October 20, 2013 at 8:09 am #67814chantal2012Member
Hi everyone...I would love to get everyone's input on this issue....I've been checking out Elance to get some design jobs. In the past, I've never had an issue landing a job here and there....however, lately it seems to be getting more and more difficult which has me wondering if custom web design is dying?
Is it becoming easier for the "average joe" to design their own websites? I've been seeing themes found on ThemeForest getting used more and more. Also, services such as SquareSpace.com seem to be making it easier for people to design their own sites. It just makes me wonder what kind of services I should be providing to compete and differentiate myself? What kind of other skills should I be learning?
I would really appreciate anyone's input and/or advice on this matter.
thanks,
ChantalOctober 20, 2013 at 8:47 am #67823RobGMemberHello Chantal, I think the demand for web designers are still needed especially for up coming business's. I just think some people are getting more into web design and are learning how to do thing more them selfs.
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http://www.robgoss.com / Follow me Twitter / https://twitter.com/robgossOctober 20, 2013 at 11:06 am #67849SummerMemberChantal, I have not yet had any success finding gigs via places like Elance, Craigslist or even jobs.wordpress.net. I'm planning to give ODesk a shot, but 90% of my projects the past year have been word of mouth from current or former clients, or people I've met at open house events when my local clients launched their businesses.
I'm still looking for that same secret sauce, myself. The past 3-4 years have been "interesting", having had to go freelance through necessity rather than by design. In addition to websites, I'm still doing freelance writing, freelance voiceovers and narrations, and of course producing multimedia content for a handful of ever-evolving niche geek news sites -- and still looking for good ways to get steady revenue from those streams as well 🙂
Since my background is in system administration, I've had some success with maintenance & support for some clients who aren't tech savvy or comfortable navingating their way around a hosting control panel, or even a WordPress admin panel.
I've even begun considering seeing Drupal on the side again, seeing if branching out for website setup options will help expand or diversify potential clients. I've only had one person complain about WordPress, saying up and down all the time how non-intuitive it is, how frustrating Genesis is for him, and I just smile and shake my head because I did use Drupal and Joomla for a short while 4-5 years ago... as a non-admin type, he has no idea what non-intuitive really means 😉
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