About the Author

Mark Frank has been helping businesses and nonprofits succeed on the Internet since 1999. He is a website designer, consultant, and the president of Sunrise Designs, a home-based website design business. He is also an editor for the search engine directories Zeal.com and JoeAnt.com. With years of experience as a web designer, extensive training in website design, and a degree in management, he knows what it takes to make your website design business work.

Author's Note

As a recognized expert in the field, I get a lot of questions from beginners and from experienced designers who just can't seem to get their design businesses off the ground.

The most common question is always the same...

"Is there really a market for new website designers?"

My answer is always the same...

"Yes, there is a market for new website designers.

Everyday small business owners are becoming increasingly aware that they need websites. Even if their businesses don't do any online sales, their customers expect them to have websites with phone numbers, directions, descriptions of products and general information.

More and more, small business owners are realizing that not having a website is like not having a telephone. Today's buyers are online 24 hours a day. The sellers have to be there too.

And don't worry about the competition from other designers.

Competition isn't a problem - it's the sign of a healthy market place. The Internet has only really been available to the public since 1998, and look how it has grown. To think that it will suddenly stop growing or that there is no more demand for websites (and designers) is foolish.

Your business can be successful, but you must learn how to market your design services. There are a lot of people selling the same service you will offer. The designers who are successful are the ones who go out and find the work, not the ones who sit back and wait for the phone to ring.

It is important to master website design, but it is much more important that you master the business and marketing skills you will need to make your business prosper. You have to bring the work in, and you have to manage it after you get. That's the only way to be successful in any business.

Learn as much as you can about the business side of the design business. For every design book you read, read one on business (or advertising or marketing or copywriting). As you build your knowledge, you will build your business.

I know this from my own experience...

In 1998 I took some classes on website design. There was a class on basic HTML, one on Tables, and a third on Frames. Each class met for three two-hour sessions. In early 1999, with only of 18 hours of HTML instruction, I started Sunrise Designs, Inc. - a home-based website design business.

I made $500 from my very first client, over $3,000 from my second, and over $4,000 from my third.

Designing websites was easy. But building the business was a long and painful process. I made a lot of mistakes - some of them very expensive. Many of my problems would have been avoided if I had been able to find a book that dealt specifically with the trials and tribulations of running a home-based website design business. There was a lot of small business information and a lot of website design information available, but nothing that tied the two together to answer my questions.

Somewhere along the way, I decided that if my business ever became successful, I would write the book that I had needed for so long.

Finally, I realized that it was time, so I gathered up all of my notes and documents, wrote down all of the problems that I had faced and everything I had learned, and put them into a book – Start Your Own Home-Based Website Design Business. I didn't want to write a book about website design. I wanted to focus on the business side of the website design.

Start Your Own Home-Based Website Design Business does exactly that. It provides step-by-step instructions on:

• How to set up your home-based website design business
• How to find work
• How to set your rates
• How to manage a website design project

The book also includes the documentation you need to make your business work (contracts, invoice, timesheet, design worksheet, etc.).

This book was written specifically for home-based website designers and it includes as much information and as many tools as I could squeeze into it.

I can't guarantee that your business will be successful - only you can do that. But I can promise that this book will give you the tools and techniques you need to make your business thrive. All you have to do is apply them.

If you are starting a one or two person website design business, or if you have already started your business and are struggling to make it work, this book is exactly what you need.