My Journey to build a successful, long term web-dev business from scratch.

Introduction:
Hi, guys. As the title says I am starting this journey to build a long term and successful web-development business form scratch. And when I say from scratch, I mean form scratch i.e. I will teach myself web-development from scratch.

Even though I will soon be graduating college with a CS degree I have zero practical experience. I mean I just know the basics of everything but have never applied anything in a real world scenario. So, I have a lot to learn and learn I will.

The Vision:
To build a long term and profitable business that helps its client by providing high quality, ultra usable and aesthetically optimized websites/web apps/web services and to provide excellent communication and exceptional customer service.

The Why:
There are many reasons I am doing this journey-

1. I want to have a stable long term business as a core of my income streams.
2. I can see myself enjoying this line of work and doing a better job than most people do in this market.
3. Ofcourse money.
4. I am sick of earning literally pocket change using the various "Methods"
5. I don't want work for scraps for someone else.

The How:
For now I am starting with learning front end development. I am going to learn HTML,CSS and Javascript first. For lessons I have signed up on codecademy, its free and I like the "Learn by doing" style of the lessons. I have already started the HTML and CSS Track on there. I know what they teach is fairly basic. I plan to expand my knowledge by building real life examples after taking in the basics.

After I feel comfortable with front end and UI. Then I will dive into learning backend programming using PHP and Ruby.
After that, comes really getting into the business side of things. That is taking regular clients building a brand. And expanding. But that's too far into the future.

For now I intend to learn and apply.

Time frame:
The ideal scenario is to start taking up paid clients by the time I end my last semester in college that is June, start expanding the company by December. A think to keep in mind is that I will have a lot more to do academically this semester so I do my best to stick to this time frame.


So, that's it for now. I'll be updating at-least thrice a week. I sincerely hope this journey will help you in some way and feel free to join me in building you own business.

Hey! No offense and I'm just trying to help but please read this when you have some free time. http://www.vikingcodeschool.com/posts/why-learning-to-code-is-so-damn-hard
Again, stay positive and best of luck.

i am on a similar journey, good luck op

hfsyou said:

Hey! No offense and I'm just trying to help but please read this when you have some free time.
Again, stay positive and best of luck.

Click to expand...

just read this, great post

Hello , couple advices for you:
1. Learn frameworks like jQuery, Laravel (for php) etc. Will make your work much faster.
2. Always Try to understand what client want and email him with that information (just to avoid changes in future). But make sure you dont make much questions during the development.
3. Ask % of the money before start if possible, this will make client pressure you and thats good. If you dont ask money some clients will stop contact you and lose the interest on job (that really happens).
4. Search work on odesk / freelancer.com both are safe for you and for clients. Its hard to get first clients so get ready to work cheap and have anoying clients.
5. Less clients pay , more they will complain.
6. Make sure you change for "possible" problems. When server go down clients will contact you even if you are responsible and you will get mad and say "DAMN why i ask that money for so much work"
7. Dont give freebies unless is a good client, (anyway avoid )
8. Before delivery a work always ask your self "this is the best i can do ?" always delivery more quality then client ask.

Good luck.

cyrusmoney said:

Hello , couple advices for you:
1. Learn frameworks like jQuery, Laravel (for php) etc. Will make your work much faster.
2. Always Try to understand what client want and email him with that information (just to avoid changes in future). But make sure you dont make much questions during the development.
3. Ask % of the money before start if possible, this will make client pressure you and thats good. If you dont ask money some clients will stop contact you and lose the interest on job (that really happens).
4. Search work on odesk / freelancer.com both are safe for you and for clients. Its hard to get first clients so get ready to work cheap and have anoying clients.
5. Less clients pay , more they will complain.
6. Make sure you change for "possible" problems. When server go down clients will contact you even if you are responsible and you will get mad and say "DAMN why i ask that money for so much work"
7. Dont give freebies unless is a good client, (anyway avoid )
8. Before delivery a work always ask your self "this is the best i can do ?" always delivery more quality then client ask.

Good luck.

Click to expand...

Very nice advices!!

To OP, nice move to try to establish a real business, this is the way to go, good luck!

hfsyou said:

Hey! No offense and I'm just trying to help but please read this when you have some free time. Again, stay positive and best of luck.

Click to expand...

I just read it and yes it does resonate with me from my previous attempts to learn things online.
Thank you for this, this is the type of support I am looking for. I suspect I'll be looking at this again and again.

cyrusmoney said:

Hello , couple advices for you:
1. Learn frameworks like jQuery, Laravel (for php) etc. Will make your work much faster.
2. Always Try to understand what client want and email him with that information (just to avoid changes in future). But make sure you dont make much questions during the development.
3. Ask % of the money before start if possible, this will make client pressure you and thats good. If you dont ask money some clients will stop contact you and lose the interest on job (that really happens).
4. Search work on odesk / freelancer both are safe for you and for clients. Its hard to get first clients so get ready to work cheap and have anoying clients.
5. Less clients pay , more they will complain.
6. Make sure you change for "possible" problems. When server go down clients will contact you even if you are responsible and you will get mad and say "DAMN why i ask that money for so much work"
7. Dont give freebies unless is a good client, (anyway avoid )
8. Before delivery a work always ask your self "this is the best i can do ?" always delivery more quality then client ask.

Good luck.

Click to expand...

Thank you for all your advice I'll keep those in mind when I start taking clients. I plan on learning Jquery after I finish with Javascript basics. In my perspective it is essential to learn how jqurey is doing things and for that I need to learn JS.
What do you think?


UPDATE #1:

I've been swamped with work load from college and doing my html+css course.
Anyways, I've completed 60% of HTML+CSS coursework on codecademy. This includes all the basics html tag. Building a profile page using HTML. Building buttons for websites etc.

Things I'll do this week:
Finish, HTML+CSS course and start Javascript course. Think of a real Idea that can be done using only HTML and css and build it form scratch.
If you have any suggestions on what I should build I am all ears.

Hello yes. Javascript is important but jQuery is a simpler way to write Javascript, because make your code much smaller and cleaner. Anyway go ahead learn and give it a try with development dont be afraid. After dominate frontend (html css , javascript learn php)

Good luck.