Iam interested in setting up a internet business, Im thinking about website and graphic design, webhosting reseller. Making personal mambo/joomla, xoops, droopal sites for customers. Personal forums, dateing sites, gaming sites, music libraries, auction, blogs etc.

Could I make a worthwhile living out of it, say over £30,000?

Any advice would be appreciated.

That's a pretty complex question in such a simple statement

Yes it's possible, however it is not easy and probably not right away - it really depends on the contracts you get, your skills with web design and web development.

there's very little in just webhosting reselling unless you sell them the "whole package" at a premium (ie website in a box)

you may want to start it off as a hobby (setup the company, make your own site and build a few showcases/templates) - that way the outlays are not major and if you've got a job that will keep you going while you're getting more clients (you can always hand in your notice if your hobby pays off)

The trouble i've found with using CMS's like mambo/joomla and xoops is that they all seem to look the same - and the aim of any good web developer is to be original - design your own Themes/templates/skins/layouts etc...

Another hurdle you'll find is that if you're using what is essentially free software, you have to make the customer feel they are getting more than just an install of droopal with a few plugins, a downloaded theme with the banners changed and the GPL text removed.

My biggest piece of advice is know the products you are going to use well - they all have their strengths/weaknesses/features being able to choose the correct solution for a client on day one and that solution still be the right one for them years down the line is a skill in itself, design for the future in all your developments - it will show you want your clients to grow and succeed. There has been a few occasions early on where i have chosen one solution and after it's all been developed and the client is asking for additional functions i realise that maybe a different product would have been better if only i had understood where the client was going in the years ahead - oh well you live and learn.

You'll probably not make money designing personal forums or blogs as the people that run these things tend to see that you can run one of these with very little tech knowledge for pennies a month. Better to aim for the small/med comercial with shopping cart requirements etc... (use any contacts you have, when starting up a company like this you need to use word of mouth and mates before you get a name for yourself)

Good luck! it's a fun world.

I do this as a hobby :) Graphic & Web design etc.. Thing with webhosting is there isn't much money to be made unless you find a real good value hosting company as the more they charge the more you have to charge to make profit and cover your own hosting costs.

If you are going to be a reseller I would advise you resell through a hosting company that has their own data centre, you really don't want to get into a situation where you host through a host who then hosts through another host, it could get really complicated support wise..

For the mean time I would probably stick to designing and do a little more research on the hosting side of the business.

I am self-employed and could have gone down that route, but I'm not sure just how much money there is in it to be honest. The larger companies who would pay a lot for a CMS, even opensource, will probably not look at you unless you've been in business for a couple of years. The smaller ones generally wont understand what a CMS is.

And there are so many people around doing websites that I feel the only way forward, unless you really are a fantastic designer, is to try and differentiate your services. If you can offer something no one else is really harping on about then you might do well that way.

The biggest problem is getting business, having a website will help but not much unless you do your SEO really well. I think my experience will mirror most people like me, and that experience is selling to people I already know, or meet in person. The website then is required to show that they can have some confidence in my abilities. (hopefully)

SEO isnt important for a startup. Referrals, experience and a decent portfolio is vital.

SEO isnt important for a startup. Referrals, experience and a decent portfolio is vital.

I totally agree with this

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is only useful if you have a service that can take advantage of it (usually way past the startup point)

When I said doing your SEO really well could help with the business, I'm talking about being the top site for search terms like "Sheffield web design". Of course I agree that if the site then has a rubbish portfolio you wont benefit.

Thanks very much for all your advice, I think I will do it as an hobby and see how it goes :thumbsup:

It would be very difficult to make a worthwhile living out of it.

We have a few clients who have tried Internet only businesses and a couple have done OK, but they have only made a small profit to add to their regular day job.

None of my clients so far have made their living from such a business.

It would be better to carry on as a hobby until you are confident you have enough money coming it to live off.

The Inland Revenue could class it as second income therefore you will need to be registered with them.

www.c-todd.com

Mambo/Joombla are Open Source, this means you are not able to charge for them, so if you make sure you state in your contracts your using 'free' software, and the customers are paying for your service to set them up, and maintain them, then you should be ok, however this means anyone who reads your terms has the chance of either seeking alternatives and set it up themselves, free, or find a cheaper place..

i would recomend getting in touch with a web designer or 3, and asking them to create you a Simple CMS (Obviously you would have to pay them) Lay out your requirements, such as, user logins, EASILY Themeable, Forums, etc, and then you have your own, unique thing to offer customers...

maintaining the CMS, and fixing bugs would be the problem, but if your making money out of it, it wouldnt be too much of an issue..

as i said, the biggest problem is your dealing with open source/free software which is where you could trip up.. ;)

It's a very hard industry to make a decent living in these days. There's too many people doing it (many of them aren't any good) and the market's flooded. You can still make money from web design and the like but you have to be really good and make a name for yourself.

What do you do currently if you don't mind me asking?

Ghozer, that's not a major issue - you are right in saying that you cant "sell" those products, but you don't need to state in your contracts that you use FREE software like PHP and SQL, you just need to lay out what your service is. As long as when you're putting your quotes together you identify what you're doing it's fine.

Personally i would NOT recommend getting a privatly designed CMS - designing a good CMS is many man years of effort - making sure it works with all the plugins you're going to develop or use etc... Personally i prefer to use the CORRECT CMS for the job, one that's been tested on thousands of websites having millions of users.

This will not be the biggest problem in website develoment i can assure you.

A lot of people in the business specialise in an area but can adapt to other.
E.g you're a PHP developer who can do excellent XHTML and CSS with some AJAX thrown in.

Or you're an ASP.NET developer with some of the above.
One of the things I have noticed is that many web "designers" are not designers at all.
They're developers. If you have a design flare and skills coupled with the above you would have no problem making good money.

I hear Ruby on Rails is a great developing language and easier to master than ASP or PHP but it's less widely used.