[randomwebdesign]

Hi mate,

good luck to you on your new business, we're ina similar position. Best bet is to hammer the sales, but LOOK after your customers. GEt your name out there. Email the local newspaper and say new entrepreneur is in town doing this. Do some press releases, flyers, posters, banners. Anything to get your name out there. And once again, customers you get, look after them and they will tell their friends how good you are, ergo you earn more money.
good luck mate,

james

[randomwebdesign]

Yeh i agree with retrograffica, you cannot undersell / oversell. You will get stuck with that image of cheap / expensive designs and you will struggle changing that image. If you want to do lots of fast cheap designs. Do fast cheap designs. If you want to do expensive flashy designs, do them, but dont undersell.

A good point at the moment is there are a ton of small businesses laying off staff, that are then going out and starting new businesses, who all need websites. Target these at first, good source of income!

[kithappens]

Go for it, I think may of us started off in the same way, I would second someone elses comments though about not giving away sites or charging too little, simply charge the right amount, otherwise you devalue your work, and we all know referrals grow business, if you customer base refers you to other clients expcting the same next to nothing pricing, it'll be hard to move away from.

Feel free to drop me a line for any advice.

[rob@cystem]

Hi There

I've not long started a website design business, in fact I started it as early as March 2009. When we first started the business I was working from home and had a client base of 1 LOL. Were now in July and we are now able to boast a client base of 6 clients and although this is a very small growth margin to us as a business we think it is fantastic.

It's certainly worth doing and it most certainly is worth the risk, at the end of the day it's one of those where if it fails you can turn around to someone and say I did it and I had a go. My business is doing rather well, it could be better, however with the economic climate I'd say I'm very pleased with the result.

We started off by simply offering website design and then we moved into graphic design, logo design and now we offer a broad range of services. What worked for us was to target people who were start up their own business and popping in a business a card or an offer.

Go for it. Good luck :D