Hello, and this is Rob from Rob coming here, welcome to this lecture starting a design business, then the general tone of this lecture is going to be if you want to start a web design business, then just start it's as simple as that. Now, I'm not saying you should give up your six figure job without any clients and immediately start up you can think about starting up in your spare time, but what I'm going to say is you probably have everything you need in order to start. And in order to start, you need four things, equipment, knowledge and ability, business plan and objectives. And lastly, clients. So let's start with the equipment then. So it's possible To say that all you really need is a computer and an internet connection.

And then you can start a web design business working for clients. Of course, it's not as simple as that. as your business grows, you'll eventually need to set up a company, hire an accountant to do attacks, and purchase more equipment, outsource maybe employee stuff, but we're talking about starting out here. And remember from the last lecture, we're trying wherever possible to save money and utilize the equipment and the communication infrastructure you already have, rather than rushing out to the stores. Of course, struggling along with a slow computer is a false economy. But if you're happy with your setup, there's no reason to change it.

So let's talk about computers. Now, whether you're a Mac or a PC person, you need a fairly decent computer, lots of disk space, first processor speed, and bags of RAM and if I Starting out today I'd have something like this iMac 27 inch, and that will set you back about 1500 dollars. But this is just my personal preference. Now with software, there's a lot of great free tools out there. But when you're talking graphics, you pretty much have to purchase software, then you know what I'm going to say. We're going to talk about Adobe Creative Suite and Creative Cloud.

Specifically, I have to use Photoshop, InDesign and illustrator from this package of software, also use others such as Acrobat Professional. It used to be a case of Adobe Creative Suite numbers 12345 and six were old fashioned software, which were DVDs that you loaded up onto your computer. The next version has gone to the cloud and it's now called Adobe Creative Cloud where you pay a monthly subscription to That subscription depends on whether you're up dating from an existing Creative Suite that you might have on your computer. How many of you are there is there just one of you or or your team and there's various price points. Also with the old creative suites, there were various price points as well there are pared down Creative Suite which had Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign and Acrobat Pro, but then there was web premium version, which included flash and Dreamweaver, there was a Photoshop extended version.

And there was a master connection, which sort of had all of it nowadays on the cloud, the price points and more to do with how much space you have, but you'll know what you want. At the very least, you're gonna want Photoshop for web design, although it would be possible as a stretch to use GIMP but if you want to be a serious web designer at some stage, you're going to have to spend some money on either Creative Suite or Creative Cloud. So as I was saying, I usually use Photoshop. straighter and InDesign, I actually use Dreamweaver. For text editing, you're gonna have to have some sort of text editor to write your code, and your HTML and CSS. The only reason I use Dreamweaver is because I have it on the Creative Suite version that I have.

But there are other fantastic text editors that you might prefer, like coda, for example. And if this is all too much for you, you can always look for an computer on eBay, which has Creative Suite already installed. And if you're a student or teacher, you can get creative and Creative Cloud App reductions. Moving on with other software. After you've had a few jobs, you might want to purchase a font management program as well. You can use font management programs like suitcase fusion, and these just help with opening and closing fonts quickly and safely so they don't slap your computer too much.

So Let's move away from software back to hardware. And also, it would be wise for me to talk about backup because further down the line, you'll have your hard disk stuffed with client work. And what happens if something goes wrong with the machine, you need a backup and a portable alternative. And this is very cheap, you can get one terabyte disks these days for 60 $70. And if you have a Mac, all you have to do is set up time machine, and then all your work will be backed up. So if you deleted something a few days ago, you can just go back on time machine and find an old version that you want and backup from there.

So with time machine, you pretty much have your backup sorted, but of course it's in the same room as your computer. So if you had a fire or theft, you'd probably lose both. So in this case, you might want to think about cloud backup system. And there's plenty of options to talk about here. Usually You get some free disk space in the cloud with services like Google Drive and Dropbox, but you don't get very much. And obviously, you have to pay for the extra space that you want in the cloud.

Of course, if you have Adobe Creative Cloud, you've got some free space there. Again, it might not be enough, but if you pay for it, and you've got all your stuff on the cloud, it means you can have a fire or, God forbid, and of course, you won't lose anything. So we've gone through the paid software and the hardware. So now I'd like to talk about the free tools you can use. As I say, you probably would want to use Photoshop for web design, but there are online image editors out there and there's two mentioned here pixma and photo flexor. There are open source alternatives to Creative Suite.

As I said, this GIMP and there's others such as Pixelmator and Inkscape. So for file sharing, if you want to Send large files to your clients, you can use a variety of services. And one I use is called use send it. And for images, there's lots of places you can get great free stock photography. And I've listed a few here. But please be very careful and don't reproduce any photography.

This is copyrighted in any way. So be careful to read the copyright. And don't just take photos off the internet that you happen to think look pretty. There are lots of great free effects or resources out there. There's so many good resources, you can just simply do a google image search sometimes. And then you can find the vector you're looking for.

And you can find vectors for logos these days at brands of the world.com. Also, you can just Google for vectors and usually you can find a company's vector logo online, so funds there A lot of great free fonts@dafont.com. There's a lot of other places that have free fonts and what the font calm can identify a font, sometimes from an image. For free fonts to use online, you can't do better than Google web fonts, which has around 300, excellent fonts. I use them all the time. They don't slow down your browser too much.

And you just put a line of code there in the head. And all you have to put is the CSS declaration. And there you have a different font to the usual ones Times New Roman Arial, Georgia, whatever we used to use seems like a long time ago now. Now to help you with web development and web design. There are some absolutely bog standard tools that everyone uses many times a day, and they're all free. And you can just use developer tools for Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox.

I tend to develop in Chrome and I just use the Chrome Developer Tools many, many times of the day, if I'm developing websites, I find them absolutely essential for debugging JavaScript, and working out your CSS, onto HTML. Of course, there's the HTML validator, which is very useful. And also the CSS validator as well. Other online services of huge importance to the web designer are, of course, Google Analytics to tell you how much web traffic you're getting, and where it's coming from. And a lot else, Google Webmaster Tools absolutely essential, great information about whether all your pages are indexed in Google, uploading your Google sitemap, and all sorts of other things. And Google Docs is just a great online service.

So here's some sites for cross browser checking browser shots, and Adobe browser lab and view like us in order to analyze your page speed. To find out if you can speed up your page loading times, which is very important. You can use Google's PageSpeed or Yahoo's why slow pingdom is excellent for telling you when your site is down, or how much time during a month your site has been down. There are some great color tools online as color scheme designer, and cooler. And lastly, by no means least, there are some excellent FTP clients that are free to download. And I use files a lot all the time.

And one thing you will need as a web designer is an FTP client. Okay, so that's it for the equipment, the hardware, the software and the backups. Now we're onto your knowledge and ability. Now, I can't tell you how to design all sorts of websites here. But as you're taking this course, I am sure you have a lot of skill in developing and designing websites and you know how you can help your clients Even though web design is a relatively young profession, there are already many different especially realities emerging. The challenge is getting the clients with needs relevant to the services you offer.

However, they'll always be limited to any one person's technical ability. And while you'll want to do as much technical work yourself at first, you'll need to develop a network of trusted freelancers you can work with, as well as an ability to outsource. And you'll find this happens quite naturally, you'll have friends in the industry, and some of them will be better at other things than you are, and you'll be better than them at other things. Sometimes, you'll like to give them work and sometimes they'll like to give you work. It happens all the time. But also, you can outsource to oDesk and Elance and you can find people to do quite unskilled repetitive tasks for $5 an hour or something like that.

Or you can find some quite decent And coders and designers for 20 to $30 an hour. But this doesn't mean that you're getting people from oDesk or Elance, to do all the work for you, while you put your feet up and take all the credit, but I cannot overstate the demands of running a web design business. And if you're going to be successful, you'll need to manage your time effectively. And this means offloading some work to other people. And later on, it'll mean offloading most of the work to other people. So, so much for knowledge and ability, but we'll come back to this later.

Next up, we're going to talk about patterns. Now, all businesses of course, have a business plan. And if you're starting out, you should be thinking about the direction you'd ultimately like to take your company. Think of the clients you'd like the projects you'd want and the sort of work you'd like to be doing day by day. And this by the way, will carry On every month and every year in business, it doesn't stop after you've started. I have many plans and many goals, business goals and personal goals.

I don't know if any of you have read books by Napoleon Hill, or Tony Robbins, or a lot of other business authors, but a lot of them say that you should write down your plans and goals and take a lot of time thinking about them. I have a business goal that I like to put my client in the center of everything I do. I like to provide the best marketing and design services. I like to be the person that is an expert about developing personal and business brands across the internet. I also have a desire to help other people start their own businesses. So I've thought about these plans.

I've written them down and they change they don't stay the same from one year. Two, three years time, some of them can do. But as you grow with your business, they mature, but you've got to do them as soon as you start. And in addition to this, you can have three monthly, six monthly and annual goals. So every year at the beginning of the year, you can write down what you want to achieve in three months in six months and at the end of the year, and continue to do this throughout the year. And think about three years time as well.

Make sure that goals cover everything from the quality of work you're doing to the amount of new business, you're getting the traffic to your site, and profit. Also try to make these plans smart, and I'm sure you've heard of smart plans, they should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. and timely means time focus. So in a year's time, or in a two years time, something like that. Now, you may not achieve all these girls, that doesn't matter. Don't worry about failing because we all fail.

But the process of thinking about plans and goals and writing them down is invaluable in terms of focus for your business. Just do it. It's brilliant. Trust me, it's essential that you do this. Otherwise you can easily get swamped in the day to day running of your business. And I believe with plans is writing a simple philosophy that sums up your business.

But as I said, I'm a great believer in just starting. accountants can be sorted out later, the company name can be sorted out later. stationery, of course can be sorted out later, but you can just start now if you want to. If you've got a full time job, you can start in the evenings and the weekends now is the best time to start a new business. And designing at home is a brilliant way to make money. I was lucky I was freelancing when I started.

So I was working five days a week but some weeks I would work four days, some weeks I'd work three days, but the weeks when I worked to Three days were great because I could work two or three days at home on my business, I'd work the weekends as well. Of course, all I had was software computer and broadband connection. And that's all you need. But later, you will have to set a proper company up with its own bank account, accounting, and you should do all this sooner rather than later. But it's not difficult. I'm in the UK, and it cost me I think two or 300 pounds to start a business and the accountants are quite easy to find.

And they won't cost you very much as a proportion of your annual income anyway, but all the business details are different in different countries. But I suspect it's the same in most other countries, but you will have to have a business account and separate tax for your company. And the sooner you do that, the better. But the most important way to start as a web design business is with your own website. And that works. To get clients to contact you, so I left this last point to the end.

So I hope you enjoyed that about starting the web design business. As always, if you have any questions, just ask me. This has been Rob from Rob carbonite.com. Thank you very much. Goodbye.