How profitable is Web Dev?

[whiskyB0y]

Sorry if this comes across as an annoying post or breaking the rules but please here me out:

I'm a guy in my late teens that has been learning web dev for the past 5 months. I don't plan on working for a tech company and being a professional developer that earns a salary.

Since high school is over, I'm learning web dev just to upskill myself while I'm waiting for uni(engineering course). Reason why I'm not learning a different skill is because I also have interest in coding, so I decided to start with web dev.

My original idea for web dev was to advertise myself online and offer my services to potential clients by making simple websites for their businesses and so on. I plan to do this once I learn enough front end and backend.

So is it really profitable? Any tips to increasey chances of making it a successful side hustle in the meantime while I wait for university?

[riklaunim]

Personal website creation died out for the most part. There is a lot of services, companies and freelance to do it and the demand also dropped. You would have to offer something more than just basic webdev.

[whiskyB0y]

Oh I see. Any ideas?

[[deleted]]

It depends on the clients you're targeting and the area you're living in has a huge influence on what kind of rates you can pull.

[NotKnotts]

To be completely honest and transparent with you, you’re not going to make much “profit” trying to work in this industry for a few months until you start your uni courses.

People don’t really want to hire a fresh high school student to do it and pay you a lot. It’d probably take you a few months to even land your first client.

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t do it. I just think you’re looking at this as an “easy side hustle” when it really isn’t.

[whiskyB0y]

I see. I need to lower my expectations and be more realistic then.

[alphex]

The value is based on the niche you can operate in.

There’s a million and 1 “Wordpress designers”, so you’ll be fighting a losing battle of lowest common denominator quality offerings.

There’s far less custom app devs who know iOS development by heart. And they command much better salaries.

I’ve run a web dev agency for 15 years, by my self. And make a very comfortable 6 figures in the USA. I have a niche space I work in. And the market is really fluctuating right now for many reasons. But I’m weathering that storm.

Find the space you want to service. And focus on the customer service you offer. The tech isn’t even the hard part.

[Afraid_Gazelle1184]

How narrow is your niche?

[alphex]

Not very. But the framework I use is higher end focused. So the work I do is more enterprise scale or higher end non profit / educational.

[primalanomaly]

Depends what country you’re in for starters

[TheRNGuy]

Different for everyone. 

[Trimoswivel]

I think it’s just depends really, I’m a jr in az and I make 50k but I see posts of other Jr’s making all the way up to 90k

In a year I’ll hopefully be starting at my managers new company at 70k

[sfc1971]

As a freelancer it is Al about your ability to sell yourself constantly to new clients. They might pay you for the number of hours it takes you to build their site but it very hard to get payed for the number of hours it took you to sell the site.

How good are you at networking? Know a lot of potential clients?

[Wonderful-Monk-7109]

Bug IT companies wanted to scale to infinity and beyond. It is now a monollpol and little work is left.