Are there small business ideas?

I'm thinking of starting a small web design business, and tips or ideas?

• I'm thinking of starting a small web design business. I was laid off at work and need to do something. I would love to work from home and have to use what I have for hardware and software to start. I have FrontPage, digital camera, scanner, fast connection, and understand the basics. I have put up a few basic sites but nothing for money to this point. I have no real design skills, as far as page content and layout. I don't really like the templates in FP but know that what I have done can be a lot better. Also, any marketing ideas for this type business on a very short shoestring? I'm going to use the few examples I have, put together some marketing materials, and hit the street. A few of my thoughts and ideas are to: since I am small I will focus on small and micro businesses that do not have sites I am going to focus on target markets - used car lots, auto repair, carpenters, masons, etc. Get a feel for there needs and go one market to next as I use up leads

• Answer:

  You are entering one of the most competitive fields in Internet services. There are hundreds of thousands of people offering their web design services. If you go to onfocus.com and use the googlesmackdown tool you can see how many web sites are currently offering a web designer (666,000 as I write this). And the number of web sites advertising as a web design business, 34,200. You will absolutely need to develop a very specialized skill set and it would be to your extreme benefit to have many thousands of personal contacts to help spread -- word-of-mouth advertising. My business contracts with web designers, web developers, and web programmers almost daily. There are very few who actually know how to design a web site that provides customer loyalty, sells a product, provides search engine compliance and marketability, provides Internet directory compliance and marketability, and promotes brand awareness. All of which are absolute musts for an online business. Hope that helps stimulate your business ideas.