Buddy Web Design

Nothing compares to the internet when it comes to how it has changed the way we work, live , purchase and play on this planet. It is now difficult to imagine a world without Facebook or Google. Suddenly all of us have well over 500 friends, be it virtual friends.It has become more difficult for politicians to hide their true colours. Only last month Facebook had more than a billion users log in and use the platform. That's a whole lot of people!

I qualified as an accountant in 1997 after starting my articles at an accounting firm in 1993.

Those days cell phones were as big and heavy as a brick. It was common to carry a briefcase around.

Picture above: Briefcase

This is what a briefcase looks like. One used it to carry your diary, stationery, business cards , important files and even perhaps lunch to work. All of this has been replaced by mobile devices which can be comfortably carried around in your shirt pocket.

Today I ply my trade in the web design world. It is commonplace in the workplace to change your career a couple of times in your life but to change from an accountant to a web designer! That's a big change. Or is it?

It is not really.

Computers function on the binary code system of either a 0 or a 1. In the accounting world we work with debits and credits. People use search engines like Google to find specific information and these search engines index information using formulae based on logic reasoning. It may not seem so but the world is still a logic place where supply and demand determines price.

Supply and demand also determines what you will be earning when offering a product or service in life. It is important to consider your career when starting out in the working world.

Right now I am enjoying a creative moment where i write freely and words flow easy. This blog entry was inspired by an early morning coffee , still wearing my pajamas and slotting behind my PC at home before 05:00 in the morning. I will work non stop till probably 14:00 - 15:00.

As I peep over this computer screen I have a beautiful view onto Table Mountain National Park in the scenic deep south of Cape Town, South Africa. Rather than posting a random quote on Facebook to welcome the working day and to express my amazement at how the working world has changed i decided to blog about careers in the web design industry.

Blogging or offering your writing services are just one of the services on offer in the web design world. As devices and technology improve, this ability to provide information in a written format will become more and more important. Good quality information is what search engine like Google are looking to offer their customers.

Content largely determines the number of visitors (readers) of a website which turns into customers or offers an advertising opportunity to a website owner.(Similar to the print industry where circulation figures are important to potential customers.) In our business, that of web design it determines the number of people who ask us for a quote for web design services.

The first possible career thus is that of being a website copy writer.

People will not buy or contact us for web design services if our website is not attractive. Graphic Design is another career opportunity where software like Photoshop or Coral Draw is involved.

Our software was designed, and is continuosly being developed, by highly skilled programmers. They are the real "web designers" people who founded the internet and which is why websites used to be extremely expensive and complicated and businesses where at the mercy of web designers.

Our user friendly software means that normal people , even accountants can sell websites. Sales is an important career opportunity in the web design industry. We at Buddy Web Design now have a full time sales manager working for us.

We also offer people the opportunity to become independent web design businesses just like ourselves.

When I sat down to start writing this blog entry i considered what title I should use for this blog entry since choosing a title , considering introductory paragraphs and key words form part of the current domain of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).. That in itself is a career opportunity to consider where one studies search engines and what you can do to get better rankings on these search engines.

Or business owners can go the more driect route and advertise directly with Google Adwords. Becoming a Google Adwords manager is another career opportunity to be considered in the web design industry.

The topic or heading of this article is a global topic on a planet of more than 6 billion people, of which 1 billion visisted Facebook on one day last month and probably a couple of times since then.

This blog entry or piece of information has probably been written before and perhaps researched a little bit more in depth. On it's own i doubt it if it will be indexed very high on Search Engines.

Right now quite a bit of my time has been taken up writing about career opportunities in the web design industry and I am starting to wonder how I will recover this time and end up eventually with the ability to buy food or a beer when shop closes today.

I have the opportunity though to share this blog entry on Facebook and Twitter. (Our Busines Facebook page is linked to our Twitter account so our Facebook Page updates are automatically tweeted where posts can be retweeted or favourited.) What I write now can be retweeted by a follower in Australia to a follower in Russia , again retweeted to a follower in Russia back to my neighbour in Cape Town who can enoy a brilliant article on careers in the web design industry with his early morning cup of coffee. All thanks to my hard work.

Reality though is that this topic might not be interesting to many people.

I have just described another career opportunity, not in the web design industry but that of a career in Social Media Marketing. See our ongoing research project on Cape Town Web Designers and Social Media Marketing. (You will notice web designers are not all hotshots when it comes to being cool on the net, unlike us "Cape Towns Coolest Web Designers" . You can Google it. It is true.

That was just part of a search experiment involving the words you include in your website, including making it easily accesible to the search engines.

In the beginning the traditional web designer had to be a whole lot of things at once. Specialisation is not an unique concept. Specialition together with the Industrial Revolution changed our world and our view of it. I think the internet has been a more drastic change. Consider me, sitting down with the view I have and I call myself working, blogging away as if time is no limit. That is not the case. I really do hope i get some shares and retweets by other web design companies. If i really put proper effort into this this article might be shared or linked to by really important websites in the industry and i can gain a great back link to my website. That will boost my page rank. That's how Google wants the internet to function and what Google wants it gets. Again I am describing the fields of SEO , a career opportunity within the broader web design industry practsed by people calling themselves SEO Experts.

I have recently advertised Internship position and also been in contact with a few people who want to join as independent web designers. I hope my aspirant understudies take time to read my blog entries to gain a better understanding of the environment they will be operating in. No matter what specific or general career route you choose you have to have a basic understanding of the different opportunities available in the industry and how the industry functions as a whole.

You have to understand that it is an industry which makes use of technology which sees dramatic improvements like we have seen with our software over the past 8/9 years. Consider that i posted pictures of a briefbase which was replaced by a small smart phone. Where will we be in another 20 years from now?

That answer no one has. Working hard will always increase knowledge and that which you have to offer the world. It is global world of supply and demand we now live in. You better have something to offer if you want to survive because beer and food aint free and your parents money might not always last. The Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerbergs of this world is few and far between.

My mission this moring is to try and make contact with some businesses in other countries with strong currencies and to see if i can get some work in writing articles for websites. I can hopefuly be paid in dollars or pounds. We have sold websites to people all over the world. Not many but it has happened. That's another avenue to be explored if the distance factor can be overcome. Because we are literally at the far southern tip of Africa, the internet is sometimes slower when websites are hosted. Maybe some technological advances has changed that. Who knows?

Hosting services is another avenue to be explored but it is becoming more common for web design businesses to offer hosting services as part of the package. With us it is compulsory to host with us. It is not a lot to ask if you consider the power of our software. Within an hour or so, you too can become a web master or even a web designer.

We have hundreds of customiseable templates , using CSS Stylesheets. Being a professional CSS Stylesheet Specialist within a larger operation like Kwikwap can also be another career. The choices and career paths are many. The road often though a little slower and more difficult than at first anticipated but then when has something which has been easy ever been worth it?

Have a good day and enjoy your career in the Web Design Industry!

We have ways to make it happen easier and quicker than you think.