For the third day running, I was crying on my couch, my boyfriend trying to console me.
“You’ll find a way honey.”
THIS was not what I wanted for my life and THIS was not what I expected I’d signed up for.
I had just moved to Germany to be with my boyfriend, and upon landing, I realised my undergrad and Masters degrees were worthless here.
Without speaking the language my job options were 1. Working in an English pub and 2. Working in a bilingual kindergarten.
I loved my boyfriend, truly I did. I was fine to give up my country for him, give up being around my friends and family for him, but this is where the line was drawn. I couldn’t give up doing a career I enjoyed for him too.
I wanted something for myself. Something that didn’t completely bore me to tears. Something which allowed me to fly home anytime I pleased. Something well paid that stood half a chance of paying off my student debt in a reasonable timeframe.
I had always been ambitious and this foray into underpaid work for foreigners was messing with me more than I ever expected.
I had only one option left.
Find work online I could do from anywhere, preferably with clients who didn’t care I was in a totally different timezone and would be working while they were sleeping.
I did luckily have one really wild, out-there idea: Become a web designer.
I didn’t know how to code, didn’t know what the heck the term UI/UX meant, had never once taken a graphic design class, and had less than no experience with running a business or finding clients… but it felt like it was my best bet.
I knew web designers made decent money, I saw others charging $5k/project and completing it in 2 weeks.
And I did have one thing that gave me a shaky confidence I maybeee could do this. A few years back I had started a travel blog. I had literally Googled “how to build a blog” followed by “blog site builders comparison” and had taught myself how to build a drag and drop site on Squarespace.
“This is my best bet!” I thought, and went for it.
1 year later, I was the first actual website designer who appeared when you Googled “Squarespace website designer” which resulted in getting an inquiry A DAY, and booking out months in advance with projects between $5k – $9.5k, which I completed in just 2 weeks each!
So let me tell you all about this little known job and help you decide if it might work for you! (I say little known, because it seems most people think this job isn’t an option for them if they don’t have a computer science degree, which is totally not true these days!)
What do web designers actually do?
Let me start with what web designers DON’T do anymore: Build sites with custom code.
These days web designers build websites on drag and drop website building platforms. You might have heard of a few of them before, Squrespace, Wix, WordPress, Showit & Shopify are all common website building platforms.
Clients tend to want a website which they can update and edit themselves, which means if you custom code the whole thing, they’re not going to have a clue what to do with it or how to use it.
In short, web designers build websites. That involves gathering site content rom their clients (photos & copy A.K.A. “website words”), and then building custom site designs for each client. This involves using a site builder to drop content blocks on the page, designing it to fit the clients brand, and also understanding design best practices and the best practices for how to rank sites in Google (aka SEO) to put together a site which is both custom to the client AND works for their business! Thankfully, I learned all those skills could be a learned and I quite enjoyed learning them. Unlike when I tried teaching myself to code which resulted in falling asleep on my laptop more times than I can count. Turns out, website design is no longer something only a rocket scientist or person who took a 4 year degree in computer science can figure out.
How long do web design projects typically take?
I personally worked with 1 client at a time, and did each project in 2 weeks.
How much do web designers earn?
At the start I was charging peanuts, we’re talking $580 for a site. (Wouldn’t recommend.) Within a 2 year period I raised my prices, to $2.5k to $5k to even doing projects for just shy of $10k.
And again I’d have time to do 2 projects a month (assuming I wasn’t on vacation that month… which admittedly I took a lot of vacation. I was in Europe after all, had to make the best of it!)
What are the hours like?
The thing which I loved the MOST about being a website designer was that clients didn’t seem to know/care that I was halfway across the world and doing work at weird hours, meaning I built the sites when it worked for me, as long as I completed the site by the deadline which I’d set to be 2 weeks.
Some weeks I’d take a long weekend to go visit a nearby city in Europe or take a couple days off to fly home when flight prices were cheap during the week, and then I would just pull some marathon 10 hour work sessions, whereas other weeks I’d do the more typical 5 or 6 hours a day consistently.
For each client project I only had 1 – 2 calls with the client and we didn’t have daily check-ins or anything, so it was basically up to me how I wanted to arrange completing the project on my schedule.
With a few site designs under my belt I got a LOT faster at building sites. At the beginning I was totally doing 40-60 hours hours/project over 2 weeks, but that reduced greatly with experience. One time a whole $5k project only took me 20 hours over 2 weeks. I kept asking the client “is there anything else that you’d like?” almost feeling badly how easy it was for me to complete the project! That wasn’t the norm necessarily, one other time I took on a brand, website design & e-commerce store setup in 2 weeks and was working around the clock. Looking back, that was my own fault for underestimating how long it’d take me to do such a massive project and I probably should have extended the timeline to 3 weeks, but I learned for the next time!
How flexible (or not) is website design?
It’s legitimately one of the MOST flexible online jobs out there.
Being a Virtual Assistant or Online Business Manager or Ads Manager are other common online jobs, but they all require daily work and being on call all the time. I value my free time, so I purposefully picked a job where I’d complete a project and send the client on their merry way, leaving me free to take vacation for a few weeks without anyone needing me.
I also did 1-2 calls per project, and just set hours I was free in an appointment scheduler and allowed clients to pick a time which also suited them. Because I was in Europe and all my clients were in the US or Canada, there were a few occasions I had to do a call in the evening when the client wasn’t free until after their workday in North America, but it felt like a small price to pay for the rest of the week to be totally free of meetings and calls and the ability to do my work whenever suited me.
How do I get started or test if this is right for me?
You can find everything you need to know to get started over HERE.
And if you don’t want to take just my word for it, read through the testimonials from real women just like you that are living this flexible work-from-home dream every single day!
Meet Paige
Paige Brunton is a Squarespace expert and Authorised Trainer. She started her web design business from her couch in Germany, after having moved abroad for love. She has now taught over 4,000 students the tech of building websites on Squarespace and how to build and book out a web design business. She now lives in London, England with her German husband.
