The web design industry is quickly moving towards this model:
1. Get into the industry, make a load of web sites and become ever more frustrated because managing 50 projects a year is frustrating. Do this for 5 to 10 years until you’re an expert at making web sites.
2. Get sick of that, and begin to brainstorm ideas for making apps and products that will earn residual income. Realize that your value isn’t exclusively in designing and building web sites, but also in providing focused ideas that help your clients succeed online.
3. Start a few of them with mild success, then have the “killer idea” which you spend 1-2 years working on.
4. Launch your killer idea.
5. The last phase is all about doing what you want while the checks roll into your mail box, you’re living off of your residual income.
Only about 2% of web designers ever get past the second phase, which is unfortunate. The web design industry is filled with many bright minds, and with a little bit more momentum, people can do great things.
The good news is that ideas are all around us, and going through all of the experiences in this industry allow us to see new ideas and get ideas for how things can be better. These are the ideas that turn into killer ideas, which turn into residual income.
This post was inspired by a chat with Ward from Mister Shape.
Holy cow that’s a good post. Is anyone linking to this blog? They should be.
Haha, thanks Ben! There will be more traffic at some point, but for now it’s just the people who wander in.
This is a pretty funny post because we have gone through the first two steps in about a year and a half. Right now we are working on both stage 2 and 3.