Designing websites is one of the most eclectic methods of making money. How to make money designing websites has no simple answer, because it has many answers. No one answer is better than the other, necessarily, as it’s up to the designer themselves. The only key thing that all designers need before they can make any money is knowing how to do it.

One method for making money is to work for a design company. Some companies specialize in designing websites and hire various web designers for that purpose. A lot of these companies will have a posting for “web masters” somewhere.

You could be employed by a company that has contracts to design websites for other companies. The work is more stable, as you’re designing other websites, not just one. And the work comes from contracts you aren’t responsible for.

There’s also the option of self-employment. This would mean you have to put your name out there. It helps to have a logo, business cards, your own website, portfolio, or some combination of the above.

Having a logo or a signature or some sort of mark on a website is a very important thing for the self-employed designer. This mark will show up on every website that you design. The more you design, the more often your logo/signature shows up, the more people see it.

If your name is out there and people can find you, it’ll be easier to get contracts. The more contracts you have, of course, the more money you’ll make. Overall, the best way to get contracts is to have satisfied customers, so it’s a meticulous route to take.

If you’re looking for the lazier route of money-making, it’s in advertising. All you’ll have to do is make a website that people will likely see and you can put advertising space on it. You’ll get a certain amount of money based on the popularity of your site. The only problem is that it can be boring.

And the final method comes from designing a website to sell a product, be it your own or someone else’s. By selling your own, you make money based on the popularity of your website (which means more consumers). By selling someone else’s product, you can request a commission.

Variety certainly is the spice of life, and designers will always have that. It’s an easy profession to get into and not hard to get good at. The methods for how to make money designing websites, themselves, may be better or worse depending on what you’re willing to do or what you want to get out of it, but any method can work. It all comes down to each person’s individual drive.

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If you have ever wanted to build your own website, you might not even know where to start. If you’ve done the research and you’re looking for the simplest program for regular users, it’s likely that you’ve heard of Adobe Dreamweaver. This is one of the simplest web design programs to use, and the fact that it includes an HTML editor just makes it that much more useful. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking to create a website for fun or for business. There’s something for everyone in Adobe Dreamweaver, but before you get stuck into design, you need to learn how to use the program properly.

There are so many different books and tutorials out there offering Adobe Dreamweaver training, but you might not know how to choose the right one. First of all, if you want learning the program to be as simple as using it is, you’ll need to leave the books on the shelf.

Reading is great for other things, but when it comes to learning web design, having that hands-on experience can make or break your success in using the program. Just like children, who learn the alphabet much more quickly by seeing it and writing it, our brains are wired to learn things through example and by being shown. It’s human nature for us prefer “show me” rather than “tell me” when it comes to learning.

With computers, hands-on practice is essential to your understanding of everything you learn. If you can’t see the computer screen, you won’t know the difference between the pointer and the cursor, except that one is shaped like an arrow and the other is a blinking line. It’s all essentially common sense. If you use training software to learn Adobe Dreamweaver, your brain will get to observe how the program works, and duplicate it better. If you just read a book, your brain will likely get stuck between the execution and information stages and this is because it hasn’t seen the program in use before.

Adobe Dreamweaver makes website building extremely easy for just about anyone. Taking the time to invest in training software and tutorials that can show you how to succeed in web development with Dreamweaver will make learning the program just as simple as using it can be. It doesn’t matter if you’re already a web designer, or if you just want to build a basic website. You can learn Adobe Dreamweaver much more easily if you take the time to get involved in a hands-on training method.

The author is a trainer and developer with TrainingCompany.Com, an independent computer training company offering Adobe Dreamweaver Classes at their central London training centre.

CSS enhancements

Spry is Dreamweaver’s Ajax solution which uses JavaScript and CSS to add sophisticated interactivity to your web pages. Dreamweaver CS4 includes some useful additions to its existing range of Spry widgets. For example, the Spry Tooltip widget allows you to create a tooltip which will appear when the mouse is placed over the specified text or object. Since the tooltip is inside a DIV element, this offers tremendous flexibility as to the appearance of the tooltip. For example, it could include an image or a Flash movie.

In Dreamweaver CS4, the Property Inspector contains buttons which allow you to switch between HTML and CSS options. When working in the CSS options, you can now target a specific CSS rule before choosing an attribute or, if necessary, create a new rule.

Additions to Dreamweaver’s Spry Widgets

Spry is Dreamweaver’s Ajax solution which uses JavaScript and CSS to add sophisticated interactivity to your web pages. Dreamweaver CS4 includes some useful additions to its existing range of Spry widgets. The Spry Validation Password widget allows you to specify the minimum and maximum number of characters, numbers, uppercase and special characters which can be included in the password entered. The Spry Validation Confirm widget checks that the entries in two fields are identical and displays a customizable error is they are not. This makes it ideal for creating “Password/Confirm Password” or “Email/Confirm Email” functionality.

Photoshop images are can be inserted using the same techniques as inserting any other image file: Insert – Image; dragging from the Files panel; dragging from the Assets panel; or using the Insert toolbar. A Photoshop-style Optimise window automatically appears and you can choose the settings appropriate for that particular image usually GIF, JPEG or PNG.

Inserting Photoshop Smart Objects

HTML is a notoriously sparse environment which relies on files created with other technologies to add functionality to web pages. Typical examples of related files are server-side includes, CSS, JavaScript and XML. Dreamweaver now includes a feature called “Related Files” which enables you to edit the content of such files, without having to open them separately, and to instantly see the effect of your changes on the main file.

Whenever you open a file which contains linked files, Dreamweaver displays each of the linked files in the Related Files Bar. To access a related file just click on its name. If you make any changes to a related file and asterisk appears next to its name in the Related Files Bar to remind you to save your changes. When you do, the impact of the changes is immediately visible in the main file.

Once the image has been imported, an icon is displayed in the upper left of the image indicating that it is a smart object. Also, in the Property Inspector, the location of the original PSD file is shown in a box marked “Original”.

The fact that the image is a smart object means that if we resize it in Dreamweaver, it will automatically be re-optimised and a new version of the image will be generated with the new dimensions. (In previous versions, resizing an image would mean that the browser was responsible for resizing leading to poor image quality.

Photoshop images are can be inserted using the same techniques as inserting any other image file: Insert – Image; dragging from the Files panel; dragging from the Assets panel; or using the Insert toolbar. A Photoshop-style Optimise window automatically appears and you can choose the settings appropriate for that particular image usually GIF, JPEG or PNG.

The Property Inspector can be used to change the attributes of any element you select on an HTML page. In previous versions of Dreamweaver, changing the attributes of highlighted text would cause the program to create CSS classes with names like “Style1″, “Style2″, etc. in the head area of the current page. This random creation of styles was often responsible for getting new web developers into bad habits.

In Dreamweaver CS4, the Property Inspector contains buttons which allow you to switch between HTML and CSS options. When working in the CSS options, you can now target a specific CSS rule before choosing an attribute or, if necessary, create a new rule.

The author is a training consultant with TrainingCompany.Com, a UK IT training company offering Adobe Dreamweaver training courses at their central London training centre.