Success has a lot to do with your sense of being Find out how to train yourself to make money and stay in tune with your mind, body and soul
Thank you Reddit. Thanks for all the inspiring stories that you’ve shared. It motivated me to turn my web design hobby into a career, and it has definitely paid off.
In March, the nonprofit organization that I was working for basically shut down due to a lack of funding. I left my job with no idea of what to do next. I immediately began applying for other nonprofit jobs in my area because I’ve been in the nonprofit world ever since my first job as a teenager, and I thought it wouldn’t be difficult to just find another one. Weeks went by and only a few interviews with no offer. I began feeling very depressed; I didn’t know how I was going to pay rent and my credit card bills began piling up. I was just in a very dark period of my life.
After moping around for a couple of days, listening to tons of TED Talks, and reading through entrepreneur on reddit, I thought to myself, “why am I just sitting here staring at my phone waiting for it to ring and hoping it’s an interview? I need to stop depending on others to give me opportunities, and start creating opportunities for myself.”
I’m 30 right now, and been building websites since high school. Fun fact: the first website I’ve ever built was a site dedicated solely to Roy Jones Jr. (one of my favorite boxer at the time) in 2004. Ever since then, I’ve been building websites as a hobby, and freelancing for extra cash on the side. So I became very familiar with coding (html, java, javascript, etc. all that jargon) over the years. This was something I just never pursued because I was more interested in doing impactful work in my community and all that good stuff, than sitting in front of a computer screen 8 hours a day. I thought, why not try to turn this hobby into a moneymaker to sustain myself in the meantime? So, with the relationships I’ve built in the nonprofit world, and people in my community, I built myself a website and just began reaching out to these contacts. I knew how terrible these organization’s websites were and began just throwing out feelers. I began by sending it out to a dozen or so organizations and surprisingly a handful of them got back to me with a “Yes! We’d love to have you help us redesign our website!” I was literally jumping up and down when I got these emails.
Anyways, after telling my friends and working with these orgs, word spread just within a few weeks and I was able to pick up enough projects that paid me more than a few months salary that will last me at least for the next 4 months. Hoping I can expand on that to keep this going.
Working with nonprofits and people in this industry, I knew that budgets were always tight so I made sure that they knew I would work with them with whatever budget they were comfortable with. With that approach, my pay did range from $200 to $2,000. I think this was what really lit the flame for my service. I know how much it can cost to design a website and many nonprofits don’t want to dedicate a lot of money to it, which is why a lot of their websites just don’t look that good. For me, it became less about making tons of money and more about how I can help these organizations, and not make them feel like I’ll be taking funds away from their services.
I’ll end it there. But I wrote this in hopes that it’ll also inspire others who are going through what I’ve been through. Look at yourself and see what values you can bring to others. Also, reach out to people that you know because you just never know who knows who, and who needs what. It always starts with your friends and family. And BIG THANK YOU to all you REDDIT Entrepreneurs for stories of your success, failures, and conversations; it is really what inspired me to pursue this.
I haven’t updated my website since I started it because I’ve been busy with these projects, but if you or anyone you know need web design help on a budget, you can check it out and contact me at:
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