Lucrative Business

Tonight I attended a presentation by some local businesses about a webpage for an organization who's board I serve on. I came away with two main thoughts:

1. web design is a very lucrative business
2. when you're in a business like web design that is a mystery to lots of people, you can snow them pretty easily

I know a little bit about webpages. A little bit. I was a webmaster back in the dark ages before we had programs to do it all for us - when you just had to learn basic html. Thank goodness. It's useful to have that living in my brain and I use it on a regular basis. Now I have a nifty program that makes it very easy to do web stuff, although it does expect you to have some basic understanding. Although I have not used it, I understand Nvu is a great program comparable to Dreamweaver you can use for webpage design that is a free download.

The other thing I learned about this now very lucrative web design business when I was a webmaster is that I find it mind-numbingly dull. This would be directly related to why my own webpage never gets redesigned. I can always find about a million things that sound more appealing than working on a webpage. That list would include mopping my kitchen floor and taking out the bathroom trash. And those aren't even at the bottom of the list.

However, maybe if people were paying me thousands of dollars to do it, I might suddenly find webpage design fascinating. I doubt it, though. Money seems to have little impact on how much I enjoy a particular activity. One of seven things will motivate anyone. Money is one of them, but it works for very few people - me included.

But, I digress... back to webpages... I'm very, very, very glad I know some basics. I use it almost every day and I actually enjoy that level of it. I just don't want to have a  job where I'm doing it all day every day. I feel my brain liquefying at the mere mention of it. Yuck.

It's always interesting to see how people approach a presentation like this. People break it down and "explain" in different ways. When you're talking to a room full of people, most of whom don't know much beyond the basics of email, word, etc., you can either talk specifics or generalities.

Tonight was a real lesson to me. In such a circumstance I would speak in very general terms. But, I realized tonight that when you do that, and don't tell people the different options available to them, it can look like you're hiding something. I don't think that was at all the case, but it can certainly come off that way. Something good for me to remember for the future.

Every day is a learning experience.