To create a marketing plan for your web design business, you first need to decide what you’ll be offering. What core service offerings will be available?

When I started my web design business I was too optimistic. I thought I could offer everything. I thought that offering a variety of services would bring in more clients. So my original site offered graphic design, web design, web maintenance, internet research, desktop publishing, SEO, logo design, photography, press releases, and publicity planning. I’m really surprised I didn’t include content writing on that list!

Well, experience showed me that (1) web design clients are not hard to get, and (2) I can’t do everything. What I ended up doing was graphic design, web maintenance, and web design, with some SEO and content writing work tossed in on the side.

My recommendation for one-person home-based web design business owners, is to specialize in just a few things. Be the expert. Train yourself well and then take on only the jobs you’d be best at. Yes, you’ll have to prepare yourself to turn some people down. In particular, if it seems the client wants you to do something you’re unfamiliar or uncomfortable with, you can save yourself a lot of stress by saying NO. You’ll find that you earn more and work with a happier state of mind when you choose your projects wisely and turn away the rest.

Of course if you’re starting a large web design firm that will hire specialists in logo design, SEO, graphic design, content writing, and more, you can advertise and get jobs in all those categories. But for the one-person business, it would be a bit too much.

So evaluate your talents and decide exactly what your core service offerings will be. Here are a few examples:

Example 1 - Graphic Designer: If you’re an outstanding artist you might want to advertise your images to web design business owners. Let them know your artistic talents are available for their web design projects. They in turn will tell their customers that these amazing graphics are available (for a greater price) and you’ll probably find you have more work than you can reasonably deal with.

Example 2 - PHP specialist: If you know how to code PHP you’re bound to be in demand. You can offer your talents to web designers and to the public, with your PHP web design website. You might be able to make a business doing PHP only without dealing with the web design or graphics end of the business by working with a few talented web designers who will sub-contract work to you.

Example 3 - Flash specialist: If you’re good at creating Flash sites, this is a specialty that could be turned into a business, again without delving into the intricacies of design, SEO, and content writing.

Example 4 - HTML/XHTML/CSS specialist: If you’re like me, and are basically good at HTML, XHTML, and CSS, then make those your core products. If your customers ask you to include SEO and content writing skills in a job, you can add these to your contract if you feel competent to complete the tasks well.

Example 5 - CMS specialist: Some web designers specialize in setting up content management systems (CMS) and installing themes. You might advertise WordPress setup, Drupal setup, or whatever you’re really good at.

Whatever else you decide, remember never to offer to do something you are not sufficiently trained to do. You need to be totally confident in your skills. Make sure, before you start your business, to have your education (or self-education) complete and UP TO DATE. Well, the truth is, your web design education is never totally complete, because you’re always going to be acquiring new skills. The thing I’m trying to get at here is that you should be entirely competent to do whatever it is you’re offering as a core service.

Once you know what your specific core service offerings will be, you’ll be ready for part two of my series on creating a marketing plan for your web design business. It will be about how your services will benefit your clients. (To be posted soon.)

Anyone who starts a WordPress blog will soon discover that comment spam is a huge problem. The only effective way to deal with it, I’ve found, is to check blogs daily. I have a collection of blogs; my future income is to be based on blogging and content writing. I’ve found a great FireFox add-on, Morning Coffee, that allows me to open the dashboards of all my blogs with one click. I’ve also included other sites such as message boards and social media sites I like to check daily.

Once into my collection of Morning Coffee sites, I quickly check all blog comments, delete comment spam, decide which blogs I need to write posts on, and of course I check the public front page before I go to make sure everything looks copasetic. Daily checks of blogs and deletions of spam have made my blogs a joy to work with. Blogs, frequently updated, on the front pages of sites, are a great way to excel in search engine optimization efforts.

We all need the inspiration of new web design ideas from time to time.

If you’re planning a career as a web designer you should start as soon as possible to collect your favorite designs to keep as inspiration. You could start a web design idea gallery as the owners of the following sites did, or just bookmark all the inspiring, beautiful, amazing sites you come across.

Here are twenty web design idea resources to inspire your creativity.

Patrick Haney has collected over 400 web design ideas on his Flickr account: Web Design Inspiration.

A Site A Day intends to give web designers one new inspirational site building idea daily:

Web Creme collects screen shots of inspiring web design ideas:

Web Design File has more than 650 inspirational web design ideas waiting for your perusal:

Only the best: Inspiration King focuses on quality over quantity:

Unmatched Style is a community blog acknowledging designs using CSS and web standards:

At CSS Clip you can submit your CSS site to the gallery and compete with other great web design artists of the internet:

Best Web Gallery defines quality design as “Visual + Technical + Creativity”:

The Best Designs features quality CSS and flash websites:

You’ll find plenty of web design ideas and inspiration at CSSremix:

I Love Blog Design specializes only in (guess what?) …blogs!

The CSS Zen Garden is perhaps one of the most inspiring places on the web:

CSS Mania! Be inspired!

CSS Revue isn’t in English but you don’t need to understand the language to appreciate the beautiful web design ideas.

Design Idol features beautiful CSS and flash sites:

MotionSpire provides a gallery for impressive 3D, 2D and multi-media:

Frequent updates: CSS Envy.

FantastiCSS - a gallery of fantastic CSS web design:

We Love WP - showcasing WordPress sites:

Inspiration Folder requests membership…

I’ve started a new forum, Write Web Now. It is where I’ll be helping writers who are setting up websites. I’m not going to make sites for them but will help them learn to do it themselves.

This has grown out of my initial desire to help writers create impressive, professional looking websites. Too often I’ve seen writers with sites that don’t show them off in the best way. I’ve even seen sites of professional, paid, successful novelists that were less than satisfactory. Since I am a writer too, I really want to help others have the sites they need. It seems that though writers are good at writing, many are panicked at the thought of learning a little HTML. I’m trying to demystify it and make it seem easier to learn, because HTML really is easy when you learn to use only one or two tags at at time.

If you’re a writer, or blogger (for bloggers ARE writers)… you’re welcome to join us at Write Web Now.