Outsourcing.

[Iotrez]

Hi all.

With the trend of western companies to outsource their work to countries like India and China more and more, I'm wondering what the situation is in web design.

Does this happen a lot now in web design and is it likely to happen more in the future?

I'm putting alot of time and effort into learning to create professional quality websites in my spare time, so that I can eventually make money from it. But I am in the UK and I don't want to waste my time if the work is just not going to be there.

Thanks alot.

 

[LeetPCUser]

I personally think it doesn't matter where you are from as long as your prices are good and your work is efficient. I haven't seen many designers or programmers from anywhere by the states and europe yet...we'll see however.

 

[StudioWorks]

Well these companies are outsourcing to developers in India and China and etc because of their low prices.. If you aren't confortable working for these prices then it's probably not profitable for you.

SW

 

[Jonny]

More often than not, for high paying jobs, I will outsource. By handing smaller tasks off to subcontractors you can be more productive with your time.
Ideally, you should keep in contact with your subcontractors and in time build a strong relationship with them so that you can use them again and again, it leads to a more effective understanding when it comes to a new project with new needs.

My advice to you is if you want to make money from website design, only do it as a supplement to another job. You have to either be very talented or very good at marketing yourself as an individual to make it in the web designers world and work from home. I am not trying to put you off it completely, it is a very good second job to have if you ever feel like a new laptop or even a new car, but I wouldn't risk everything on it unless like I stated before you're very good.

Regards.

 

[monty]

I personally think it doesn't matter where you are from as long as your prices are good and your work is efficient. I haven't seen many designers or programmers from anywhere by the states and europe yet...we'll see however.

It really DOES matter where you're operating from. We do our business from Asia (Thailand and India) and we target mostly European startups. We get more and more requests from companies in the west who won't accept the way too high prices some firms asks for.

It's just simply a fact that production tends to move to where it's the cheapest; it always has been like that and it always will be like that. And if you're able to use this to your advantage by offering relatively cheap solutions and maintain western quality, you have yourself a nice little competive advantage.

-monty

 

[StudioWorks]

Exactly!

SW

 

[Jonny]

It's true, why do you think all plastic toys, computer chips and pretty much everything you pick up at a store is made in Thailand or China? Cheap production and high quality.

A recent example of this is Intel's relatively new Chip production factory in Vietnam. The reason they chose Vietnam was so that they up their profits by lowering costs, to catch up with AMD.