Building websites is not beyond your capabilities. It’s so easy, even a child can do it. (…and they do!)

If you come from a generation previous to “generation x” you’ll be happy to know that the youth culture love giving stuff away for free online. With sites like W3schools.com and the hundreds of free tutorials available online, learning to write or edit html couldn’t be easier.

Even better that learning how to do it for free, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of websites that give free layouts (if you didn’t take the time to learn CSS for free).

Can it get any better than free education and free tools to start with?

Sure it can…with open source code.

If you don’t want to learn JavaScript and/or PHP (or any one of the other scripting languages, you can simply use an open source script for your customer’s website.

You should follow the rules and make sure that you read and comply with the licensing agreement for whatever you decide to use. Some open source scripts are only free for non-commercial use. Most often, you’ll find that you have to leave their link in the footer of the page or just tell your customer that what you’re using is free online, and you only charge a fee for your time and effort setting it up.

I learned to build websites (and use open source code…like this blog) in an afternoon. I put an ad out in the local paper for $300 for a month and got 6 jobs at an average of $250 each. That one ad and a few hours of my time netted me $1,200.00 after expenses.

$1,200.00 isn’t bad for what you can learn in an afternoon. I’m sure that with more advertising you could do much better than I did. Give it a try!

- John