Is Web Design a Good Career for a Stay at Home Mom? (5 Reasons It’s Awesome)

Is web design a good career for a stay at home mom? If you’re thinking of learning about web design as a mom, welcome, welcome. I am lowkey obsessed with you already. Not in a creepy way, but definitely in a “yessssss, go girl!!” way.

Because learning design and/or code as a mom and learning how to make it your job is an awesome thing – and I’ll stand by that statement for my entire life because I LOVE being a web designer as a mom of three.

Real quick: You don’t need to code as a web designer and you can definitely get started with no-code web design. That being said, I recommend learning it when you have some time available – it’ll make your life easier. But there are certainly designers who go their whole career without dealing with code at all, so don’t feel like you HAVE to just because I say that you should. At the end of the day, I’m just a random mom on the internet. ?‍♀️

Okay, so let’s get into it.

 

Is web design a good career choice for a stay at home mom?

Long story short, yes. Web design is a highly valuable skill that you can pick up relatively quickly as long as you’re comfortable working with a computer. If you’re not as tech-savvy, it’s definitely achievable, but it might take you more time.

There are actually so many work from home jobs that are great for moms, (I wrote a list of 12 of them in this post) but I want to address moms who want to learn web design because I think that it’s something that a lot of moms tell themselves they can’t do even though they’re perfectly capable. You probably are, as well!

Disclosure: This contains affiliate links which means that I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through one of my links (at no extra cost to you.) You can read the whole affiliate disclosure here if you want to. Thanks so much for reading and supporting!

 

 

Pros of becoming a web designer as a mom

There are honestly a lot of pros of learning web design as a stay at home mom. It’s a lucrative and creative skill that you can use to help other businesses thrive. And you can run your web design business however you want, charge a decent amount of money for your work, and keep your project timelines flexible. Definitely a win-win! Here are some of my favorite parts of being a web designer.

 

1.) Get work done whenever it works best for you because of longer project timelines.

Naptime, early AM, overnight – whatever floats your boat

Flexibility and time freedom is a general upside of almost any freelance job, but web design has another level of flexibility entirely and a typical web design project can last anywhere from 1 week to 1 year depending on the scope of the project.

Web design project timelines usually take longer than other kinds of work, so you’ll have less pressure to get things done crazy quickly.

Flexibility is important for me because I have twin 1 year-olds and a 3-year-old, so almost no work gets done during the day. If I’m lucky, I will be able to respond to quick emails during the daytime. Almost everything else happens at night.

When I have projects that run for a few weeks at a time, it doesn’t matter if I don’t get work done during the day. It only matters that the work is done before the deadlines.

 

2.) It’s not a boring job

Web design is a job that ties left brain and right brain stuff together, so you’ll rarely be super bored. There are some repetitive tasks, of course, as with any kind of job, but the majority of my time is spent building things and being creative. Work isn’t something that I dread.

I do know how to code and use code often in my work, but even if you don’t code, there are technical parts of web design that will give your creative side a little break. Still, there are plenty of opportunities to be creative when designing websites.

If you’re someone who likes being creative AND doing semi-technical stuff, web design might be something you should explore as a career idea.

 

3.) It’s meaningful because you can help small businesses grow

It also feels great to be able to create something meaningful and have a finished product (a website) that helps businesses make more money. When you work with companies that you’re enthusiastic about and you believe in, it definitely helps with a sense of fulfillment because you feel like you’re doing something meaningful with your career.

At the end of the day, small and medium businesses are the backbone of our economy and they help families create a better life for themselves. If you can assist them with that, that’s so cool. Just one of the things I love about being a web designer.

 

4.) There aren’t that many downsides of web design

The downsides of a web design career are pretty much the same as any other kind of job.

If you’re a freelance web designer, you’ll sometimes have to do more marketing and sales than you’d like and you might end up running into a few difficult clients. If you don’t do freelance work, you may have to deal with a supervisor you don’t get along with or a frustratingly inefficient workspace.

The only downsides I can think of that are directly related to web design are these things:

• Sometimes, with design projects, people don’t know what they want and this can lead to a reallllyyy long revisions process. The best way to avoid this is by making sure that you only work with people who have a clear idea of what they want for their website. Speak with them thoroughly before agreeing to work with them and have some pre-qualifying questions on your inquiry form so that you can easily tell whether or not this client is ready for a custom web design project. If they’re not, you can let them know it’s not a good fit right now and give some helpful suggestions for what might work better for them (maybe using a website template until they’ve figured out a clearer idea of what they need in terms of a website.)
• Sometimes you’ll run into technical issues. Usually, between making sure that you’re using reputable tools and using Google to troubleshoot anything that pops up, you can fix it. If it’s an issue with your website, sometimes you can ask your web host’s support team to help you out.
• Some of the popular web hosts actually suck. Most of the bigger web hosting companies (GoDaddy, Bluehost, etc.) have notoriously glitchy systems, mediocre service, slow or packed servers, and they try to nickel and dime you and your clients for every little thing. And the only way to learn this, unfortunately, is to experience the suckage. These hosts have big ad budgets, good intro pricing, and lots of affiliates, so that’s why they’re so popular. You’re better off hosting with companies who don’t have a myriad of technical issues and overpriced upsells and you have lots of options to choose from. I don’t recommend GoDaddy or BlueHost. I do recommend DreamHost (You can get $50 off a DreamHost hosting plan with my link! It’s what I use.), CloudWays, Siteground, and LyricalHost. Check them all out and see which one makes the most sense for your business! 🙂

5.) Web design is a highly-valuable skill

You can absolutely provide for a family with your web design skills. Websites are a hugely valuable marketing asset for a company and you should charge value-based pricing that reflects the amount of business that your website will help your clients achieve.

You can start off by charging less for a site to build up your portfolio if you’d like to, but I don’t recommend doing free web design projects. (Those people usually aren’t ready for a website, so they won’t want to pay for web hosting or write content for their site – you need someone who is ready to invest time and money into the project.)

The average website build is somewhere between $1000-$100,000. Some are more and some are less.

I know that this is a huge range, but that’s because every web designer has a different target audience, a different amount of experience, and different deliverables. For example…

• Will you write your client’s website copy?
• Will you install Google Analytics and let them know how to use it?
• Can you implement some conversion rate optimization strategy for them?
• Do you understand search engine optimization and will you help your clients rank in Google?
• Will you set up Google my Business profiles for your clients and deal with local SEO?
• Can you help clients set up an email marketing service and integrate it into their website?
• Can you set up payment gateways, a shopping cart, and a checkout system on their site?
• Will you include help with product page setup and optimization?
• Do you have any A/B testing, website monitoring, or website security included with your packages or offered as an addon service?

There are tons of ways to add value to your web design services. As you have time to learn new skills and implement them, you can add them to your packages to increase their value – or you can offer them as optional upgrades. As a web designer, you have the option to increase your prices whenever you want, and there are so many ways that you can justify the price increase by adding a little something extra to your packages.

So, is web design a good career for a stay at home mom?

I’d say yes. Between the income potential, how flexible the projects can be, and the fact that I’m actually doing meaningful work that helps other business owners really helps me feel content with my career choice.

I have good days and bad days of course, but in terms of a career choice, I’m super happy with what I’ve chosen. Whether you decide to do web design as a freelancer/business owner or as an employee, I think that it’s a unique job in the sense that you get a chance to explore your creative side and learn new technical skills.

Do you have any questions for me about web design or how to get started? Comment below with your Q and I’ll get back to you ASAP!

 

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