advise on starting up a web-development company
mechanical_fish: You don't need to buy server hardware: Use something like Slicehost. You don't need to run an ad campaign.The way to get a customer interested in a long-term relationship is to do a tiny short-term project for them, and do it well. Web sites are like engines for generating work. They will have more work for you sooner or later.Don't compete on price unless you absolutely have to. That's a sucker bet. Your pricing sends a signal. Charging $10 tells me that you're either absolutely desperate, that you're located someplace very far away from my time zone -- possibly an uncharted backwater with pigeon-based internet connections and a really low cost of living -- that you're a student who has almost no time to spare and no business experience, or that you are such a neophyte that you can't be trusted to touch my website without breaking it. Possibly all four.Undercharging your competitors will bring you business, all right -- you'll get deluged by offers from the kind of delusional people who think that Youtube should cost a couple thousand dollars to design and build. If you hate bottom-feeders, why are you aiming at the bottom of the market? Learn enough skills to justify a higher rate, and sell your quality, not your low cost.Yes, if you charge $40 an hour or more (top developers with experience charge rather more than that) you'll have to actually convince people that you know what you're doing. To do that, you let them sign you up for a very tiny project that only takes 1 hour, then demonstrate competence on that. And you build a portfolio. Setting up a single website doesn't take long. You should build some site for yourself right away just to demonstrate that you know the basics -- or as a way to learn the basics.Read: http://eikonoklastes.org/articles/2007/09/26/how-i-can-charg...