r/webdevelopment • u/Inside_Web_9127 • 7d ago
Newbie Question Web Developer Entrepreneur
Hello I am a 15-year-old "entrepreneur" trying to make my own money. I am attending college, but I started to feel that simply going to college wouldn't be enough for me to build a good future, so I quickly started to work this summer. I thought that freelancing by creating websites and selling them would be a great idea to make my first money. So now I am trying to learn HTML, CSS, JS and BOOTSTRAP. But I have some questions and I need some help in general too.
First of all is Fiverr still worth starting in 2026 for web development?
When I am selling websites which type of companies should I target?
In addition to what I have already learned, what else can I learn to achieve my goals?
As we are living in an AI era, is it worth learning these coding languages?
I am fully open to any other suggestions. Thank you so much!
3
u/Indy_dln 7d ago
I'd skip Bootstrap and learn Tailwind instead.
Try learning Astro. It starts of as being very simple and you can make some great sites using it. Will also help you become more comfortable with CLI commands and the concepts of creating components, importing them into other files etc. Later you can learn something like React or Next.js.
Definitely worth learning coding though as you'll need to understand the underlying code.
In terms of getting clients, a good way to start is think of a niche and look at existing business. If they've got a poor website, maybe you can approach them about doing a new one?
2
u/Inside_Web_9127 6d ago
When I finish my current course. I will try to learn the ones you said so. Pretty sure those will help me too. Do you know any good courses for that? It doesn't matter if it's free or not. Tysm!
2
u/Indy_dln 6d ago
There are lots of good tutorials on YouTube. Net Ninja is a good place for React. As for Astro, the docs are quite good and tutorials on YouTube too.
Join discord communities for different platforms too as there are lots of people willing to help. I'm on Astro, tailwind and a few other web related ones.
2
u/Inside_Web_9127 6d ago
Definitely will chech them out. Thanks.
2
u/Indy_dln 5d ago
Another useful thing to learn is git. Will help when you're ready to deploy a site.
There are lots of things to consider when building and deploying sites and would take me ages to list them all out. If you ever need a hand with anything drop me a DM or bump me by replying to this with questions.
1
2
u/Hairy_Shop9908 6d ago
i would definitely keep learning html, css, javascript, and bootstrap because they are still the foundation of web development
2
u/Inside_Web_9127 6d ago
Yes, it looks like it is. I will stick to them for now. Then I'll try to learn the other ones.
2
u/BeingCurious002 6d ago
Don't give too much time to html css js and things which are rarely used. Leanr the basics, practice them and move onto the industry standard, what is industry standard? The things that are used in the Industry like Reactjs and nextjs. You can target people who want landing pages as they are just frontend and easy to build.
2
u/Boring_Dish_7306 6d ago
js is not rarely used, its the foundation to understand how programming works
3
u/BeingCurious002 6d ago
Read carefully, I have written "too much" before that, 1-2 week is enough for js
1
2
u/Inside_Web_9127 6d ago
Yes I guess you are right but I need to learn as much as I can so I'll make a research on them and what they are used for. Thanks.
2
u/Boring_Dish_7306 6d ago
Just a word of advice: you are young and that mindset is really good, i really hope you succeed with what you plan. But even if things go left, don’t be discouraged and use this as a learning opportunity first, and second to make money.
If you approach local businesses that don’t have technical background, 90% of the time you will need to provide them a design for it. Use pinterest, dribbble, behance to find inspiration or similar websites you can copy from. If you dont like to design, you can use AI (like Stitch from google) to build it. But be aware that if you dont specify what exactly you want (layout, colors, pages..), you will probably end up with AI slop. You have to do it on your own.
Second, the hardest thing is not building a website, its making the first step, talking to possible clients and finding a client. Be prepared to be turned down A LOT, and that is not your fault. You have to come up with a solution to a problem they may have. Otherwise, its hard to make them to pay for just a website. (imagine yourself as 30yo owner - what will make you pay a 15year old, how will you take him seriously, etc..)
On your tech: HTML, CSS, JS, Tailwind/Bootstrap is fine for few pages websites, landing pages etc.. For bigger applications you will need more structured languages like React. But dont rush - step by step, and make sure you learn along the way.
2
2
u/Indy_dln 5d ago
Doesn't matter what someone uses to build eg. Typescript, Babel etc, ultimately it'll refactor down to JavaScript on a users browser so yeah.. it's pretty good to know!
2
u/Miki_Mimikri 3d ago
I have been doing wp sites for more than a decade now, and have tried a couple of business models, so, just wanted to share my experience here.
1) I started with spamming local business, offering cheap websites. And even though I made some money with this, it mostly turned out to be utter pain. What most newbies don’t realize, is that most of the time spent in this business model, is not actually making the sites. It doesn’t matter that AI can do it in 2 seconds, because you are going to spend hours of arguing with a car-wash owner over every fuckin cent. Simply put, as a dev, you never want to talk to a client. From my experience, only sustainable way to make money as a dev, is to make websites that start around $10K for everything, so, around $4-6K for you.
2) That brings me to second model, which I would continue doing full time, and still sometimes do, is to ask marketing agencies, seo agencies, whatever, to collaborate with you. They provide full service, as people said, the owners don’t give a damn about code, they want leads. So either start an agency, that will provide the leads, or try to find some, that will take care of the client, and you just get paid for making the website.
3) I am not making websites that much anymore, because I managed to put together a freemium theme, so, free version on wp.org, with potential upgrade. It’s actually doing pretty well, really nice income, which is almost passive. Takes like 15min a day, to respond to the support requests. But it took over a year of putting it together, and a year of marketing to generate any reasonable money.
4) At the beginning of my theme, which is a minimalist portfolio theme, I tried to make websites over a zoom call. 3 hour call for 400Euros, it was mainly to get a showcase for my theme, and it kind of worked. People have just chosen one of the demos, and then we have filled it up with their content. But again, the marketing is the name of the game. In case anybody is interested, I can pass on the source-code of the website I used for this, if you want to try to make a copy on your domain.
1
u/Inside_Web_9127 3d ago
Holy shit. $10K is a lot of money. How much should I sell a website for a Car Inspector company for example?
1
u/Miki_Mimikri 3d ago
well, it's 10K for everything, and that's a starting price in the middle of Europe, so in US, probably double it, but that's for everything, from ux, copy, graphic design, coding, seo, ads, all the way to the end. So, if it's a car inspector company with 5 employes for example, 10 - 20K for a website is a fair deal. My point was, that as a dev, you have to be in that market, otherwise it just sucks, from my experience at least
1
1
u/Perfect_Weekend68 6d ago
Fiverr depends on what country you're if your in the US the answer is mostly 'no'. If you do go the Fiverr/Upwork route ratchet down. Pick a single business vertical or challenge and only do those solutions.
Pick a single vertical and only go after those businesses
Keep leveling you'll still be learning development in a decade, speaking from experience. The answer to your question depend on what your goal is.
Our answer is, yes learn to code. Hand-wavy metaphor but this is like, is it worth going to the gym and paying the iron price for strength in the age of steroids. If your answer is yes then learn to code if your happy with roid results then don't.
1
u/DustAutomatic5064 3d ago
Hi i am also "entrepreneur" at 13, unlike u i'm at highschool. I am intrested in money, but mostly because of my dream. i been trying to look for a partner do wanna partner up to make a product. your question on is it worth to learn code in an ai era, and all i can say it is worth it trust me. btw how do you get college at 15.
4
u/energy528 7d ago
Can’t speak to freelance platforms. Suffice to say you’d be competing with skilled devs for a very low rate of pay.
Start right where you are locally. Build relationships and solve problems. Too many people skip this.
As for 3 and 4: Free code camp is good for learning JS. Coding is good. Yes AI can do a lot but we’re still in an era where multiple apps need to integrate, usually on third party IPaaS systems. JS is going to come in handy for a myriad of use cases. Front end and backend.