BetterPHP

Any tips for how to really start with web development/design as a business?

Please don't recommend me oDesk or Elance or any other site like that because to be honest, I think they're shit.
They are all packed with "hiring" jobs and if it actually is a freelance work then they refuse to pay more than $50 and I can't live with only making $50, even if I do one of them each day. Obviously it's a resource I'm going to use in the beginning when you have very few clients.

I don't have a job for another 4 months so any useful tips would be great.

Well, on oDesk, i eartn around $500 a week for around the 3 weeks I was doing it about 2 years back. If you have a good portfolio, and you can write your application in good prose, most companies will consider you.

Dont look at the companies that look for people at around 2-5 $ an hour, since they are not worth your time.

If you charge between $20 and $50 an hour, you get considered more than somebody with $5-15 an hour, since your considered to value your time more, which means you are usually better skilled. Also, do the tests on those websites.

I was in the top 10 percentile for PHP and top 20 for MySQL, so i got more jobs. IF you dont look like you know what your doing, thats when you earn nothing If you convince them that you are good at what you do, then they will hire you, and hire you well.

Good luck,

Other than that, all i can think of is teaching, writing articles for various blogs or tutorial websites that may pay you (eg. Nettuts+) or create scripts for CodeCanyon.net and sell them there.

The problem with oDesk is that I only seem to find really big projects or wordpress plugin development or something with ASP in it...

It's a tricky one ! If you have some experience you could try applying to some web design companies I guess.

Or if you want to go freelance the only option is sites like oDesk really, unless you have a way to promote yourself in some way you need to rely on their popularity.

If you are looking to go into the development side of things and are aiming to work full time at some point, I would try to build a few interesting things that show you know what you are doing and also are interesting. In other words, not a blog system (boring !) but somethign cool that would seem impressive.

In other words, I have no idea !