First off, I have been developing websites since early 2010, and then I officially became a web developer in late 2012. When I say that I became a web developer, it's because that was when I saw the change from being a standard desktop software developer (look at my previous projects such as Painter Pro and Wonderword) to a web developer and got my first contract in January 2013. Since then I've come a long way.
When I first learned web development in 2010, I did everything with tables - because I didn't know much about CSS and found it a scary concept. As I learned Java and PHP in my own spare time I eventually picked up CSS as well. This was when I started to actually think maybe web development was the right place for me. People started to notice my website and my works such as BalfBar and BalfBlog and so on. Now, years later my website development has become a bigger part of my life - I take on jobs again.
I left my job at the start of October with the intention of doing freelance work for a while, at least until I get into teacher training because I know it's where my skills lie (and because I couldn't cope with the travel to my previous job).
However, a few years ago I spoke to someone who had been developing websites (whilst transferring some sites to me) for some time and took some important advice. We discussed hosting sites ourselves and he told me that clients who host with you will be easier to manage than those who host with someone else, and they can get a much better tailored service. He claimed that he had been developing websites for about 7 years and manages them all himself.
This bit of advice stuck with me for about 5 years but I didn't really act on it. Now after all those years of using different accounts for each website I built, I'm now managing all of my clients' websites. This makes both of our lives easier.
Be a good developer and host
I want to be a good web developer and host to my clients and I do this by offering them everything for so little compared with competition. My hosting and services are considerably cheaper than the competition but I currently only offer them as a single package - you can get a website created by me and I'll host it, the two are not mutually exclusive so you can no longer get a site by me and not have it hosted by me.
I offer a range of services, and maintain sites to keep them up to date with the times. I recently refurbished two of my oldest developed sites at no cost to the owner. You see, I actually enjoy this kind of thing, so doing this is a favour to me too.
To be a good host, I have a range of new things. For instance, I moved everyone on my server from PHP 5.5 to 5.6 and now to PHP 7.0 and have enabled the OP cache and so on. I have developed a bunch of reusable tools for users and I'm prepared to install other tools that users need. I've spent a lot of my personal time learning about web server maintenance and I've become really knowledgeable about it so that my clients can experience the best.
Future updates
My brother and I have been discussing a business venture that would have a significant performance improvement for all of the hosted websites at no extra cost. To be able to achieve this, however, we will need to get enough websites to host so that we don't end up paying for something that we make a loss on.
