I wanted to share a little bit about myself and see if I can seek some advice from folks here as I believe you will be nothing but blunt/honest about providing advice. I graduated from school with a business degree, but because the economy was not so hot around 2010 when I graduated, I pursued the idea of opening my own business with credit cards and what not. It was a business that sold electronic items and then soon, me and my partner (who also went to business school) decided to pivot as had established a good understanding of what it takes online to sell the product. With whatever knowledge we had about web design, we utilized that and built over 5 websites back in 2011-2012 supporting our 1st business of selling products. We wanted to get out of that because we didn't have much capital to keep buying the inventory and do something that would be more profitable and perhaps something we can call our own. We thought to ourselves that "hey, we have built a few websites, and know how wordpress works, so why not build websites for a living along with implementing what we knew at business school". Long story short, I am 28, and my partner is almost the same age. We actually have great design living in a city that isn't so hot, but we have over 30 portfolio examples that are spread out in different niches and actually look good. There are interactive elements, parallax scrolling, and many genres. You name it. My partner started focusing on design and development, where as I started focusing on sales/prospecting. That is how our team has worked so far. I have hired 1 outside sales consultant who is paid hourly to find projects based off of our leads that we have generated, but that is a slow process. Right now we have a few referrals and we close a few sales per month. All together we probably close 2-4 sales per month giving up anywhere between $3k-7k depending on how we do. But we are having difficulty now. I am trying to decide if this is the route we should continue on and how successful can we be. Do we pivot again and do something else? Or should we go our own way and I get a corporate america job? I know we are not charging enough and based off of our portfolio, we can charge a lot more. But the issue is we are barely getting any projects. We have invested time in to SEO, primarily just getting google reviews and adjusting our meta title, description and such. But not more. Do I continue this crazy journey of building a business or throw in the towel and realize that wordpress will be obsolete 5 years from now, and move on to a proper 8-5 job. Please ask questions or offer advice. I am open to anything at this point.

I think there is still a HUGE market for web designers. If you stay at the top of the game! Go responsive! Coffeecup has a lot of new tools out and more on the way to help you design responsive web sites. Drawing in customers and contacts, well that's another story. Social media is a big help. Blog, facebook and twitter are a few. You just have to stay at it.

That said, here is another option.
This site is just going up and not really advertised yet. Not much content but a few things to look at.
I'm working on it, slowly ... http://graphiccash.com

Hey Cool Dude,

I would also say that web design is a very good market to be in but as gunsmoke has already mentioned it is best to stay current with trends in web design.

Personally I do not like Word Press as i just don't have the control over elements and over all design. You are also stuck using templates (I assume that's how your building now) which I hate because I like to offer my clients a truly one of a kind look. IMOH when using WP you are not really a website "Designer" and more a website "Setter upper" lol ... if that is a real word. Don't get me wrong there is a good business out there for setting up WP websites because they are one complete pain in the butt to do, that along with all the security risks involved with it. Of my 60+ clients I only have one using it and wouldn't you know... they are my most troubled clients.

I encourage you to browse through Coffeecup's software. They provide cutting edge responsive solutions in many different categories of web design. I almost use Coffeecup software exclusively since I found them, I brag so much about them people think I work for them

All that being said, I am not sure what your level of coding is but I would suggest giving Responsive Layout Maker a try. I use it on a daily basis with my business and the results are magnificent!

As for the part about acquiring customers, well that's another beast all together. Like any other business it just takes hard work, loads of social media, door knocking (to businesses) and cold calling. Once you get some traction and good reviews the word of mouth recommendations will start taking off.

My partner codes, but primarily uses WP. For site security, we offer a monthly cost and purchase 3rd party software and install for clients. We don't charge monthly maintenance cost because we train our clients how the back-end operates so they can makes changes themselves, unless they are major changes. We are more design oriented right now than development oriented. I guess we could think about bringing on a 3rd partner and who is strictly a developer, but pay is not huge right now..so he will have to start with a much lower pay at least for first half of the year or so. We do have a business plan, but it is not on papers. The business plan really is to grow. Build our portfolio as much as we can, and then we don't know right now..right now we are just trying to survive with getting clients and making the most out of every client