I don’t see it as whining either. Its a tough situation. I initially wanted to do freelance development around my area, but I found that people just want stuff for cheap. They don’t have the budgets and they don’t take things seriously. As a web developer, part of my job is to educate the client as to WHY you do things certain ways. Why you dont pay your nephews friend in high school if you are looking for a professional and scalable website.

The problem I see in my area is POOR quality of local ‘web design’ companies. ANYONE can call themselves a web designer, all they need is to take a class in HTML and get Microsoft Frontpage and they can start making money. It is people like this that don’t charge what they are worth, because they dont KNOW anything in order to properly price.

I think the ‘free’ stuff out there does hinder the perceived value of our work. I also think that about some CMS’s as well though.

Needless to say, I stopped doing freelance in this area about 2 months ago. I have a full time job that allows me to really focus on the websites and quality control/maintenance. It wasn’t worth the stress and hassle.

Time is money, and I was spending way too much time away from family, friends, and other things - and not getting paid near what the work was worth.

So, there are my ramblings for you.

Peace,
Nate

Well, I think that there will always be people who don’t see the value at your price level, and these are clients that are meant for other people.  There are clients who are a good fit for a $10/hour high school student “web designer”, clients for easy templates, and clients for custom work, and even clients for pricey custom work beyond your price level.

It’s a matter of sorting through all these folk, attracting the clients at your price level (the “right clients”), and sending the rest off to other clients. 

The challenge, of course, is to find enough of the “right clients”—-your clients—-to support yourself and your family.  This is, I think, a massive challenge no matter what.  The cost of a conventional corporate job when you want to be working from home may far outweigh the struggle and pressure, though, of the constant marketing in the early years when you work for yourself. 

There will always be people who do not value what you do, or think you’re too “high” for them.  I accept these people, and cheerfully refer them to low-cost and free resources that better fit their needs.  Then I go back to work finding people who are my right clients. 

I think Paul hit the nail on the head. Any person can understand that you just dont let anyone fix your hot water heater.

I often use the analogy of a doctor, or your car maintenance person. Would you really trust your brothers mothers uncles son to fix your car for a low rate, all because he learned about cars in high school? Would you trust someone like this to perform a critical surgery on a relative?

I know that may seem far fetched - but to most people there is no inherent danger to having their sisters nephews son do a website for $10/hr. They dont understand the underlying implications - they dont understand how the internet works. This is just a small piece of the puzzle - but Paul, I agree with you 100%!

Man… there’s the gospel of web design. That spoke my feelings out in the matter. I am happily taking on free jobs right now because I feel it is a worthwhile start, and I am happy to help out a couple contacts in non-profit land. But eventually it would be nice to stay afloat in the industry. Sometimes I don’t know if it is even going to happen. But I’m not worried, I guess. We’ll just see how it goes. I do notice that the large majority of jobs out there seem to be those ones where someone expects to get away with paying small amounts for a quick fix. I would never make it on those type of arrangements and would probably avoid them. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if it might be better to just get hired at a firm that does that service, since they know what a designer is worth. Who knows what I’ll do. I still have time to figure it out.