I guess this should be made clear in the very beginning before the start of the project that if the requirements increase during the course of the project which would involve more than the specified no. of hours, the designer or developer should be paid more.

Designing your own sites and promoting them doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to earn more money. Earning money from a site involves a lot more effort than just building it and making it available online.

Most of my clients want web design, web development, search engine optimization and search engine marketing to drive traffic and create leads and sales. Just part of the whole package.

Long Live Web design.

if web designer then {
*insert stereotype here*
PLUS some ‘new’ thinking of
doing everything at the “f”lick of his left
mouse button. }
else if entreprenuer {
*insert stereotype here*
have your own myspace or nothing else.
a 1.6 billion youtube or mytube or anybodystube
would also do fine.
}
else if dude {
*insert stereotype here* (never ever
forget te stereotype).
watch ‘the big lebowski’ over n over.
go bowling. shoot your friend.
}

what’s wrong with having no hard and fast rules? because there aint any rules. period. how about an enterprising web designer who is a millionaire? how about a businessman who hires web designers skilled to the hilt, and still barely makes it through the month? anything is possible. It is a matter of choice. You can stick to stereotypes for all the ease in decision that they provide, or you can break-some and go live.
Hmmm…

Put simply, there are more potential and actual businesses out there already that need the services of a good web-builder than there are “grest” stand-alone money making ideas floating around in the average developers head.

Unless you have the next MySpace ($550m exit sale in 18 months) its probably best to use your web-building skills to realise some other peoples ideas until you do.

Why bother marketing your knowledge? Why bother building a good site for other people when you can build it for yourself and take 100% of the profit? Not only do you enjoy being your own boss, but you also reap all the rewards for your work.

Business people do business with business people whether they look cool or not but it’s human nature to be more receptive to your preconcived notions on what a busisness man looks like.

Continuous development of self is another tool stay ahead of the game do not pigeon hole yourself if you need more programming education go and get it. If you need more graphics knowledge find a way to expand on what you have. The only barrier between you and your next big client is your view of yourself and what your skills are worth. If someone doesn’t want to pay for the full monty give ‘em as much as you think they paid for. Wet a persons appitite if they see the potential they will go for it regardless of their previous estimation.

Finally ask for help if your only companions are pride,arrogance and ego then make room for their cousins poverty, misery and depression.

It’s also about after-market services. A lot of our work comes from training/consultation and building a relationship where you hand-hold a client throughout their on-line transition. Not only do you get continued revenue from support but you’re first in-line whenever any further development work needs to be done.

A lot of younger startups also seem to forget that _all_ the time that you spend on a clients project should be chargeable. If you have a large project and you need to spend a week just getting a detailed spec put together, make sure the client is paying for that - treat it as a seperate job from the actual development and quote/invoice accordingly.