Need Some Advice

PHP
1

Not very sure if this forum is the right place to be posting this, but I will greatly appreciate it if someone out there could help.

I bought the Web Design Business Kit package a few months ago. I haven’t had much time to go through the whole material. Right now I have a decent full-time (37.5 hours a week) Web Development job. But I am looking to do some stuff on the side. Looking at all the work involved in starting one’s own web-development business, I am thinking of just doing contract work via websites like Elance and [URL=“https://www.odesk.com”]https://www.odesk.com. I haven’t really done much contract work before so I am trying to polish up my resume, linkedIn profile and the likes to make myself marketable. The main problem I have right now is that most of the Web Apps I work on at my job are Intranet applications and I do not really have a portfolio of work I can present to prospective clients. Can anybody give me neat ideas on web apps that one can build that would look good in one’s portfolio (I can build the apps, I just need good ideas of what one can build that will look good in one’s portfolio as a contractor). The kinds of Apps I develop at work are feature rich but do not require a really fancy UI (which is what I believe is what most people will be impressed with).

I am a PHP developer (Zend Certified Engineer - PHP 5) , proficient in javascript (JQuery is my best js framework), css, able to adhere to the xhtml 1 strict standard and also knowledgeable about accessibility and SEO techniques in web-development.

Thanks!

2

If you’re going to spend time writing something, don’t do it just for your portfolio, make something that can potentially generate revenue for you, or something that solves a problem you have.

If you’re hoping for someone to pay you to build the next where is some income-generating application, what’s stopping you from building yourself and keeping all the money instead of just an up-front payment?

3

I agree with Dan. Do something that you enjoy, or will solve a problem. Not only will it benefit you and other people, but you’ll learn a lot too. That kind of stuff stands out in a portfolio.

I created a web service that now has over 10,000 members because I was too lazy to keep doing the work myself, so I built a service that lets everybody else do it for me. Not only did I win, but they did too. :slight_smile:

4

Thanks for the replies everybody.