Forum Moderators: phranque
I think it is time to have a serious discussion about the impact of designers undercutting and giving away their work for free, and the implications this practice has on our profession.
I'm gonna start with an observation; there seems to be alot of people trolling the boards that I frequent in search of people willing to work for free. Why are they fishing there? Because there is a pretty good chance they'll find someone to do it.
"So what" you may be saying. Well the reason this concerns me is the plain and simple fact that everytime this happens, the value of legitimate "professional" work is severely diminished. To quote a book I have read recently, " the middle of the market mostly goes away. Clients who want the best, seek out established, professional firms, while clients who are less discerning tend to put savings ahead of quality." There is no cheaper way to do that than free. I happen to be firmly implanted in the middle that is dropping out; not good enough to design for the worlds top firms, and needing to earn a living, so that bars me from working on the cheap. The clients I pursue are those who would be in no position to hire the nations top firms, but are increasingly having a hard time justifying paying for a week of my salary when they can (use templates) or worse yet, find some young bloke who really thinks giving his services away is gonna help himself professionaly in the long run. It is easy to point out what stinks about templates... not so easy to convince them that that free design groupy undercutting my fee by, well not even charging a fee, is not a good way to go.
I understand the need to gain experience. All I ask is that the pro bono work be confined to charities, non profit organisations, and personal web sites.
To the layman client, the web is a not well understood place. It is very hard to make them understand the amount of work that goes into a well developed web site. And in there opinion, if Mr. X is doing a weeks worth of work for next to free, what the hell makes me so special that I can get a weeks wages out of a site when we are delivering nearly the same product.
I can hardly blame the client:
If gasoline cost $3.00 per gallon where I normally do my business, and the station across the street is selling theirs at $.10 per gallon. I know where I am filling up tonight.
I guess the point of this thread is to outline all of the potential dangers of this practice, and maybe be able to use the thread when some unsuspecting noob jumps on an offer for slave labor, we have somewhere to direct them.
Hope to hear what you all think.
Thanks though, that cracked me up and lightened my mood a bit. Thanks.
Well, duh... I need to do an e-com site before I can do an e-com site? Is one enough?
Adljkdfal! I'm getting worked up. Time for beer.
It's a pic of me! ;)
I do Windows too for fried chicken.
Sorry to go off topic here.
Macguru, seriously? I don't believe you. ;)
I can't tell more, self promotion is not allowed here. ;)
[edited by: Macguru at 1:02 am (utc) on June 13, 2002]
If you want to work for free, sticky me and I will get you working ASAP.
[edited by: Lisa at 1:20 am (utc) on June 13, 2002]
If you are currently stressing over your portfolio, what does it take to make a fake company up
with products A, B, C -> nothing; show your talents via dummie sites. We are in the creative field right ?
If you got talent and good sales technic, not having real sites as your portfolio will not hamper
your attempts to get contracts. If you are inexperienced, give a good price but not free.
Giving our services away for free will hurt our industry and affect the upcoming developers,
even the ones that think they are actually benefiting from giving there services away.
We need an on-line Mafia to regulate this issue.
We need an online Mafia to break some knees.
Here's one that worked recently:
I am #1 for "widgets" on WidgetHoo!
By definition, everyone else is not.
The clients I pursue are ... increasingly having a hard time justifying paying for a week of my salary when they can ... find some young bloke who really thinks giving his services away is gonna help himself professionaly in the long run.
sometimes it can pay very well to give services away free in order to build a portfolio. that's how i started and i'm now able to charge a fair bit for my work. i currently have a 3 month lead time for starting any new work, and i've even got a contract to start in october (the client won't be ready until then and has chosen to pay for my services rather than use cheaper (or free) companies)).
the best way to learn anything is to actually do it. web designers / developers don't just need to learn how to build websites - they need to learn everything that goes with it such as how long a small job will really take, or how to deal with clients (especially awkward ones), or how to manage your time effectively, or what the most suitable facilities are for a website and so on. you can't learn these things by building demo sites to stick on your portfolio. if you can't get paid work due to lack of experience, do some free work.
once you have some real sites on your portfolio, the enquiries start coming in and then you can start charging sensible prices and being able to fully justify them.
just as there are people out there that refuse to pay anyone anything to build a site, there are people out there willing to pay good money, but they want real proof that you can do the work they need. if you can't prove it with real sites, another company will get the job.
the last site i did for free was a small ecommerce site. the original was built in frontpage with frames and was so poor that the although the site had a lot of traffic from advertising, the owner was only making 3 or 4 sales a month. navigation of the site was almost impossible. i did a very quick rebuild using a very simple template and CSS. the day after the new site went online, the owner was making 3 or 4 sales a day.
the site has gone from strength to strength, is well ranked in the search engines, and the owner is now making a living from it. the site owner has accepted he is useless at building websites and that he should employ me and concentrate on building his own business. he is impressed with my work, and he now pays me to maintain and update the site. he has also recommended me to other people, and i've had 3 contracts through him as a result. i've also had a contract from someone that liked the site and clicked through to my own site from the links i placed on his site. i'm confident that plenty more will come.
in my opinion, it's not those people that do free work that are causing the problems, it's the lack of regulation in the web design / development industry. anyone armed with a copy of frontpage can build their own site and set themselves up as a web designer / developer. some people are good at one thing but know nothing about the many other technologies. their clients are often getting a raw deal by not having the most appropriate facilities on their site.
as an example, a retailer might want for a website, but has no knowledge or understanding of ecommerce or web databases. john doe offers a competitive price for a website and the shopkeeper signs the contract. the bad news is that john doe doesn't know anything about ecommerce or databases either, so the shopkeeper only gets a few HTML pages and no means of selling his vast range of goods. had he chosen another company, he could be making thousands of $ in online sales for very little extra money. but as he doesn't know this, the retailer is happy with what he's got and sure as hell isn't going to pay any more than he has done already.
if we had some form of regulation in the web design / development industry, potential clients would be able to make properly informed choices about whether they should have ecommerce facilities or databases and so on, and which designer / developer to choose.
those web designers / developers that don't have a full range of skills or knowledge would be able to undertake training and gain accreditation and then take on bigger jobs. the cowboys with their copies of frontpage and their lack of willingness to commit to improving or expanding their skills would be forced to either give up or to take up web design / development seriously and learn new skills.
with regulation, retailers get a good deal, web designers / developers get a good deal and cowboys are out.
IMHO people who survive in the business are those that have good business skills over and above design or programming skills.
it is an individual business decision to do work for free or at a reduced rate ... anyway it is always better to be working than not, i like to look at my overall annual earnings rather than the daily position (which is up and down)
also there are no rules in business, fair competition doesn't come into it, infact most of us here are trying to give either ourselves or our clients an "unfair" advantage.
sorry i beg to differ.
all regulation does is create educational institutes and exams for people to pass - fortunately there are loads of graduates who can build great websites totally upto date with the latest technology... but with no view to getting customers, lately i'm getting clients with great sites but no traffic, they want someone to get them traffic, not java applets, news feeds, blah blah i'm very happy.
cowboys are never out whatever you do, cowboys are good, they help to teach people to employ someone who knows what they are doing, once you've been burnt you look more closely the next time.
>>>>their clients are often getting a raw deal by not having the most appropriate facilities on their site.
then it is the client's fault for not researching what they want and finding out a bit about websites and what is possible first, do you buy a new car without reading reviews or going for a few test drives? do you buy a house without getting a surveyor to look it over? do you buy a washing machine without assessing the manufacturer's reputation?
It is a mad chicken and egg thing, always has been. How do you convince someone to give you work without any commercial experience, it is difficult if you want decent money.
Showcase sites, good in theory, but you need to be able to interact with all sorts of people to get the job done in the real world. The sorts of people who want the sort of things that you know are crap. You have to have built up experience to do these sorts of things. And there it is again. Commercial experience!
IMHO
By the way Crazy_Fool - I aint getting on no plane sucka (so dont make me drink milk).
Doing Ma & Pops doesn't do it for me, sure they are nice and all but for the portfolio they stay kinda empty couz the sites really dont offer much.
