Hi there, I don't live on the US or Europe (Latin America). Being a webmaster and site builder (with traffic and ROI) was at first something misunderstood, then expensive. Now it's "anyone can do it", and it's difficult to find business opportunities. The term "webmaster" is rare to be seen, instead "community manager" and facebook pages took the market.
Far from a rant: the market seems sick. Too many "wordpress" developers (nothing against it, I've built stuff on it too) but it's the mainstream idea that anyone can do it, domain name + free template = success. It's difficult to argue and compete, even if you can build something real that last and works, it's difficult because you see people playing dirty and lie pretty well. You can tell the clients the truth, what works but the other parties sell sugar water that it's not even water. And when one is asked to explain, they take it as if you have something against the other people.
That stage it's... ok, still. The problem is how tainted the market is with clients who were ripped off and now don't believe in anything, instead the way even cheaper prices and impossible results, and some even ask for results first and then, they talk about paying. I've talked with people in some companies working this way: they are selling lies so I moved away from them, there is no ROI.
Don't get this wrong, there clean and dirty developers everywhere, but too many people in such market know nothing, only wordpress because the learning curve... forget the learning curve, it's just install + free theme, so, it's clear how it works. A lot of them tried to build something like my sites including stealing my content, they were taken down already.
How you work in such markets? I'm beginning to think a lot on seeking opportunities on the web (as in other countries).
