Just a minor rant.  I know that we all have had situations where friends and 
family have requested our services for free.  "Oh, you're a web developer.  How 
about doing me a favor, and..."

On the couple occasions where I agreed -- with the understanding that there 
would likely be very little (or -- generally -- no) compensation or 
remuneration for the task, I would typically grab a Dynamic Web Template from 
my collection and give them a quick-and-dirty site in FrontPage.  After all... 
why spend hours coding for a freebie?

The last "favor" was for a friend who claimed negative cash flow but promised a 
percentage of the profits from his business.  Not in writing, natch, but a 
handshake deal.

Anticipating a nice payday, I spent hours building a feature-rich site with 
lots of Flash, CSS and JavaScript.  My friend didn't know what he wanted and 
couldn't advise on look, feel or content.  I just went at it; using graphics 
and photo-models from my Hemera and other collections and wrote what I thought 
was on-the-mark prose about his business.

Feedback was capricious at best.   Replace the middle-aged models with younger 
ones.  Make the colors brighter.  Make up text to get people to buy his 
products (without specifying what products he would be selling).  Put in a 
shopping cart... But no, he doesn't have a bank to link credit card purchases 
to.  Handle that.  And no, still no money available for my efforts.

I finally told him to take the CD I delivered to him and insert it (sideways) 
into a choice orifice.

Latest word, he is now spending real money and hired a full-time "real" web 
developer -- and he is paying the guy megabucks to tweak and tweak the site to 
his every whim.  It has been nearly six months and his site is still "under 
construction" -- and I won't be holding my breath until the date it is finally 
up and running.

Hmm... what was that Polonius said to Laertes in Hamlet?


--
I made magic once.  Now, the sofa is gone.
http://dwacon.blogspot.com



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