Fullstack developer for a midsized telecommunications company located in southern Indiana. Programming languages and compilers enthusiast. Striving to get 1% better every day.
A quick note about your advice to build a pro-bono website, e.g. for a nonprofit or small business:
What I found in my attempts to do just that is that, for the most part, they tend to not be too worried about the initial site build. The growing perception, rightly or wrongly, is that building a site now is easy thanks to tools like Squarespace and WordPress themes that include page builders.
What I found a greater concern for was maintenance and upkeep of the website once it's built. Offering to build something was all well and good, but without the willingness to provide ongoing maintenance very few people would even consider it.
That requires one to think about what one's time is worth and whether it's a winning proposition to offer to maintain the site for a certain period of time given that by offering to build it for free one has already reduced the perceived value of one's work so negotiating a fair payment for ongoing maintenance becomes more difficult.
That doesn't mean it's not still possible to build a site pro bono for one's portfolio, but it's an added wrinkle that may come up in the process.
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A quick note about your advice to build a pro-bono website, e.g. for a nonprofit or small business:
What I found in my attempts to do just that is that, for the most part, they tend to not be too worried about the initial site build. The growing perception, rightly or wrongly, is that building a site now is easy thanks to tools like Squarespace and WordPress themes that include page builders.
What I found a greater concern for was maintenance and upkeep of the website once it's built. Offering to build something was all well and good, but without the willingness to provide ongoing maintenance very few people would even consider it.
That requires one to think about what one's time is worth and whether it's a winning proposition to offer to maintain the site for a certain period of time given that by offering to build it for free one has already reduced the perceived value of one's work so negotiating a fair payment for ongoing maintenance becomes more difficult.
That doesn't mean it's not still possible to build a site pro bono for one's portfolio, but it's an added wrinkle that may come up in the process.