hi, i have 7 good mockup sites in my portfolio on my website and i am offering free websites on craigslist.org. no one is responding or even looking at my site. i was wondering if there is another place or even a city i should try, or another place on the web, where i can offer my services for free for a while? any help GREATLY appreciated. thank you. derek

i am not charging for sites yet until i get lots of experience working for live people. my website portfolio so far is here

http://derekvanderven.com/websites.html

Don't take it personally. There are almost as many scammers on Craigslist as there are at DigitalPoint.

People just don't believe there isn't a catch.

If you want to PM me your pitch and explain your offer I will consider giving or trading a link from a newbie webmaster site that I own. I am more suspious than the average person but I will take an honest look.

ok thank you i sent you 2 pms about it. thank you. derek
basically i want to get used to working with live people as well as building 'real' sites as opposed to mockups. do you think 7 mockups is too small of a portfolio for anyone to be interested? derek

A couple of things. I wouldn't offer to do free websites for people. Your portfolio is big enough that you shouldn't need to do that. I would definitely charge and I would charge two or three times what you're probably thinking. Offering free or cheap services will not get you the type of clients that you probably want. They will be hard to work with and will demand a lot of changes without wanting to pay you.

You should also draw up a contract, to protect both yourself and your clients. Make sure it is very detailed and that it covers exactly what you will do and how much it will cost.

Regarding your website itself, there are a few things that you may want to consider. While I think your art is very good, the website could use a little work. I would highly suggest looking around the web at some of the competition and perhaps some design galleries and try to emulate some of their designs. You're using CSS, which is good, but it will make it a lot easier to maintain if all of your stylesheets are external so that you don't have to update each page if you need to make a design change. Also, your header is cool, but it doesn't really match the rest of the site and it is smaller than the content below it, which doesn't look as good visually. This short tutorial might help you a little. Also, there are a few photoshop tutorial sites that I really recommend: psdtuts, abuzeedo, and nettuts.

Keep at it and don't get discouraged.

They will be hard to work with and will demand a lot of changes without wanting to pay you.

You should also draw up a contract, to protect both yourself and your clients. Make sure it is very detailed and that it covers exactly what you will do and how much it will cost.

Ditto's ... along with a contract, make up a "change order" form and inform anyone you work with that any extensive changes will require a change-order form, which also has a fee. It's best both for you and your clients if they have a clear vision of what they want BEFORE you start so hopefully this can be avoided on both sides. Good luck with whatever you decide to do!

Originally Posted by VirtuosiMedia

A couple of things. I wouldn't offer to do free websites for people. Your portfolio is big enough that you shouldn't need to do that. I would definitely charge and I would charge two or three times what you're probably thinking. Offering free or cheap services will not get you the type of clients that you probably want. They will be hard to work with and will demand a lot of changes without wanting to pay you.

This is true. You shouldn't give that free offer unless you know the person. You can build sites for your friends but definitely not free for people you don't know. Cheap charges are better than free at all. This is not the way the industry goes. Good luck anyway.

wow thanks for those great replies. thank you for the compliment on my art. i found a sample contract, i was wondering if the client is supposed to sign it and snail mail it to me? does anyone know where i can see a sample "change order" form? also, based on my portfolio at http://derekvanderven.com/websites.html how much do you think i should charge for a 5 page website or a 10 page website? (my websites are only text and images with no php except for a contact form, and it has a little flash animation in some parts- they are only informational sites) , also, should i take out the word "mockups" above my sites or leave them, because after all they are just mockups. any more help greatly appreciated. thanks for those other posts, i will try to make my site a little more professional and update the header banner, as well as separate the "art" content from the "web design " content, so that my web design page looks more like a design firms. derek
also, is this a decent web design contract? http://www.northstate.org/wdcon7.html it states that i am to get 50% upfront. is that fair?

I'll take a free website

Originally Posted by redneckmark

I'll take a free website

Nice websites by the way!

I read an article recently by a personal trainer who found that his business increased when he started charging more. Basically, people thought that they would get faster results (weight loss, fitness, etc) with him, because they were paying more.

So don't under-charge. And I think 'free' is definitely undercharging.