Well I've been programming as a hobby since I was a little kid, which has included web design.
I'm older and I need a source of income to live you-know. I could work in several jobs, waiting tables, etc. But I've always thought that when I came to this point that I'd use my experience with web design and programming to get some cash.

So I've decided to get jobs from those freelance job-list sites. I found a couple of jobs that looked ideal, but I'm kind-of scared. What if I make a website, then the client comes back and says: "This site is CRAP! The 3 minutes that it's been online we've became BANKRUPT. Thee employees DIED, just from looking at it! We're going to sue you for everything you're worth AND take a hit out on you, your family, your cat.... blah blah blah."

So if any of you are up for doing me a little favor I'd like some reassurance please.

Basically here's the idea:
Someone who's some experience with dealing with freelance clients give me a job description, as would happen in the real world. I'll then go though some further communication, design/make the site, and present it to you. The you can all tell me whether I should bother doing any web design jobs at all.
I need the following info:
1.How much would you pay me (I'm trying to be at the higher end, one site said $800-$1200, but other's would say that that'd be dreaming, then again £300(I'm english) per job might not be enough for me).
2.What should I do differently in the client-coder communication bit?
3.What should I do differently in the coding?
4.Did I do it fast enough?
5.Comments on the quality of the site: style, functionality, robustness, security.
6.Anything else?
Important Note: Make sure the job you coe up with is obviously fictional, like a kitten factory or something less silly. This is to prevent people from giving me a job they can the plagarise.

So here we go.

You've accepted a job from getacoder, the job description reads:
Skills required: XHTML/CSS/PHP/MySql/Apache/Linux
Description: Make me a website for my new business.

You see that the job requires your skill set, you take the job and are accepted. You get an email address from getacoder to contact you client with.
You send your client an email asking him to describe the project in greater detail.
*okay now you go.*

I want a 4 page website.

It is a Honda Motorcycle website
1 gallery page containing 10 pictures of Honda Motorcycles
1 contact page with forms
1 about us page
1 home page.

my budget is £250

p.s you need to stop worrying about negative reaction. revising on work is a standard practice should the client not like your first draft. They can't sue you for delivering something that might not be what they are looking for - they can easily just turn away otherwise give you more strict guidelines such as "I don't want purple, I want blue and can you change the font to a transcript type" etc.

Well one thing that you need to know, you will need insurance so that if you do mess up and the company wants to sue, the insurance pays out - this can be quite expensive.

I may be interested in doing something, have you got any examples of your work, either online or that you could send me?

Thanks

OK thanks both of you.

So a book told me that I should do this so:


I now need to ask you these things:
1. When a visitor visits your site exactly what do you want them to do/learn.
2. Could you think of the overall 'feel' of the site then sum hat up in several words.
3. Find me 3 sites you like, and 3 sites you don't. In a sentence or two explain what you do or don't like about them.

I will begin my research on honda now.

Also could you supply your email address for the contact page.
Would you like the about us to contain information that you wrote or should I supply the information for you? If it is the latter could you point me to or give me some information about you. (If you want just say lorem ipsum).

1200 may not even be high enough. I have known people to make very beginner sites and still make 5,000 us dollars. I will post some good cost evaluation tools once I get on my computer.

Edit:

Here are some links:
http://freelanceswitch.com/ - A very useful freelancer site

http://freelanceswitch.com/rates/

http://stimator.com

1. show off my stunts, my bike, the locations I've been to and the specs of the bike - to basically encourage those to buy this bike because it is the best.

2. sporty and shiny - just like a motorcycle (sports)

3.
a. http://nsr125.com/ - it is straight to the point with a picture of the bikes - also has useful links and information in one area - i don't like it because it looks like a old website - lack of graphics - doesn't really glamorise the bike

I can't really find any other website so I'll leave it to you - my internet knowledge is not great. I just want a honda website to kick start my hobby online.

As for information - because this is just a demo for you - you might as well just copy whatever from whereever (honda.com) I personally dislike the latin spam designers use.. why not just take a relevant paragraph and use it as a placeholder? I would much prefer that.

Here's some perspective from someone who has been designing sites for customers for almost 20 years.

First of all, place your own site on the air so you can refer people to it and
your coding style. if you can do a couple of sites for businesses on top of that, it can't hurt.

Second, check the prices other people are charging who have your skill set.
But don't get wrapped up in the lowball fights. If the other idiots want to do a complete web site for $1 let them. Stupid is as stupid does.

Third, learn as much about as many businesses and industries as you can.
The more you can relate to your customer, the more you will make.

Fourth, decide what type and level of sites you want to make.
Then learn the languages and skills necessary to make them.
HTML, Javascript, PHP, ASP, whatever......

Fifth, set up a legitimate business in your state. People are checking now.

Sixth, take some classes in selling and customer service.
Become a pitchman wherever you go. You are your own boss.

Seventh, don't worry about pissed off customers.
Most customers are of three types.

1. Clueless, and will let you guide them completely.
2. Tedious and will want it exactly the way they think it should be.
Even if they are dead wrong.
3. Educated enough to work with you but not a total drag.

You have to decide which types you want to work with. Personally, if someone wants to dictate every design move, I usually avoid them like the plague because they will kill you time wise and not want to pay for the extra time. I just had to walk away from a project because one of the "owners" started changing everything I had coded. Even though they signed an agreement that I had full discretion on the design, colors and look. I made the mistake of letting them see the site before it was "finished" because they were "friends and neighbors". I will NEVER do that again.

Always get at least part of the money up front. and don't be shy about asking for a deposit. Make sure if it is a large project that you put together a detailed contract. It will save you every time. On projects less than $1000 I make them pay the total amount.

When people ask me "What happens if I don't like what you do?"

I say, "You've seen my samples and what I can and can not do, If you
are still unsure, I'd rather you find someone else. That way we can stay
on a good business relationship." Most of the time, they buy.

One last thing, unless you are just extraordinarily lucky or find a market that is not saturated, you will need other things in your skillset to tide you over. For me, I am a PC Software Specialist and Trainer. I also write and give lectures now and then.
And I have been known to do odd things here and there to make a buck. Including using my 30+ years of selling experience.

If you have guts of steel, you'll do ok. Otherwise, work for someone else.
being your own boss can be a blast, but it can be a real drag too.

Especially when every high school kid and college kid with a computer
grabs customers away and gives the rest of us a bad reputation.
I make a lot of money picking up where college kids leave off.

The first thing that you can do is have some confidence. This is very important in starting any endeavors that you have.

First I'd like to say thak you to everyone-above's advice, comments, etc. All that info's awesomely helpful.

Well this took way longer than I expected. I was caught up with the family, so most of the last few days have been spent out. But here you go. I thought that web design was going to be all fun and easy, but really it kinda sucks - it's work, most of the time was spend dealing with errors/problems and ****** browser-specific issues (oh yeah the link below dosen't have the IE fix for the gallery, It used javascript if you where curious). I started wanting to make it perfect, I had 3 rm -rf ./* re-thinks in the first day, then it got going. After a while I was kinda tired and now I can't be arsed if it's perfect or not. Maybe I'd care more if it was real.

The home page is w3 validated, the others probably will come out right, but I didn't check because the hosting won't display them. I also tested it on a larger screen, in IE, opera, firefox, with no scripts, and a with minimised window. The Arial Black dosen't come out on my linux box, but there isn't much I can do about that.

I've done everything on the side of style - which is all I was worried about .
Some stuff I haven't done, even though I planned to:
1. Admin pannel with image upload and automagic thumbnail maker.
2. Get rid of that damm little bit of space on the right hand side of the gallery.
3. Make a database backend for the written content.
4. I was also going to make the background for the navbar and footer darker (basically same colours (darker reds) as the text in the title image). But I dunno, what do you thinik?

Everything that isn't done is pretty simple IMO, so no worries, lets just pretend I did it or something.

Of course the (free) hosting I found just happens to be crap, .htaccess dosen't work so stick to index.php?p=contact/about/pics - but the include function dosen't work, investigating there dosen't seem to be a reason, oh well. I put the tar.gz up if you want to look at the rest of the site. But here's the w3 validated. Everything would work out so much nicer if I had a host to ssh into, but a tar.gz is linked to below, if you have the hart and server to host it temporarily, go ahead - you just need to alter ROOT_DIR variable in includes/config.php to it's root dir (say '/var/www/html/hondasite/').

Here's the broken site: http://quickhonda.host22.com/honda/index.php?p=contact
And here's the tar.gz so you can download it and look at the rest of the site. http://quickhonda.host22.com/honda.tar.gz


List of things I've learned:
-Make sure your diary is empty before you go for a job.
-Presume it'll take longer than you think.
-Invest in sleeping pills or wine or something to help you sleep if you can't. Gaming and going on forums is easy with 4-5 hours sleep a day, but this isn't.
-Screw capital letters in class and id names, it leads to loads of adjusting css to work out what's going wrong, when actually it's just you started the css clause with a capital.
-Set up ssh between linux and windows PCs. Or maybe use nfs or something. Either way, Moving stuff accross with a usb key over and over again sucks!
-Everything would be easier If I had a server on the net that I can test stuff on. Maybe invest in a cheep vps.

I'll continue the RPG

//

Upon first impression I have to say it okay but looks like a work in progress on about 60% - The contrast (or lack of) leans too much to the dark side. I need the info area to be much larger and the links tucked away. Navigation is fine and Footer is fine.

Logo is too dark and doesn't have that metallic motorcycle shine to it. The website should have effects to remind one of a motorcycle (reflections, glows, gradients, less shadows and satin)

//// end//

Okay so I know this was just a test for you and credit to you for setting up a demo but I gave you a budget and you came back with a work-in-progress when it is recommended that you come back with something more complete looking (in terms of design and NOT functionality).

A large black space beneath the info/links isn't really much of an impression. When you see adverts showcasing new products, they always show it off in some fancy position with the perfect lighting, the perfect area, the perfect weather, the perfect material.

You need to adopt that ideology.

Also, you went ahead and sliced and XHTML'd a design without consulting the client - you should have sent JPG screens to get approval... now what if I said to you I want it more curvy and the navigation in a shape of a motorcycle wheel and bright bright colours....? You'd have wasted all that time.

You do have a good understanding of putting a web-template together so I think you need not worry too much about that but your design skills is something I would be concerned about - put some more effort into your drafts.

I designed a martial arts layout yesterday (draft) for a client to look at. This is a draft proposal (attached) but the effort I put into it gives me the upper hand because if they see a complete looking JPG screen, they will most likely just say "YEP, I like.. please load it up" - If they see gaps/emptiness in your design they might get carried away and start dictating what you should have done properly in the first place or in the case of freelancing, may go elsewhere.

so to sum it up - put a lot more effort into your design. Give it a complete look in JPG screen because it is easier to experiment in photoshop than it is after XHTMLing it.

OK thanks for the response. I've worked on a photoshop design that I think might be better.

Here what do you think.
http://quickhonda.host22.com/All1024-75percent.jpg

Haven't filled it with text yet. I'll do that next.
What has changed:
1.Logo Brighter, a harder shinier texture. Same with 'Information' and 'Links'.
2.Thinking about design I turned the background for the navbar and footer upside down, so there's congruency in the location of the light source in both the Logo/header text and those bars.
3.Info area takes up two thirds, Links one third (hey dose it matter if I use the golden ratio or thirds? I'm thinking design it in thirds, then change it to the phi thingy in the end).


...researching design more...
In the past I've read two books from sitepoint, one I learned barely anything from, I thought was other was good. Maybe I need to look back at my notes more. I've never really had alot of respect for sitepoint books. Most programming books that I like are orieilly or wrox or something. Could you advise a book, or series of them on design theory.

Yeah that looks much better. I can now, as a client, picture how my site will look live and what text to put in etc.


re: #3; doesn't matter - you do what you think is best and from your research - most of these clients will expect you to lead the way.

As for books, sorry - I wouldn't know. All I can suggest is that you just go to freelance websites like rentacoder and use them as a testing ground to measure your progress. You'll find several projects asking for mock-up designs.. so join the race and if you win it, that's some £££ in your pocket and a sign of progress.

rentacoder.com / scriptlance.com

Awesome. Thank you. I will go get some projects and strive to improve on every one I do.