Staying idealistic and make a living

[Jando Jando]

Hi Folks,

I’m new to this forum and I’d like to be active here and learn and share heaps of web related stuff!

I work as a starting freelance web designer/developer. My goal is to support people who have good ideas -for a better living evironment- I’ve got a rather anti neoliberalistic anti over consumerist worldview. Therefore I prefer to work for persons, companies or organisations who commit themselves to the well being of people, animals and their natural environments, as well as human rights or social assistance. I consider art/music/culture to be important as well.

As a result I do lots of volunteer work or low budget projects. I enjoy that most. I also have contacts who might pay me better, but I feel I care less about what they do, because they appear to me as people who have mainly got dollar signs in their eyes. I am really struggling to make a living from what I do, and sometimes I find myself working for the dollar eyes types. I became a freelancer so I could decide to what projects I would like to work on. I mostly do that, but it’s hard to get fairly paid if your main interest lies in fields which are not so much about money. I will do my best to stick with my goals and try to not bend too much to the -i don’t care what it is as long as i get paid good money- view.

What I am curious about is how other web people look at this, if they recognize it, and how they deal with it. I’m also wondering if there are interesting articles about this that come from the web design community.

[Jando Jando]

Ah, this is an interesting article that relates to what I’m talking about:

http://www.alistapart.com/article/living-up-to-your-business-ideals

Setting business ideals, that’s exactly what I did. Now it’s a matter of keeping to them, although it’s not easy for a starting web developer to say no to certain clients when financially struggling. Guess is all about patience, keeping focus and slowly building it up :)

[Jando Jando]

Thank you Ben, your reply makes a lot of sense and gives me something to think about. About donations to the charity, would you just calculate that in the contract, or would you literally transfer them a donation?

How do you feel about doing work for friends around you, who are starting businesses as well? I usually feel like charging less for them, because I know they don’t have much money like myself, and I know them well. I’m thinking about doing something like 10% discount for friends or so.

[Jando Jando]

10% sounds a bit mingy though. Maybe a discount depending on how close the friend is ;)

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