Web Designer

This helpful fellow called John Nash came to fix the damp in my bathroom today. He's been here before; he fixed the damp in my lounge/bedroom and kitchen. The damp in the bathroom was not present during his first visit.

Last time he was here, we were chatting and I made the ever-fatal mistake of mentioning what I do for a living. He asked if I worked on web sites, then asked if I could improve his website. I hadn't looked into it for a while, and virtually forgot about it until his visit today.

He asked about improving his website again and I took another look at it. As you can see, it's pretty basic. Basic enough that some of the images haven't been properly resized. So this time I've agreed to work on a new design for his site. He says thank you very much and is off to his next call-out.

That was eight hours or so ago and I've already finished his new website. I also went shopping, picked up a parcel from the post office, cooked dinner, ate, read some of GURPS: Thaumatology and GURPS: Fantasy, played Fallout 3 (until a wild BSOD appeared), and Mount & Blade. So I should guess I put no more than five hours absolute maximum into working on the new site.

Man. It was a breeze.

Let's say, for example, that Mr. Nash was charged £200 for his current website... I wonder how much I could charge for a better presented one? I already told him that since I don't really do this sort of thing professionally as a freelance designer/webmaster or anything, so I'm not going to charge him what he was originally charged.

But even if I was (comparatively) generous only charged him £50 - that'd cover my fuel for the trip to Yorkshire I'm undertaking next week. Or I could get a proper wooden waster, cover the bill for my wisdom teeth (if the NHS doesn't cover it), or get a new book. A surprise £50-£100 every now and then for half a weekend's work is nothing to be sniffed at.

Notepad++ is a million times better than Dreamweaver or FrontPage. A million times.