gazrolo4

Thanks for the advice guys, all very much appreciated. Falken - I think you make an interesting point about offering my services to a charity, like you say their need & levels of appreciation may surpass that of the local capitalist fat cats! Could you clarify how a tax deductible donation would work though please? This is clearly me being naive but how does the tax aspect work if I'm not charging for the service? Thanks, Gareth

Hi all, Good idea for a post. Thought I'd reply as the flexibility of working from home is one of (if not the) main reason that I am pursuing a career in web design, so would also be really good to hear about other peoples experience of it. I can see that working from home full time with little contact with colleagues or clients could quite rapidly send you a bit stir crazy, but the idea of doing perhaps two/three days a week at home seems ideal to me. I'd love to have the flexibility of fitting my working day around my lifestyle, rather than being tied to a desk 9 - 5 all week. Another interesting thought on this is how working from home affects your effectiveness. Perhaps the first thought on this would be that because you don't have someone watching over you all the time, cracking the whip as it were, then you might tend to slack off/do the laundry/pop to the shop/stick on the tv for a while etc... On the other hand, for the more self disciplined perhaps this would be an opportunity to increase productivity; if you have a set task to complete and know that once you complete it you are free to do what you like (because the boss aint watching) then maybe you'd find yourself powering through the work?? For me, I'd like to think I'd do the latter and maximise the freedom that working from home offers...but I guess that remains to be seen!! Has anyone else here had the experience? What are the pro's and con's? I read the ALA article a while ago by the way - interesting reading if anyone here hasn't seen it yet. G

Evening all, I've been studying web design and through various books for a while now and I'm at the stage where I can build (relatively) simple static brochure style sites. To build my portfolio I'm going to approach a couple of local business to do some Pro Bono (i.e. free!) work for them and wondered if anyone has any advice on how I can make sure I get the most from this experience? Look forward to the responses. Thanks, Gareth