I have seen some people say, ‘Well those are not the kind of clients you want anyway!’ However, the vast majority of those people are very well-known freelancers, or have the luxury of working at an design agency that is very well recognized and they can choose to turn those projects down and not have to worry about it.

In the end, I think it really comes down to situation. I think there are times where we can afford to turn that kind of work down, and if we are in a situation to do so, I think we should.

Practically, however, web design is also art and the average person needs to see what you can do for them before they’ll be willing to spend their dollars with you. When they trust your skills, then they’ll be willing to pay. If they don’t see the value of your work TO THEM, the $ will end up with someone who WILL show the potential client what the want to see.

I can’t tell you how many times I had to produce ‘spec’ spots for clients when I worked in radio. Until the client HEARD the spot, they just weren’t ready to write the check.

Sad – but it is what it is.

When I read that article it was the first time I was ever on the WSJ site. I usually don’t pay attention to anything news related unless I see it on CNN’s site. Anyways, I am really surprised at how poor the WSJ site is. I tried it in several different browsers since FF(3.0) rendered it poorly, but no it looked like that in all the browsers I tried (FF3.0, IE7, Opera9.51, and Safari 3.1.2; all for windows). I’m really surprised that an organization that has a reputation like WSJ would have a site that poor in the first place, let alone write an article like this one. I understand that they are trying to help out the small business owner, but honestly in my opinion a poorly constructed site hurts a company’s reputation even if it does allow them to get their name out there to a larger audience than what they could if they didn’t have a site.

grrr…. sigh …. ok I’m done.

@Chris – While you could argue whether or not those build-it-yourself tools should’ve ever been used for business sites, you’re definitely right in saying that the tools are completely inadequate in today’s web.

Like @Jordan says ‘a poorly constructed site hurts a company’s reputation’. Sites that are poorly constructed and designed reflect poorly on that business and look unprofessional.