[zeemonkee]

If you are going to do pro bono work, do it for your school or college (or school/college society), your own website/blog, your brother's rock band, your local charity/church/sports club or whatever. Don't do it for a "real" client - i.e. a client who has the money but is a cheapskate. They are the worst clients, the demanding, parasitic bottom feeders you find on the Craigslist ads everyone makes fun of. Do it for someone you know who could do with the help.

After a few of these you have a portfolio. This puts you in a position for paid work. However, your best bet is to first work for a professional web dev company - either as a contractor or full/part-time employee or intern. You'll learn best practices from experienced professionals. It's hard to really learn the trade on your own.

Second, doing freelance web development or design for client s, while good for practice, isn't really scalable - you might get to re-use some designs and code, but most of the time it's doing the same work over and over. Better to build an application that you can resell to many clients. For example, if you do a booking application for a hotel, think of how you can generalize it to sell to lots of hotels.