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by noduerme 748 days ago
I'm not saying they're necessarily wrong... there are certain things where a website should just be dead simple. I built a site for my mechanic, in trade for work on my car. It's like three static pages. Just something to backstop a link on Yelp and Google Maps.

I said simple websites are a dead letter, because it's no longer the 1990s. There's no cachet in them. The web is littered with simple sites that don't rank and no one ever visits. Then the owners think 'maybe I should hire SEO' or 'add a blog' and the question is "wait you built me this site, why can't you just do that for $500"? And that's why I just refer clients like that to someone who does Wordpress now. I have no interest in learning the giant pile of PHP sludge that is WP for projects that barely pay. I hardly build websites at all anymore unless they're SPAs, and only if it's functionality that can't be done with off the shelf frameworks.

To the sibling who said I'm doing this to justify being a freelancer - quite the opposite. I'm telling potential clients of a cheaper way to get what they want, and turning away work that I know is a pointless headache.