DH has had a great idea to allow us both to keep up to par with IT and to showcase what we know - and maybe recover at least partial costs.
We are going to take up a domain name of our own, and host web pages which will at first be just for reflecting our own interests but later on will support his service club. We will focus firstly on building exemplars, and when we're "ready" we'll offer pages/sites within our domain for small businesses.
We did this a few years ago, had three clients. One site was "press ganged" into the owner's sponsor's professional site; one client had declared he could/would keep his own content updated but in the end couldn't be bothered (back to snail mail and cold calling contacts for new business - sheese) so dropped out; one was a no-pay agreement with a cultural association which also got press ganged into the head office site (taking our design and layout ideas with it).
This time around when we have clients I will insist on having written contracts with those who are sited in our domain, and automatic transfers of fees coming in.
Until we are ready for clients, DH and I will be able to practise our skills. Now he can do so already at his place of work, in between classes which isn't much time. I can also already practise here at home, but have no space online for working on databases behind the web page.
