The Difference Between $150 and $700
I’ve always been curious as to how much money those cheap PSD to XHTML companies make. It seems impossible that they make a ton of money by only charging $150 per site, plus I’ve noticed that they always take out big ads on large blog sites that charge over $600 a month per ad.
This also leads me to another thought – just how good can their code really be for only $150?
I went through several of these PSD to XHTML sites, looked at the source code of both their sites and their portfolios, and here’s what I’ve found.
It’s Raining Scripts!
One thing I can’t figure out is why all of these sites insist on having 10+ scripts in their header. Is really necessary? Have they heard of optimization or minifying their JS?
Divitis
While several of these sites claim to have “handwritten” code, I really find that hard to believe. They always look like they’ve been run through those slice n’ dice programs. The div names are always funky and generic. They contain divs wrapped around divs wrapped around some more divs. Most of these seem to come from some kind of template.
Weirdo Meta Tags
One of the sites I viewed had the weirdest meta tags I’d ever seen, a bunch I’d never even heard of. It’s like they read a beginner’s HTML book from 1994 and decided to use everything the book talked about, whether necessary or not.
IE Or Bust
All of these sites used IE hacks, which meant that none of these developers really know how to properly code, especially since almost ALL of the hacks were for IE8! IE8 is the easiest IE browser to code in, and you normally shouldn’t have any problems with it if you’re coding correctly.
Go To Class
Not everything needs a class, but according to these sites, everything must have some kind of class or ID. While it seems marginal, you should always try to use the cascade to style your elements, instead of classing everythin. Not only does that save on file size, but reduces confusion and mess in both your HTML and CSS.
Validation
The best part of all of these sites – most of them were validated, and in XHTML Strict no less. Kudos to them.
But validation isn’t everything. Semantics is just as important and is something missing in all of the PSD to XHTML sites. Someone please tell me what the divs “b-box” and “c-150″ are supposed to do?
Logoworks and Factories
These PSD to XHTML places remind me a lot of Freelancer.com, Logoworks and other crowd-sourcing factory type sites. Sure, you’ll get the work done quickly and cheaply, but you’ll sacrifice in quality and it’s very, very noticeable.
The Difference
Which brings us here – so what’s the real difference between us (the good developers) and them? We’re not a factory. We don’t churn out the same junk over and over. We learn and improve our code with each site we make. We pride ourselves on using the least code possible while maintaining semantics, validation and accessibility.
We don’t hide behind a web form. Clients can find us and talk to a real person and ask questions, instead of simply submitting a design on one end, and having a template spit out the other.
This is why the best clients will always pay more for us.
Your Thoughts
What do you think about these PSD to XHTML places? Worth the price?
image by ecastro
About the author
Amber Weinberg specializes in clean and semantic XHTML, CSS and WordPress development. She has over 10 years of coding experience and is pretty cool to work with. Amber is available for freelance work, so why not hire her for your next project?
Well said!
couldn’t agree more!
I guess you get what you pay for. I’ve never really understood why people, if they really care about their website, go to such PSD to XHTML sites.
I remember looking at one of these places a while back and the portfolio pieces were laid out using tables! Couldn’t have been more than an hour’s work to slide-and-dice the layout that way. $150 isn’t bad for an hour’s work – if you did a couple a day you’d be earning around $75k p/a taking into account weekends and 2 week’s holiday…
That’s not to say that all PSD To XHTML sites are run in this way though, I know a few people who run a similar service and they do everything by hand and to the best of their ability. But I can certainly see where you are coming from!
Great post!
Nice post. You are right on with that last sentence – the better clients are always willing to pay more. They realize the value of hiring with someone who will give them high-quality work, and these are the types of clients that are a pleasure to work with.
Well put. Although I wouldn’t quite label myself as one of the “good developers” (I still have a ways to go on that), I do pride myself in writing my code in as clean and semantic a way as I possibly can. Bottom line– Like Jelle said already, you get what you pay for. I remember that, as a kid, Clorox ran a campaign in Puerto Rico with a tag that translated into “the cheap stuff is always expensive in the end. Don’t risk it”. The same could be said for a lot of these services, I guess.
I remember when you posted the link to the PSD to HTML site with the endless meta tags on Twitter, and I was shocked that someone in the business of coding websites would think that sort of thing would help.
There were things like REVISIT AFTER 14 days (like search engines will actually pay attention to that) among other countless useless meta tags that noone, human or bot, would get any use out of. Just a waste of space, they probably thought it helped with SEO or somtehing.
Do you remember what that site was called by any chance?
Yup that’s one of the ones I was thinking of when writing this post. I don’t remember which one it was though.
About time someone posted this. Now we have something to refer to
But seriously, this divitis thing has gone on too long now. I was working on a site the other day and it too was done rather cheap instead of good and let me tell you, it’s absolutely horrific to work with.. Nothing logical about it and so much bloat (that was actually being used).
It’d be an interesting, but spendy, experiment to submit the same PSD to a few different companies and compare the results.
That would be awesome to try out!
I just thought I’d point out that the div class=”c-150″ most likely means a column 150px in width… My company using the same style names. But good post. Can’t stand Divitis either nor developers who don’t understand what the Cascade means in CSS.
Right, but that’s not very semantic or meaningful to an outside developer.
Nice Post, specially for opening eyes of the people who use xhtml and css factories.
I think services like freelancer.com are not easy. It is really difficult for a buyer to get his exact work done in exact given time using such services.
I think I have an answer how they do it and still are profitable. They outsource overseas, where they can still get a very good third party price butsacrificing quality.
That’s how I would do it if I were one of those companies.
You make some good observations in this article. I can see why people would be enticed by such services as they would be unaware of what makes good code and understandably they want to spend as little as they can. What really confuses me is how someone would spend the time and effort it takes to create a site in Photoshop and hire a budget company to code it rather than figure it out themselves?
They’re promising any PSD to XHTML for super cheap and in periods of time so short that it’s impossible they’re not using some sort of slice-n-dicer program. Like everyone keeps saying, you get what you pay for. And, like it or not, these sites fill a niche. A niche some might call “sad,” but a niche nonetheless. I’ve actually known some people who have worked for some of these places, and they were actually damn good coders. But they have to follow the company protocol.
As craftsmen/women who take extreme care and delight over well crafted markup, it’s going to naturally frustrate us to see what the less conscientious of our industry are churning out. Sure, most of it’s crap, but there’s a market for it
So what? You don’t compete at that level, so why worry about it?
Concerning on div’s names is no problem to use “c-150″ or “b-box”. Everyone of us have a personal code style and i don’t judge them because of this matter.
The main problem is that “handcode written” thing. I don’t think that these company’s are coding this psd’s. They export a PSD automaticly to a XHTML/CSS template.
The disadvantage is that the exported code is not very seo friendly and further changes are inconvenient to do.
And another thing, most of these psd to xhtml websites are tabless coded and this is a another reason to pay a front-end developer which know what to do
The naming of divs does matter big time, as the divs themselves are supposed to be named semantically.
yes, the names of the div’s are important but just when another developer will edit that code. In my opinion
No, the names of div tags are important for good coding practices and basic semantics.
I agree with that. Bad habits don’t die.
A really good post… as usual..
So do you get annoyed when you view source on a .NET site?
Business is business. Let people decide how to spend their money.
As in everything, you get what you pay for.
If someone just needs the site to sit up there and display some text and pictures, then these services can work. However, as profesional front end devs, we have to market ourselves towards people who care about the quality and the longevity of their site, since clean, semantic, and valid code is much more likely to hold up on the next generation of browsers (computer & mobile) over the coming years.
In the end, a first-rate front end dev trying to compete with the $150 coding job is like trying to sell Gucci handbags at Kmart.
This doesn’t surprise me. Being that they are that cheap, they just automate the work but don’t feel their work with the passion that we do, which always gives better end results.
They do business for clients that fit their model. There will always be those that charge less and those that charge more.
Us good developers love our code, we craft it with care, we follow best practices and learn new methods for innovate applications (no matter how much discipline it requires). I agree with you Amber, their naming conventions are also very bad. If even they needed to go with c-150, #columnWidth150 or #column-width-150 is more sensible and less cryptic.
When I name my any css or programming elements (such as variables), I try to break apart my code and view it as objects (to keep things re-usable). I like to classify my elements as objects and then assign a name for them that fits the object.