If we are to develop a website for a client that needs to update a website on his own, an editor that outputs valid XHTML code is a must. Such editors are certainly not for free. One of the best I’ve come across is xstandard that recently has developed a free light version for commercial use. Mind you, I haven’t seen it integrated in any open source project just yet.
Open source is a big hit on ecommerce projects, too. There are a few noteworthy effords on this, such as the so-talked-about freecsscart, that, unfortunately, is still under development and no-one really knows if they’ll ever release it. A similar idea comes from tradingeye, although is not free, something that is totally understandable, as valid code in such projects is definitely not an easy task.

People that contribute on open source projects, cannot afford to invest much time on it as noone is really paying them to do it. It seems that we get what we paid for and that’s only fair.

UPDATE: Movable Type’s publishing platform in now an Open Source project and is available for download. This is definitely something worth looking at, since Movable Type has been a paid project for quite a while.

The clients, on the other, don”t really care about the way you will decide to develop (fortunately, some do!) their site. They only need their website done over with, at an “affordable price”! Coming to terms with like-minded clients, proves very costly for the agency or the freelancer, and the only one to rip the rewards is, of course, the client.

Some of the most important rewards for them is the amount of traffic they”ll enjoy. Tableless CSS/XHTML developement is very very attractive to search engines, because they are simply clean. That is, fast to load, with only keywords and descriptions juice in it.

Now, coming to think of it, aren”t the freelancers or the agencies rewarded by the results that have been brought to the client”s website? I think that, they most certainly are! Gaining good reputation though, isn”t enough, or is it?

Good reputation could prove profitable, as we are working in a very competitive market with many noticable designers, developers and marketeers around. Make this your starting point as a freelancer or agency and then exploit other methods to gain more money. And, believe me, there are many!