So we started this discussion in the meeting and I believe it's worth a deeper discussion.

As you know, it's very easy to enter the IT market. All what it takes is a shallow understanding of what a website is, how to use an Open Source CMS, how to get a shared hosting and that's it. This is a major problem, especially because most clients are IT-illiterate, or at least they do not know how to distinguish a high quality website that is worth every penny, and some garbage website that took nothing more than a few hours to get done.

What is really happening in the market? Some guy who recently got introduced to HTML and *probably* some PHP gets assigned a project by some dumb client somehow. The "developer" finds a cheap (or free) Linux based hosting. He then uses Fantastico to install Joomla or Drupal. He spends an hour searching for a good looking template and imports it into the CMS using the admin panel. Finally, the guy throws in the content required by the client and the website is done.

The website works and the "developer" got the job done. Pretty good. But, now the "developer" charges the client something like $200 - $300 for the 4-5 hours he worked on "developing the website". The "developer" gets paid, the client has a new website with a shiny admin panel... everyone is happy!

The client now starts showing off his new website to his even-dumber-friends telling them that he got himself a good looking website for $300 - la2ta. Then one of those friends gets excited and decides to build a website for his business. Unfortunately, this guy goes to a "real" developer who actually knows what he's doing. The developer estimates the time required to develop the website according the client's requirements. The developer decides to quote the client something between $1000 - $1500 (assuming it's not a big project). The client freaks out and starts complaining that another developer is willing to build the website for much less than that. After all, what is the developer really doing? He's setting up a few pages that have some geometric shapes, some colors and text, isn't it? :)

So what do you think about this more or less common scenario? How is it affecting us as developers? How could we stop that (if there's anything we can do about it)? And most importantly, how can we compete in such a market?