A lot of the development requests seen on these forums are quite specific, and thus do not attract developers on voluntary basis. For these projects buying programming is probably the best option to get work done.
If you want to buy programming or get paid for your efforts, I suggest taking a look at this recently launched site:
The site is a reverse auction place for projects and it seems quite popular amoung freelance Joomla developers. The public bidding and escrow service offered make buing and selling programming safe, easy and transparent.
I am not affiliated with the site in any way, but think that it has a great idea.
I have also used this service in the past - when it was mambolancers. This is actually how I hooked-up with Jacob (the guy who did the Joomlapolis template). I agree its a great idea.
I also think that alot of CB3PD should be 'hired' by people needing to extend CB through the API framework - granted that upto now it looks like 99.9% of Joomla/Mambo folks don't want to pay for anything! Just my opinion of course.
There are actually some guys who do joomla things for living. Then again, there are a lot of peole who do that for extra income (like students).
If you want to do your living with programming, you need to charge +100€/h to pay yor expenses and leave something in your pockket. Hobbyists might do for like 25€/h. Even the smallest things are generally at least half a day since you fist need to agree on the specifications, then desing, test and later package things. But still it is still a lot cheaper than developing from the scratch yourself.
I personally do not do programming for living and neither need any extra income in addition to the current jobs and projects.
I did take a peak at the joomlancers site, but it's currently under maintanance.
I agree to Nant that the most users probably won't pay anything for any open-source like service or product. And so the plugins etc which cost money, won't get as much attention (and so testers, support, etc etc) as any piece of free code.
Currently I'm investigating the best (and cheapest, but save and stable) solution based on a combination of a cms (joomla), forum (phpBB) and a e-commerce (OsCommerce) solution.
Therefor CB is a great step forward, but not yet enough.
So I am willing to pay for the part I need coded.
This code, the solution to integrate OsCommerce with CB in Joomla, has my interest and once stable and functional, I'm willing to "donate" it for download.
So my points:
1: I'am looking for developer who is willing to make the code (stable, secure, userfriendly and offcourse not to expensive)
2: I'm sure there are more willing people to pay a price for custom code, and "donate" it afterwards to the community.
Although I think 100,- euro's a hour is a lot of money, and 25,- indeed a students fee, afterwards all that matters is what is the total price for which peace of code...
ps: a little tip: you might want to place your paypal-donation window at the top of the screen, so it will be noticed!
We have lately done a lot of very large components for Joomla/Mambo. And we think, that if the need is present it is no problem for the customers to pay for development.
Of course the dev cost is huge so before going into a new production you need to be certain that the product is needed.
The way we do this is:
1. We get a lot of request for new components via our Fix/Do my Joomla service - we collect, sort and filter the ideas - and then suddenly we have a new flow
2. Many customers have some ideas/needs for a custom component - if we believe the idea is good, we split the dev cost with the customer. That means that he will get what he wants and we will have a new commercial product - of course we keep the copyrights. Having a pricing from 40 to 100 dollars pr. license - it is not something that will ruin new customers......
This way we have a win-win situation - and it is much easier to get new ideas done.
Sometimes we get requests for products where peoble thinks that a new product is done for cents... But if you want quality - it will cost - and we do NOT wanna do cheap crap.
And after talking to theese guys: they can understand that!
So this is the way we have done things - and we are busy.
nant
