I want an experienced Ghuru do you?

I say that in the title because more and more I see people getting in the game of web development or design. Design and development are two different things and you have to ask yourself, which is it that you are looking for. Sure, you want your site to be professional and such but what about how it makes you money? That is the bottom line, isn't it?
Do you want someone that has only built sites using shiny (or even not so shiny) templates or someone with experience from the ground up? If you are not technical minded, maybe you have no idea what that even means so let's just put it in layman terms. Do you want someone that go buy a cake and put your name on it, or someone who knew all the ingredients, put them together and made that cake especially for you?
I am not saying all templates are bad, in fact they look sort of fun, and some are very colorful and if that is what you want for your business then by all means this is a direction you should go, in fact I can put a template up lickity split! Again, the bottom line really is. How do they make you money?
How about these questions? Do you want to and can you interact with your own website? Does your website look like you and YOUR product?

 I have respect for my colleagues in the field and like any other businesses the playing field starts to get leveled some after years of the web and we all have to make a buck at what we do I suppose. Most of my direct colleagues are people like myself who can do just about anything on the web or with computers, but like to keep it fairly simple and understandable. Most of our clients are the working class that own their own businesses and want to make a go of it with an a web presence in mind. Some of our clients would like to change their own websites and ALL without exception want to be first on a Google search and my colleagues and I know some special things about web searching that has changed from the old days that maybe someone else might not tell you.

This might be an ad for my services, and it might not. You decide. It may just be a public service for you to start thinking about what you want your next web project built by. A web designer, or a web developer?