Originally Posted by navcom
I have a question. Why should anyone even attempt to be a web developer? I mean, you can buy web design software just about anywhere extremely affordable so you can make your own website. The software makes it extremely easy too. So why are there still web developers?? It's two-fold. First, most normal people simply don't have the time to devote to learning everything about developing a website and maintaining it. They might try a personal site, but not a commercial site. Second, they would rather pay a professional to do it right to have a better chance of getting the results they want from their site.
Our posts overlapped somewhat in subject matter, great minds eh.
To answer your question, people hire web developers not just to set up their websites but also to maintain them and fix them when they go wrong so forgive me for saying so but that wasn't the best example. Nevertheless your point still rings true.
People also hire photographers for their weddings etc. and some of the examples I've seen would get laughed off the forum if they were posted here. I think things like that are more dangerous to professional photography because some of these so called "photographers' give the good ones a bad name.