: In my experience, doing work 'now' for some kind of equity or compensation 'later' almost never works. What usually ends up happening is the project becomes a weight attached to your ankle.

In my experience, doing work 'now' for some kind of equity or compensation 'later' almost never works. What usually ends up happening is the project becomes a weight attached to your ankle.

I'm not saying don't do it, but I would:

Not expect a lot in return from the site itself. Perhaps doing this could be a catalyst for additional projects that pay conventionally?
Make sure maintenance and modification of the site is as simple as it can be, ideally to the point that someone other than you can handle it.
Avoid going out of pocket completely to get things going. This includes hosting, domain registration, paying for graphics / plug-ins / theme / etc.
Set a limit for how much time you're willing to spend on it and stick with it.

Ideas like this often look great on paper, but usually never end up producing as well as anticipated. Again, if you manage your risks (which is currently just your time) it sounds like it might lead to other opportunities.

What you don't want to become is the 'person who does sites for free or next to nothing' :)

I wish I had for every time someone said "Come on man, you could do this in like three or four hours, I'm sure!". Three or four weeks later that usually proves not to have been the case :)

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