"I've designed a site that looks nice but I want to improve how it functions. I don't have the coding chops to make this happen, are developers ever willing to work for credit alone?"
Well, not really. I have invested a significant portion of time into building the site and am looking for someone with an eye for good design to spend about 30 minutes worth of work tightening up my color schemes. I'm not asking for the Sistine Chapel, I'm asking for a paint-by-numbers.
30 minutes of a strong designer is ~$50-60. But they're not going to sell you $50-60 of time, because consulting time doesn't divide up into neat little 30 minute increments, and because clients inevitably mean "30 minutes plus several hours over the next three months supporting and answering questions about the work", and your promises to the contrary don't overcome their actual experience.
You want 99designs, where you can put a simple dollar amount on a simple project and get bids for it. The work is middling-low-quality, but better than what you'd do on your own.
Also, what does your investment in the site have to do with anything? Tough love here: nobody cares.
Ok. I can accept that. Thanks for the advice. I was already leaning towards 99designs, but posted the original question to see if there were any alternatives or any other successes that others have had with other possibilities. Thanks again.
* Don't expect HTML/CSS from them (you wouldn't want what you ended up with); just go with mockups and ask for color palettes and font/font size to go with them.
* Be very careful about any custom imagery/iconography you get. There are definitely plagiarists on the site; seen it happen to a friend.
More sage advice. Thanks. This is really the first app I've ever built where I didn't have a design to work with from the beginning so I feel flustered on how to improve things. My design abilities are pretty much limited to making nice action alerts using Javascript and the color #ff9;
You're right. This was an extreme exaggeration. But honestly I'm mostly just looking for advice and a few suggestions. I really am only looking for about 30 minutes of someones time. Didn't mean to imply that anyone's design work should only take 30 minutes.
Sounds kinda silly, eh?