Ive quoted a customer this week who came back saying that our price was "without hesitation CONSIDERABLY outside of their expected budget, by a long way". I'd quoted a fair bit under £2k for a Magento store, blog, dozen or so info pages, heavy design twitter and facebook integration, online book and availability for courses (extra from the shop) a good chunk of work. I went in pretty tight on the price as I quite fancied the job. But crikey. Sounds like he wanted it for £20 from that response.

 

Really seen my arse with it

 

Oh and I had another today contact me through facebook, saying they want a site, was fairly simple, a day's work possibly two and before I'd had a chance to even send my quote I got a message saying by the way I aint paying more than £100 for it!

 

FML

well at least on the second one they were upfront and you saved alot of your time not having to go through the costing exercise with them.

 

So many people want things for (next to) nothing these days.

 

I quoted one recently and laid out a number of options with different price levels. A few weeks later they came back and asked if I could do 3 sites for about half that price. I told them I couldn't (you can imagine what I wanted to say).

To be honest I estimate one in ten enquiries I get actually have a realistic budget in mind.

It's par for the course I am afraid.

 

 

Something I am noticing more and more these days is people who expect web designers to do things for FREE. Now THAT is my major bugbear. You wouldn't ask a decorator to paint your house for free, or go to the pub and expect a free beer and packet of crisps, but web designers - oh yeah we all work for free don't we..

 

I developed some custom Prestashop coding recently and every day I get at least 2 messages on that forum asking if I will help them out. (Always for free of course). Once money is mentioned they disappear to Mars.

 

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well at least on the second one they were upfront and you saved alot of your time not having to go through the costing exercise with them.

That's the frustrating part as well, actually putting in a proper quote always takes time.

I find that over the years I've learned to spot the unlealistic clients and just send a polite "I'm too busy" email. I've had them all. There was even a guy who wanted me to copy a site EXACTLY, it was some kind of national gaming poker web site for pubs, the original creator had got 100K from Dragons Den to set up the original. My guys budget was £250. I did laugh though.

 

One of the problems is that there are too many people accepting pennies for work, and especially people willing to work for nothing.

 

To be honest, most of my decent clients are clients that I've gone out and found, rather than enquiries from unknowns.

We all feel the pain at some point, sometimes you just have to say no when clients won't accept a reasonable price - let them go cheap if they want.

 

Saying that I recently quoted what most of us would consider a reasonable fee for a job, only to be told I wasn't charging enough!

We all feel the pain at some point, sometimes you just have to say no when clients won't accept a reasonable price - let them go cheap if they want.

 

Saying that I recently quoted what most of us would consider a reasonable fee for a job, only to be told I wasn't charging enough!

 

that doesnt happen enough!

 

 

But I do know I've lost a couple of jobs going too cheap.

I'd quoted a fair bit under £2k for a Magento store, blog, dozen or so info pages, heavy design twitter and facebook integration, online book and availability for courses (extra from the shop) a good chunk of work. I went in pretty tight on the price as I quite fancied the job.

 

You must have REALLY wanted that job. I've never quoted a Magento job under 80 hours.

You must have REALLY wanted that job. I've never quoted a Magento job under 80 hours.

 

 

Well I reckon I was a good 30-40% lower than I would have liked to have been. But the project is interesting and the clients that the site will attract could/would/should lead to further web work for me. So I was keen to go tight and possibly even just cover costs to a certain extend.

 

80 hrs for Magento or 80hrs inclusive of design? I quoted 75hrs done.

Typical Magento project for me is: discovery, design, development, migration of existing content & products, initial setup. 5% or so on top of that for project management, plus a couple of hours training.

See, as an amateur to 'the biz' (web) myself, I too wouldn't understand where you get your figures from, i.e. "What exactly IS involved in creating a web campaign from scratch?"

 

What's more worrying nowadays (to the self-employed web PRO) is that THE WORST "web developers" can be found left, right and centre (usually, and unfortunately, the top/page 1 of Google Search--if they know a smidge about SEO). I know I, personally, only check the first page of Google after I've typed in key words--anyone on the following pages is obviously no good (<<< NB general opinion of a web user), so now you're competing with amateurs who (like me, sorry!) have realised web communication is "the future" so they're/we're all jumping on the band wagon and--in its simplest/quickest/easiest form--doing a quicky online DreamWeaver course (a friend of mine did this... the results were not so aesthetically/ergonomically pleasing) who will then offer their services at next-to-nothing. To the unbeknown eye (i.e. people who don't understand the graft that actually goes into a decent web campaign), they will laugh at your quote because they "don't get it". £2k--at the end of the day--is a lot of money to part with. I have absolutely no doubt the results would be worth it, but you've gotta make sure you're dealing with the right people/people who know their (your) stuff.

 

Here's an example of the p*ss-taking customer: I used to paint wall murals for a living; I'd put a custom design together in Photoshop using a room template I'd designed; I'd print out a 2D picture on A4; freehand copy the image in pencil onto the wall, then paint the outline with a fine brush, then fill in the colours/shading etc. As you can imagine, this took A LOT of time. I had to accept £40 for 20 hours work once--not because it was shoddy (honest!), just because they had no clue of the work/effort involved (and I, obviously, am a shocking sales person!). Their excuse was they "could have got a wall sticker from B&Q for the same price". NOTE: I don't paint wall murals now!

 

THIS ^^^ is the climate we are in. A HELL OF A LOT of people don't appreciate the graft/technique we artists/specialists have to offer. We should not work for these people, but 'these people' require our services just as much as the pro's (corporations). You've gotta make sure that not only your clients but YOU understand your worth. Itemise it all (inc hours) for your customer. Treat them like they're stupid (most are). If they're not worth it, they'll get the gist and refer to the numpty who read a book. Leave the plebs to deal with the plebs. We aint no fools!! NB I'm not American! I just like to make sure I'm down with the kidz!

 

Honestly... "People"... I despair!

 

That probably hasn't helped whatsoever, I just wanted to get my two penneth worth!

 

Good luck!!!!

At the end of the day everyone's a cheap skate and will try to get what they need for as cheap as possible, myself included!

 

However what is lacking in the average client is an understanding of what we do as developers/designers and who can blame them? Going by the amount of 'how much do I charge for this website' topics, neither do we.

 

I've noticed a decline in the amount of clients who reckon they can get everything for nothing, the education seems to have filtered out to them and many understand that for a worthwhile site they need to budget correctly. However, as I mentioned above, it's roughly one in ten clients who have this understanding.

Actually, some of the worst offenders for wanting things free from web designers/developers can often be those who are from the same industry (or who reckon they are)

Edited September 5, 201115 yr by oakleaves

If I got and find a client myself I will not start work for anything less than my months income as the type of client I want is a month by month project anyhow. I have a price bracket where I design for developers ONLY or the occasional one I'll do a .psd direct for a customer based on the same rate. It covers a days work more often than not but when I figure I need X per month and I bring in 20 .psds jobs per month minimum based on £255 for 2-3 pages then it works out nice enough income for me.

 

That being said end of the month if I want to treat myself and the wife to a meal out I will pitch for a job thats worth a couple of hundred quid and thats once and a while.

I love the awesomely detailed enquiries that I get like this;

 

How much for a website?

 

I could cry every time I get one of those fantastic enquiries!

i do websites for 50p upwards so can you lot please send the requests through to admin@bkwebdesignandhosting.co.uk

 

cheers

I once had a dealership ask me to redesign a site for them all they done was sell high performance cars with price tags of £50,000+ they offered me £200 I asked if they would let me buy the CLS they had there for £100 and put the other £100 in the tank and we can call it quits. I never got the job sadly

i do websites for 50p upwards so can you lot please send the requests through to admin@bkwebdesignandhosting.co.uk

 

cheers

 

ive amended my spam folders fwd email

i do websites for 50p upwards so can you lot please send the requests through to admin@bkwebdesignandhosting.co.uk

 

cheers

 

I do websites for upwards from 50p. Quite a considerable 'upwards'.

What do I get for 50p? I'll turn on my computer......

You can't even buy a can for 50p no more!

You can't even buy a can for 50p no more!

 

No its 3 for a £1 = 33.3333333 designers got no hope in hell for getting 50p for turning on a computer

 

As if you needed any more proof survey of 50p designers taken start of aug

Edited September 5, 201115 yr by pandadoodle

What do I get for 50p? I'll turn on my computer......

 

It costs me more than that in electricity to turn on my desktop!

It costs me more than that in electricity to turn on my desktop!

 

--snip--

 

I live in Scotland...

I'm sure if you spend enough time watching the shopping channel Mike you could find a exercise bike to USB 2.0 adapter to power your computer

Not just me then with these crazy client requests!

I handed a site over on Saturday after I had to wait an extra 3 days to be paid because he sent the paypal money to the wrong address... and I put an extra hour making a tutorial showing him how to upload the site then he changed his mind and asked me to do it when I wanted to do that in the first place...

 

Sunday afternoon I get a email saying he has broken the site - he was trying to "rename the links for google..."

 

He then insists I have to fix the site. I say OK.

 

I then quoted him for 2 hours to re-upload the site and change the links (which I would have done when I made the site if he asked...)

 

He then called me a robbing rapist c***...

 

WTF is wrong with people

He then called me a robbing rapist c***...

 

Jesus. I've never been called that before... well not as a web designer. I normally reserve those nicknames for my mates down the rape club...