The Perils of Cheapskating
I have a client for whom, many years ago, I put a site together very cheaply as a favour. It did well on Google and was updated regularly. Unfortunately, the client now expects to have everything done at ‘el cheapo’ rates. He went off and had the site redesigned a couple of times and the latest attempt is quite good.
He contacted me after hours recently out of the blue and asked me to look at another website of his and what would I charge to do it properly this time. Here is therefore another problem. He has spent some cash on this thing and either is not satisfied with it and/or b) the designer has got fed up with his demands but consequently, in addition to having everything done cheaply, he is reluctant to spend a single cent on this thing.
‘How much would you charge to finish this off?’ - it’s only three pages but needs a setup etc. ‘Oh and by the way, I need Flash’ - well, how much and where? Would it be just a slideshow? - Yes but go to this site to see. So I visit the site and there’s a full blown Flash animation on the header. ‘But this is not a slideshow” - ‘Yes, but I want something like that’.
So, you want a nice site? ‘No, I want a perfect website’.
Well, that’ll cost more for the extra work.
‘Oh, and I need the logo redesigned’.
That’s more work.
“Oh and finally, I need a business card’.
You see the tactic here? It’s to trivialize what is a fair sized job and then argue the toss about the quote for such a piffling job. This character is the only one who tries to beat me down and he does that because I did him a favour years ago.
“You see my other site? It only cost RX,000′.
Well why don’t you go back there then I think, the site’s not too bad. So, I think what has happened there is that they underquoted, got beaten down and then peppered with requests so that now they have quoted some huge figure.
I’ll send him a quote and then within ten minutes there will be a call to try and beat me down. He may succeed but the quote will be adjusted upwards accordingly before he gets it. Incidentally, he is the only client who, the day after his site was put up, complained that he couldn’t see the thing on Google.
The moral to this tale is ‘Don’t underquote’. What you do has value which is translated into the quotation and the client needs to understand that. If it is too much for them, they must go elsewhere.