Buying My Time
Working as I do it's essential to have a daily/hourly rate to tell potential customers. Although mine isn't a set figure, as such, and can vary slightly from job to job I still have a rough figure I work from. As yet I've never been asked to justify this cost. If ever I did I think these two stories might help:
Building a simple website might take a week to do, but the client is paying for more than a week of my time. They are paying for the ten years experience I'm relying on to build it so well.
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Yeah. Been there before.
I had somebody come to me asking for a brand new website which matches fitness/workout partners for training purposes. "Sure," I said, "I can do that." "Oh", he said, "because you use Domino to do your work you can do it all in a couple of days can't you. So the cost would be about £200."
Needless to say I had to enlighten him, and by the time he realised exactly what he was asking for, it was well outside the budget he thought it would cost.
And for those who might think, "of course, I could just crank out a generic little clone of a template and charge the bloke £200", but would you then also want to put your name on it? Moreover, would you later want to support it, or work more at the rate you have now set with that client? Becasue they will expect you to work dirt cheap now, and the generic template that was produced void of good sense will come back to haunt you.
I don't usually go deep on cautionary tales, but this has been one I've seen in many fields in my life bite the unexperienced on the very greenness of their posterior. Often my own. :-O
One place I worked at, all the clients seemed to be the kind that Dragon alludes to. It's so nice not to be there any more.
BTW: is this a coincidence ... or have you been reading Malarkey? See {Link}
Great minds ... :-)
By the time you've written proposals, explained the details to the client, revised the specification (usually more than once) and then been asked to change it "a little bit" right at the end of the project, three days turns into nine quicker than the blink of an eye.
Clients are getting more realistic about the costs now though - particularly when you remind them how much a single page advert in a half decent local paper costs.
I guess you reach the point of saying, that's the cost, take it or leave it, because I'm worth the effort. I've had instances where the client have gone off and found a nephew etc.. who knows about websotes, only to come back six months later when not one enquiry has come in from the site - which doesn't work.
Onwards and upwards. :-)
Jake, you will remember CMIS with affection. We have just been asked what the rate per hour is for it. As we quote a fixed price for the entire service including the use of our intellectual property there is no hourly rate. 'But...' they ask 'what would it be if we wanted an extra hour's support?' As we have given a fixed price for an undefined amount of time the answer is zero if we stay late.