[consulting] Drupal web design as hobby - shall I start consulting?

[Sam Plett]

What you are suggesting is exactly how I do it.  I just tell them that they
can go ahead and purchase the hosting themselves if they want (I prefer this
actually because then they get billed directly and I don't have to send an
invoice every year) but many people don't do this as they don't know how to
do it.  The way I cover it is by saying that I am just facilitating the
purchase for them but that I am in no way responsible for the hosting
itself.

That being said if you have a customer that is smart enough to know about
uptime then they are probably smart enough to know how to sign up for
hosting themselves.

You talk about charging $X/hour to fix hosting problems.  I can't say I have
ever come across this because the hosting is not my responsibility but you
could definitely include this in your contract.

On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 6:36 AM, Alexei Malinovski <alexei at malinovski.org>wrote:

> 2010/8/14 Sami Khan <sami at etopian.net>
>
>>  >
>> > Q3: Site maintenance
>> >
>> > What are the components of site maintenance(hosting&support)? At least I
>> > see
>> > following
>> > - End user training how to use CMS
>> >
>> > - Hosting cost
>> > - Regular drupal and modules upgrade
>> > - End user support if they have questions or messed up something
>> > - Doing regular site backup (automatically)
>> > - Recovering site from hacker attacks/spam etc
>>
>> Most of this work is not very profitable, avoid if possible... If you have
>> to do it, make sure it's in the contract.
>>
>
> So we have here:
> - I expect Customers to require hosting to be included since they are non
> technical people.
> - I do not want to mess with hosting being responsible for uptime etc.
> since it is not profitable for me.
>
> What about following idea. I offer to Customer to create hosting account
> for them and pay for it while they cover the cost. At the same time they
> should agree  that I'm not responsible for up time, possible hosting errors
> etc. In case they have such problems I will fix them for a price X
> Euro/Hour.
>
> Advantages:
> 1. Customer doesn't need to mess up with hosting company
> 2. This might bring me some work later on when Customer needs to do
> something with site.
> 3. I'm not responsible if hosting is down.
>
> Disadvantages:
> 1. If hosting is down Customer will immediately contact me to solve it. So,
> I play role of a middle man here transferring messages Customer<->Hosting
> back and forth. But what if I'm not available?
>
> Has anyone tried this approach?
>
>
>
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-- 
Sam

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