[consulting] Lowball offers

[Roshan Shah]

One way we handle this situation is giving range of hours v/s price. For
smaller projects the rate is very high. For mid projects, the rates are bit
low and for larger projects we have rates even lower.   With all our long
term partners, the rates are nearly 40% of what we charge direct clients.

Start-up and Shutdown costs on smaller projects are very high cost to a
company and hence we have this approach.

We also charge a $100/hr+ rate for On Demand Support from our existing
clients on live production issues and about $200/hr for similar service to a
customer who is not having existing relationship with us.

In all cases - we walk away from the project if delivery expectations are
unrealistic or if the effort in hours v/s price doesn't fit in the price
range we have for those hours.

Most clients think that project management, building simpletest suite,
training, documentation, deployment, setting up SVN, deployment, server
tuning is a part of service.

We explictly have assumptions that cover this. i.e 10% for project
management. Others we exclude.

We are based out of India. The point I am making here is that it doesn't
matter where you are based out of. If you can deliver solid product, you out
to charge rates for your expertise.

Roshan
http://www.gloscon.com

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 6:19 AM, Liam McDermott
<liam at intermedia-online.com>wrote:

> On 11-03-22 03:32 PM, Tom Geller wrote:
> >> this problem will not go away.
> >
> > Is it really a problem? If these lowballers do a bad job, you'll get
> > the work eventually -- with a better-educated client. If they do a
> > good job, that means the market has shifted, and the rest of us are
> > charging too much.
>
> It seems that what people are worried about is the exchange value of
> Drupal services falling below the subsistence wage in their area.
>
> Glibly saying, 'You're charging too much.' is cold comfort when a
> person's livelihood is in danger.
>
> Not that I necessarily agree with the OP, just thought I'd point out
> that this sort of reaction is not unexpected and saying people need to
> lower prices, when they cannot afford to, is not a solution. :)
>
> Kind Regards,
> Liam McDermott.
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> consulting at drupal.org
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>
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