[consulting] Gouging Stupid Clients

[James Porter]

The best thing to do is set a policy such as a minimum charge to do
something. For instance your policy could be that you never charge
less than an hour. As long as you are up front with what your policy
is, then it's their fault if they don't bundle tasks together that
require a full hour. Never bill for time you didn't use, if you are
"efficient" at what you do then increase your hourly rate. That's why
some of us make more than others. I personally don't have a lot of
time to devote to my freelance work, but I am very good at what I do
and very much in demand. So I have a high hourly rate to keep demand
in check with my availability.

On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 10:26 AM, Fred Jones <fredthejonester at gmail.com> wrote:
> OK the subject is exaggerated--that was just to get your attention. :)
>
> I recently spoke with a client who told me his woes about how he had
> to wrestle a site away from unscrupulous site builders who built and
> hosted it and charged exorbitant fees for any change to their
> (hard-coded HTML) site. He was looking for assistance with his new
> rebuild in Drupal. According to what he claims, I think his
> organization was gouged previously.
>
> Now I have a client myself who has no understanding whatsoever about
> what I do. When they ask for a change (and I even ran a training
> session with them (twice) to tell them how to do little things
> themselves, but anyway they like to ask me) they ask how much time it
> will take and what's the price. Usually I say it looks like a half
> hour job and so I will charge you for a half hour. I don't want to
> discuss rates here, but let's just say my rate is 100 Yen per hour. So
> I charge them 50 Yen.
>
> But I realize now that if I would say two or even four hours, I am
> fairly certain they wouldn't flinch, and even if they did, I could
> whip out a few big words and explain why it's complicated and they
> would accept that. They would then pay me four hours for a half hour
> of work. So what I could do, to be honest, is to say, "This will cost
> 400 Yen" and not mention that it's a half hour job. They don't really
> care about the time--just the price.
>
> I'm sure others have such clients.
>
> I'm wondering what others think about this. On the one hand, it may be
> unscrupulous, because no one (not even Lullabot) takes 800 Yen per
> hour. On the other hand, however, they are willing to pay 400 Yen for
> this job and the business majors would say "don't leave money on the
> table." Wouldn't' they?
>
> Fred
> _______________________________________________
> consulting mailing list
> consulting at drupal.org
> http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting