[consulting] Gouging Stupid Clients

[Emma Irwin]

Not stupid clients - 'Trusting' clients.
Not gouging - 'Stealing'

Get your words right.



On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 8:26 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
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