In any case - I am one of the many here that consider the objection to discussing prices as political censorship gone mad. It's not difficult to get prices from someone if you need them - just send an enquiry under a fake name and address! With my other hat on - as a Health and Safety Consultant - I publish a leaflet with my prices in!!
Peter MacGregor
At 20:37 05/10/2003, you wrote:
At 10/5/2003, you wrote:Also would you be willing to share more information on your 2 web site package deals--who you targeted with each, what were the differences between them, your pricing structure and how this compared to other local Web site providers (were you selling low cost, fixed price, guaranteed delivery in a week or some other benefit as the main hook and how did this compare with your competition's offering).
As I mentioned in a previous message, prices in different parts of the world vary. So even if it were allowed, giving you MY prices here wouldn't be all that much helpful to you. I was able to charge nearly twice what I do now when I still lived in the Monterey area. I can almost guarantee that our prices are the highest in our area, but they are still considerably lower than places like New York, LA, San Francisco, Miami, etc.
So, my advice on pricing is this...
If you are establishing a business, find out what your competition is pricing and charge less. That's what we did when we first started so that we could establish a portfolio and start getting people talking about us.
However, as soon as you possibly can, stop being the lowest price in town. It will get you established, but it will also bring in the "dregs" of customers. People who will argue every single nickle with you on their bills and demand that you provide more than they are paying for.
Also, don't be afraid to tell someone NO. I send potential clients packing all the time. As soon as I get a sense that they are going to be trouble, I give them a list of our competitors and send them out the door.
If you are better than your competition (if you're not, consider a different career), then raise your prices once you've built your portfolio. Market the fact that you provide quality service. Push it, hard. Having higher prices will seperate the cheapskates from serious customers interested in quality work and you'll have fewer problems over all.
Once you are established and doing well, increase your prices again and start demanding 1-third to 1-half of your fees up front. If your customer isn't willing to provide money up front, then they'll be a collection problem later and you probably don't want to deal with them.
For contracts under $1,000 we demand 50% up front. For contracts over, we demand one-third up front. I know that "demand" is a strong word, but we're not "asking" for the money up front, it's a requirement. We don't do any work without it.
After we did our first few real estate web sites, we decided that it was a lucrative market in our area (the local board of realty has over 4,000 registered agents in our county). I decided that we needed to offer a fixed price for a web site, so I did "market research".
MARKET RESEARCH is the key. Find out what your competition is charging and base your pricing on theirs. First, I visited every real estate web site listed in the phone book and noted which were good and which were bad (in my opinion). And I noted who created the site. I then visited the sites of the web companies who created the various sites and made a list of their prices and features.
With this information in hand, I created a list of features for our web sites and several prices to choose from. Since we outsource the "design" part of the site to a contractor (my wife and I aren't artsy people) and I had to make the price high enough that we could pay the contractor and still make money ourselves.
I am also one of those people who likes to provide "more value" than what you're paying for. We decided to join the local board of realty as an associate so that we could provide live MLS data to all of our clients. That way we wouldn't have to create a "management" system where they added/removed listings to their web sites manually. And the local board didn't support IDX (although the state board does support IDX, they're price was more expensive than joining the local board). So we are the only local web company that can provide live MLS data on our clients sites... a big selling point (and opportunity to charge a little more).
There is a LOT of competition in the real estate web market, so it's not something you can just jump right into unless you have an edge. But if you do have an edge, it can be pretty lucrative. I wouldn't try to compete on a national level, it would be too much work. But locally, we kick butt and the market is pretty large. <smile>
One other quick tip... As I mentioned before, I regularly send potential clients out the door with a list of our competitors. This has actually worked out to be an excellent marketing tool for us. I print up some post cards with our service guarantee on one side and our contact info and contact info of our competitors on the other side and I hand it out regularly.
You wouldn't believe the "shocked" look I get when I do this. I'm very polite and I tell them to give our competition a call and make sure to ask about their service guarantees (none of them provide any). And I let them know that if things don't work out, we'd be happy for them to come back. Most of them do.
More importantly, I don't trash my competition. Instead, I focus on what we do better. This has proved to be a really good sales technique for me.
--Dave
____ � The WDVL Discussion List from WDVL.COM � ____
To Join wdvltalk, Send An Email To: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Send Your Posts To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To set a personal password send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words: "set WDVLTALK pw=yourpassword" in the body of the email.
To change subscription settings to the wdvltalk digest version:
http://wdvl.internet.com/WDVL/Forum/#sub
________________ http://www.wdvl.com _______________________
You are currently subscribed to wdvltalk as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to %%email.unsub%%
____ � The WDVL Discussion List from WDVL.COM � ____ To Join wdvltalk, Send An Email To: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Send Your Posts To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To set a personal password send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words: "set WDVLTALK pw=yourpassword" in the body of the email. To change subscription settings to the wdvltalk digest version: http://wdvl.internet.com/WDVL/Forum/#sub
________________ http://www.wdvl.com _______________________
You are currently subscribed to wdvltalk as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
