Boy, can I relate to this....
I still have a hard time charging for my services, but have learned my
lesson when it comes to "I'll pay you later when I make money" pitches.
I have found a good way around this is to say something like,"I'd love
to help you, but I am swamped right now. I would be happy to put you in
touch with a web designer who has time for you."
The "site under construction" reminded me of good friends who were
realtors. I told them that I would love to do a website for them. A
couple of weeks later the wife told me that her husband wanted to use
me, but went with someone else who could put up a site "at 3 in the
morning with his eyes closed". Guess what? That was in 2003 and the site
still said "Page parked free courtesy of ....". I guess that forgot to
tell him *which* morning... :-)
Have a good weekend,
Riva
On 3/21/2008 2:13 PM, Conyers, Dwayne wrote:
Just a minor rant. I know that we all have had situations where friends and family have
requested our services for free. "Oh, you're a web developer. How about doing me a
favor, and..."
On the couple occasions where I agreed -- with the understanding that there
would likely be very little (or -- generally -- no) compensation or
remuneration for the task, I would typically grab a Dynamic Web Template from
my collection and give them a quick-and-dirty site in FrontPage. After all...
why spend hours coding for a freebie?
The last "favor" was for a friend who claimed negative cash flow but promised a
percentage of the profits from his business. Not in writing, natch, but a handshake deal.
Anticipating a nice payday, I spent hours building a feature-rich site with
lots of Flash, CSS and JavaScript. My friend didn't know what he wanted and
couldn't advise on look, feel or content. I just went at it; using graphics
and photo-models from my Hemera and other collections and wrote what I thought
was on-the-mark prose about his business.
Feedback was capricious at best. Replace the middle-aged models with younger
ones. Make the colors brighter. Make up text to get people to buy his
products (without specifying what products he would be selling). Put in a
shopping cart... But no, he doesn't have a bank to link credit card purchases
to. Handle that. And no, still no money available for my efforts.
I finally told him to take the CD I delivered to him and insert it (sideways)
into a choice orifice.
Latest word, he is now spending real money and hired a full-time "real" web developer --
and he is paying the guy megabucks to tweak and tweak the site to his every whim. It has been
nearly six months and his site is still "under construction" -- and I won't be holding my
breath until the date it is finally up and running.
Hmm... what was that Polonius said to Laertes in Hamlet?
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