Oct 21 2008
Spending More Costs Less in the Long Run
We recently had problems with the heating in our home. The weather is getting colder and this is when I noticed that adjusting the thermostat had no effect in warming my place. So, a jack-of-all-trades “expert” was called in to fix the problem. After three visits with parts being purchased and replaced, the problem persisted. In the end, a professional repairman was brought in and he fixed the problem in a few minutes. It was just a matter of cleaning the dust that was collected around the baseboard heaters.
Its amazing how fast someone with skill and experience can solve problems. We tend to want to save money by buying the cheapest products and services thinking that they can do the same thing that their more expensive counterparts can do. You need to waste money like this to learn an important lesson. A $30/hr carpenter costs less than a $10/hr one because he will do a better job and produce more reliable results than the lower cost wood worker.
Quality costs money. Quality tends to be directly proportional to price. The more you pay, the better the product or service. There’s a good reason why a Mercedes-Benz costs more than a Ford.
I get many requests from people to build them web sites. They’re very enthusiastic until they see what it would cost them. One customer said they couldn’t afford to spend $1700 on a web site, even though they just bought an $1800 digital SLR camera. Another person wanted a web site to sell their home. I quoted a price for a basic site for $500-$700. This seems to be too much for them since I haven’t heard back from them.
People don’t value web developers because what we produce isn’t tangible. Its not like building a table and charging $500. The desk is physically real and you can touch it and have dinner on it. A web site exists virtually on some server far away and you can only see it with your web browser. It seems to be worth less than the table, but building a dynamic database driven web site requires considerably more knowledge than learning how to build a table.
Clients with established and profitable businesses appreciate the skills of a good web developer and understand the value they bring to their business. Stay away from the wannabe with visions of becoming a dot com millionaire or having a successful web site overnight with little cost to them. They will just waste your time.
Nov 01, 2008 @ 18:30:07
Johan, I agree you here. Do you know also people think what they see on a website is just a minute of work. Tell me a better way to explain how much effort and expertise needed to create that functionality. Man, people also ask much more than what they initially signed for. Example, if you say i can get you a website having multiple forms on it and you can track your submitted information, in return they presume it to be a CRM System. What? Are they mad? Lot to say about those clients but let me just enjoy my work.