Client Cancelled Project

Yes, you need to know the cost upfront.

However, please note that when you startup, you need to handle this slightly different. This is why I recommend offering packages that they can chose from (nothing fancy, just more/less pages). This will allow you to find what it would cost to make the design for what the package contain, then after add your hours/markup to get the total package cost.

Later when you get larger clients, the picture can get different as they have custom requests. But here as well, you need to review their requests, then provide at least an estimate before the project start. If the client want a quote, then make certain you increase the quote with at least 30% more, than what you believe it should cost, as it is quite normal at the start to be over optimistic on how long something will take to complete.

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so i should start out with something like this

Package One

  • 2 Pages
  • Custom Design
  • Hosting aviable ($30 a month)
  • $300 ( Deposit 50% Upfront)

Package Two

  • 3 Pages
  • Custom Design
  • Contact Page with Contact Form
  • Hosting aviable ($30 a month)
    $500 ( Deposit 50% Upfront)

Package Three

  • 5 Pages
  • Custom Design
  • Hosting $30 a month
  • Contact Page with Contact Form
    $700.00 ( Deposit 50% Upfront)

Package Four / CMS

  • Unlimited Pages
  • Hosting $30 a month
  • Wordpress Cms
  • Contact Page
    $1500 ( Deposit 50% Upfront)

Package Five / Online Store

  • Unlimited Products
  • Hosting $30 a month
  • Wordpress Cms
  • Contact Page
    $1700 ( Deposit 50% Upfront)

How do these packages look to you???

My first thought is that hosting of 30 dollars per month for a two-page site seems exhorbitant to me. If I were looking at your packages and only needed a two or three page site, I wouldn’t be happy at paying the same for hosting as someone with “unlimited” pages.

Just my opinion.

Also, you need to clarify whether the “contact page” is included in the specified number of pages, or is in addition to them.

Although, that might be he’ll create two custom pages for you (but you are more than welcome to add more of your own).

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Hi Yes i will For Packages 3 to 5 Yes the contact page is included in the deal for example

if you order package number 2 you get 3 custom pages with 1 contact page so 4 pages 3 of which can be any page you would like.

if this makes sense??

I don’t understand why you are working so hard to make a free website for someone who clearly has no respect for you considering your courteous gesture. if I could suggest an alternative. I would recommend signing up on upwork.com. There are a fair amount of people on that site looking for cheap, quick work that would probably be open to someone with little experience. You just need to find the right jobs. The nice thing is that there are a lot of jobs posted that require residents of the us that speak good english. So you won’t have to compete with Sudhir in India or third-world who is working for a cent an hour.

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hi zookeepr

yes it is somthing ill keep in mind regarding my plans whats your thoughts on them?

I think its a futile exercise to pigeonhole web projects into fixed prices. This is my perspective as someone who has only ever worked in-house and at an agency with large client accounts. The last account I worked on had a 3 million dollar budget. When working with small operations it probably makes sense to offer budgeted packages but I myself have never worked on small, low traffic websites. The whole concept of pricing per page always seemed to be flawed to me. I can see how it makes sense on static websites but on dynamic websites the whole concept of what constitutes a “page” becomes very blurry.

so for hosting on a small website how much would we be looking at? $10 a month for a 1 to 2 page website??

For the types of websites you intend on building I think any well-known shared hosting vendor would probably work. I’m not really up to speed with shared hosting costs these days. Most of the stuff I work on is either on a dedicated server or in the cloud managed by other teams responsible for infrastructure.

Well i have a reseller account with a reasonable host so i get recurring income

You need a reality check on hosting OP. There is hosting from FREE on up. 1and1 is less than a dollar a month. Godaddy starts at $2.99. I personally have a VPS account for 4 dollars a month which essentially is a dedicated server. You are just not going to make money hosting websites. Anybody that can google is not going to pay you 30 dollars a month to host their website. All your “packages” and pricing are severely out of touch. Spend your time learning actual skills that you can charge decent money for.

Hi,

Yes i am sure there are cheaper hosts out there cheaper than me. even free ones eg wix however some business owners to do or are not tech savy enough to sort out webhosting problems but if they are happy with me hosting it i am quiet happy to.

when i orginally spoke to this so called client he had no idea what hosting was so i kindly had to explain to him.

as for packages i had posted above maybe i can re-arrange my hosting fee.

@william232: I seem to recall you are not US-based, so when you mention dollars, I presume you don’t mean US dollars. If that’s the case, it might be a good idea to clarify, so we get a better idea of your actual pricing.

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Yes that is correct i am not based in the usa i am from new zealand

and what i have noticed all reseller accounts and vps hosting from new zealand webhosting companys are extremely expensive some hosts

example one local hosting company their smallest reseller plan comes with

25GB Disk Space
100GB Traffic
Host 25 Domains
for $30 nzd plus gst on top of that

so reseller hosting over here is every expensive.

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Is that $30 per month? If you’re hosting 25 small sites for that price, you could charge them $10 or $12 per month, and you’d be bringing in $250 or $300 per month, which seems a decent profit to me on very little work.

(I don’t host clients’ sites myself, so I don’t know what is considered normal in these circumstances. If I set up hosting for a small site for a client, I use shared hosting at the equivalent of about $45 NZD a year, including taxes.)

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I used to host clients sites and to be honest, I’d almost tell you to stick to $30. It can become a hassle as every little issue they experience, they call you, even if it isn’t remotely connected to your hosting (their internet being down, for example). You will at times feel like you are chasing nothing but little problems that either a) they created on their own, or b) are not a hosting issue.

If you have clients willing to pay $30, you only need a couple to make it worth your while, which lessens your stress level of 25 people contacting you throughout the week. When you have max potential, you might have enough income to higher a second person to take on those calls/support requests (also worth it).

Just my 2 cents, for what’s worth.

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One more thing. People will ALWAYS tell you, you are overpriced. However, those are the same people who fail to value the service you are offering to provide. There are a lot of people/clients who value someone local, that they can drive to (in case of emergency), or call, or text/email. They are willing to pay for that opportunity versus being with a large existing company where you have to submit a ticket, potentially wait a while (as your issue may be a low priority), or have no phone support or direct email support.

These are advantages you can take on, with a small set of clients and still continue to take on at max potential, if you hire the right person to answer those calls.

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yea one of the reasons i decided to get a reseller account as i know most of my client have no idea whats involved in having a website done so they would proabbly be overwhelmed to learn about new stuff arises if there is an issue or problem they cant fix.

William, just some things for you to think about.

The first is: cheap isn’t always the best, not for you, and not for your client.
Clients often see cheap as being cheap, hence they treat it as cheap. Charge them and they have more respect for your time/effort/work and appreciate what they are getting. And as stupid as it seems, the more you charge the smarter/special/important you make them feel.

I know some-one that lives and owns a business on the Gold Coast and this year they paid $4000.00 for a home page, $200.00 hosting per month, and they were charged every time they wanted the home page updated. Now that beats building websites for free. Sad part to this story is that this is my daughter. I guess it made her feel important/ special/ successful.

It is far smarter to create one website and charge $100 than it is to build 100 websites and charge $1.00 each. Think about it, you need to find 100 clients. Then there is all the time involved in producing a product for them. Then you are looking at keeping 100 clients happy, all for nothing, or $1.00 each, and that will quickly feel like nothing.

You live in New Zealand (I struggle to believe this is where you were born), you should have an unlimited account with telecom or vodafone, or whatever. If you really want to make money out of hosting, and have total control, set up your own server. You can have a good setup for just about nothing. I’m sure you would have friends/contacts that would help, if you really needed it. Now you can offer cheap hosting on trademe and it doesn’t need to be only for websites that you build.
You can even build some sites (complete with hosting) and sell them on trademe.

If I were to build a website for some-one my first questions would be:

  1. what does your business do
  2. Do you have a domain name yet.
  3. Can you provide me with some pictures/photos relating to your business.
  4. I will need a $250 deposit, is that a problem.

So lets say they are a New Zealand business, and they are called Pretty Underwear.
The first thing I would be doing is registering a domain name “prettyunderwear.co.nz”
I would then upload some kind of home page (just a starter) and send the client the link. As soon as they see their name in that url you are well on your way to having a client that will work with you. From there on you work with your client building the home page they want. I would also provide a link from the home page to a blog that already has their business name on it. If they dont want the blog then thats ok, its just a cheap template anyway. But its also another chance for them to see their business name on the internet. They didn’t ask for a blog, they didn’t even think about a blog, but you offer it as part of your service. They can either ignore the blog, or its something they can start using immediately to attract client attention.

Remember if they ever want to leave your hosting service, you own the domain name. That is the domain name all their clients know, what value does it have. Owning the domain name would be a good way of retaining clients.

Paying some company $99 to provide graphics for a year is a waste of $99. You need some-one that has an interest in providing what the client wants. Either team up with some-one on a 50/50 basis, or pay some-one to do the graphics for each project. Or learn it yourself, its not that hard.

Just some thoughts from some-one stuck in ChCh - New Zealand