Forum Moderators: mack
I'd really appreciate some opinions on this; I'm not sure if I'm just over-reacting or if the client is really acting like a leech.
I'm working on my first paying job and am having a bit of trouble with what the client expects from me. The original job was to redesign a simple 8 page website (new layout, custom graphics with rollovers, basic search engine submission, make it more search engine friendly, and add a flash enhanced search feature that ties into a database). The agreed upon price was $500usd.
The project has increased to over 30 pages and the client wants it to rank in the first couple pages of google under a VERY common search word for a very common business. During the several trips I've made to her office for meetings I've installed software, scanned images, transferred photos, set up e-mail filters, and now she expects me to help with setting up new e-mail accounts and transferring them to the other computers in her office. (These accounts have nothing to do with the website.)
The extra pages weren't so bad and I didn't mind helping out with a few things in her office, but I'm at my wit's end on how to get her rankings that high in google. The site is light on content and when I suggested she create some articles for her users she assumed I would write them. When I told her that I didn't have the background or qualifications for that she got annoyed and insinuated that I was trying to cheat her out of work I was being paid for.
I don't want to alienate her as a client; I think she would be a good start at networking. However, this one site (which should have been finished over a month ago) is really starting to eat into the time I set aside for other projects. Are the above common tasks for web designers to perform for a client? If not, how do you say no?
Sorry for the long post; I'm just going a bit crazy. I don't know what to do...
Top rankings? That is not submission which is all the leech is paying for. You did not offer her SEO services, she did not originally request services, nor has she paid for any. She has not paid for SEO for one competitive search term, much less for super competitive for a whole site.
She paid for 8 pages with submission? She needs to pay for all those extra pages.
This is called project creep and it's anathema. Do you have a contract or *anything* at all in writing indicating the original specs agreed to? A proposal you gave her or even email? Anything?
If not you will have to send her in writing, something affirming what the original agreement was, even if it was verbal, and request more funds for additional work, which were not contracted for originally, even verbally.
>>how do you say no?
You don't have to. Tell her what it will cost and get paid up front, or in the case of computer work at her place, get a check for the services while you're there.
Also - do you do SEO, have you ever done SEO?
I know that doesn't help you in this particular case since it's gone too far already, but if you can learn from this and apply it to future projects at least you can try to stop it happening again.
oh and BTW ...welcome to WebmasterWorld
- If you didn't say the extra pages were free, then bill for them. At a pro-rated rate, 22 additional pages would be $1,375. Maybe give her a break and bill her $1400 for the entire 30 pages.
- If you didn't say the extra office help was free, then bill for your time. Pick an hourly rate. Determine the number of hours spent. Then do the math.
- If you didn't promise a high Google rank in your initial offer of $500, then explain the amount of time that will be required (at your hourly rate) to achieve that ranking in a very competitive segment. Explain that it may also require additional investment by the client in the form of paid links or other paid arrangements.
- In the future: Provide a written estimate to the client that details the work that will be done. Include a statement to the effect "This estimate only pertains to the work explicitely described within this estimate. Although any work not described herein is not included, the following items are specifically excluded: All 3rd party software, domain registration, hosting, blah, blah, blah.
Welcome to WebMasterWorld AND also to the school of hard knocks!
Also. Don't be afraid to send a bill for what you've already done, especially if it's recent. There's no reasonable way she would think that it was all included. IMHO, she knows exactly what she's getting away with!
[webmasterworld.com...]
It's long, but it's a good read and there is a lot of info there that will help with your situation.
He was also paying a reasonably low-amount for the work I was doing (<<100), and I wasn't that happy doing it.
But luckily I had made him sign a contract before I even got to work, and so did he.
After a while, I told him that he's making me do far more than what had been agreed, and it wasn't fair for me to do that. Fortunately, he agreed. He payed me the rest, and I was outta there :)
Sid
Thank you so much for all the feedback; it's a huge relief to know this stuff isn't standard. I could never make it freelance if it was. I wish I'd found this board earlier; it would have saved me a truckload of frustration.
Do you have a contract or *anything* at all in writing indicating the original specs agreed to? A proposal you gave her or even email? Anything?
I did type out a list of services that we had agreed upon at the initial meeting. (basically the same list as above) I gave her a copy and kept one myself, but it wasn't anything formal like a contract - no signing or stipulations pertaining to additions or changes. I'm not sure if it will help, especially since I've already gone so far over the original list without billing her extra.
Also - do you do SEO, have you ever done SEO?
No, not really. I didn't even know what SEO stood for until recently. I've done quite a bit of research into SEO in the last month or so and I think I have a pretty fair understanding of what goes into it; enough to know that I definitely don't have the skills to promise any top rankings in google.
The site actually was listed with google before I started on it, it was just so low it would never have shown up. The site has risen much higher in the rankings than it was before the redesign; previously, it was buried about 3 layers deep in unneeded frames (which made it completely unviewable in anything but IE), it had no descriptive page titles and meta tags were nonexistent. I've managed to raise it to first on google using the company's name as the search phrase but it still isn't anywhere near top rankings using any other words. Certainly not the ones she wanted to rank under. There are just too many other high quality sites with the same business.
When the client started wanting such high page rankings I tried looking around for companies or services to refer her to for SEO. However, the price ranges were above what she was willing to pay (cheapest was $300 and seemed a bit iffy). Does anyone have any advice or recommendations on finding a good service for SEO? How do you know if they're solid or just promising something they can't deliver?
I really appreciate all the wonderful advice from everyone. I'm not sure if I can bill for the office work already done but any future help will have a price tag attached. I'm definitely going to try billing at least a minimal fee for the extra pages. I just have a bad feeling that it won't be paid. But maybe it will shock them into realizing it is extra work. This has been a good learning experience, if a bit unpleasant.
Digitalv - Thanks for the link. I skimmed over a few pages and it will definitely be a big help. I'll read it thoroughly when I get the chance. I searched for information on contracts/proposals on this board, too, and found a bunch of excellent information. This message board is a gold mine of information.
Leosghost - No way do I want another client like this one. Looking on the bright side, I did get one great project from this mess. They're super clients and I'm already finished with their website, which they seem very satisfied with. Working with them was what got me questioning all the extra work from my first (and current) job.
:) Web Design - We'll take care of ALL your unrealistic goals and needs for one flat low fee payable at your convenience!
[edited by: mack at 2:07 pm (utc) on June 19, 2004]
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:) Web Design - We'll take care of ALL your unrealistic goals and needs for one flat low fee payable at your convenience!
*laughing in fellowship* I'll bet we've all been there done that at least once. And now we all know what not to do next time!
Leech is a REALLY polite word for the client described btw. I would sincerely hope that she's not cloned over and over - NO ONE needs that sort of dreck. Though as a learning experience, she may have been priceless, y'know!
[edited by: mack at 2:09 pm (utc) on June 19, 2004]
[edit reason] Domain in quote removed. [/edit]
I resent them a (template) step by step configuration guide that i wrote for all my design clients about 3 years ago.
-> "Still doesn't work. something is wrong with the website."
I tried to talk to them through the steps on the phone.
-> "Still doesn't work. something is wrong with the website."
Are you sure you doublechecked everything?
-> "Yes, but still doesn't work. something is wrong with the website."
It's not the website, because I just logged in.
-> "Please come and show us - because we did everything you said, but t."
Okay, but I am going to charge you $75 dollars if there's nothing wrong with the site.
> incoming mail server: eaxmple.com
hmm... shouldn't this be example.com?
-> "Oops."
Time away from my desk, plus 30 previous minutes of email and phone support, plus taking my car out of the parking garage, going to your office, and driving back, parking and then back to the office?
Sorry, a deal is a deal.
Sorry, a deal is a deal.
Always beware project creep. If billing lags very far behind the clients extras, the client can put the designer under their thumb pretty quickly. Being a nice guy and letting the first few extras get in free or cheap sets PRECEDENT, which the unethical client will exploit without mercy. It may be one or two of this or that the first time, but once done they will hit you with it again and again. Soon that free or cheap extra will be mounting losses for the designer.
Being a nice guy and letting the first few extras get in free or cheap sets PRECEDENT, which the unethical client will exploit without mercy.
One tactic I have used when deciding that I won't charge for something is to give them an invoice with the charge on one line and an equal credit on another line item. It makes it clear to them the value you have provided. And by putting it into the context of an invoice, they also realize that such service normally comes with a fee.
Now, when I did SEO I *definitely* had a contract, because clients' expectations about SEO are often really unreasonable, and because I was offering a money-back guarantee so I had to stipulate the terms under which I was considered to have failed.
Another thing, remember that you don't *have* to refuse service just because it wasn't in the contract. If a client only calls or emails 2-3 times a year for something outside their scope but which I can help them with and make them happy, I generally do so. It's value-added, and I keep that client forever. They won't go elsewhere even if they could save a dollar or two, because who would help them when they got stuck?
My most unreasonable design client: She was paying me $75/mo. to maintain her site and make minor changes to it. One day she says she wants a map of the whole world, where users can click any continent to drill down to a map of that continent, and then from the continent map click any individual country or U.S. state to limit the geography for the search they were doing. I calmly explained that if I spent 10 minutes on each of the 243 states and countries that we were looking at over 40 hours of work, or less than $2/hr. The funniest part about this is that her database was tiny, maybe 200 records, almost none of them outside of Austin, Texas, not worth searching geographically.
To be a good sport I offered to build her system slowly, adding a handful of countries/states every month. But she declined, and fired me not long after. Good riddance.
written record of what we agreed on via email correspondence.
but I'm at my wit's end on how to get her rankings that high in google. The site is light on content and when I suggested she create some articles for her users she assumed I would write them.
It's in my experience very hard to make some clients grasp that the words that appear on a website do not just magically show up as part of the design package, this is a very common misconception I believe, and getting the client focused on creating this content is probably one of the biggest stumbling blocks I have when starting a new website project.
Expecting top positioning in google is also a natural desire, but shows that they have never looked at the results closely. It can be helpful to point out that when you type in 'my widget' in the google search box, there is this number that shows up in the results, like 130,000 results returned for this phrase, of which 10 are on the first results page.
You have to educate them as to the difficulty of getting their website into that top 10 position, it's not random, it takes work, a lot of work, and that work isn't free. Read the Content writing and copywrite section of WebmasterWorld to get a sense of what that work is worth, then read the google news sections and the search engine promotion sections to see the skill levels required to be able to offer these results.
To get a solid idea of how much work it takes to get this kind of success, read brett tabke's thread on how to make your site a success in 12 months [webmasterworld.com]
Personally, I offer tech support to clients, it's just good pr, and doesn't take me that much time, with one I ended up just creating a monthly general support fee, which is nice.
MichaelBlueJay: LOL, if you hadn't said texas I'd have thought we had the same client....
I know in my case, I have been running a Google campaign using a general keyword and the cost in keeping us #1 outpaces my salary by a wide margin. Yet even with this, when we have occasionally slipped to #3 or so, I hear about it from the man at the top.
In one meeting we had on the subject, I respectfully submitted that for the price they were paying to be #1 in Google, they could just go out and hire another ME, and pay him more. This other me could devote all his/her time to building our web in such a way that we could drive much more traffic to our site through straight search results than Google Adwords ever could, and not drive our Finance Department crazy with massive invoices that have no P.O.!
This was one rare instance where our President was at a loss for words in a meeting... ;-)
But relating to your situation (and the situation of all webmasters who get recruited for SRO) -- if you consider what they're willing to pay for their sponsored ads vs. how tight fisted they are with what they're paying YOU, you tend to get hard nosed about billing/salary issues real fast.
