How do you respond to enquiries for building Yahoo, Hotmail, EBay etc

how do u explain that success of a site isnt just technical

[Sobriquet]

We all have got enquiries like this, here and there.

Typically " I would like to get a site made like YAHOO.COM. Please let me know the minimum amount and the timeframe of the project. Earler I tried to explain to such emails about the scope of portals.

Today morning, once again, I have an enquiry in my mailbox to built similar to eBay.com and his own paypal service, asking to give the minimum quote and if i can complete it in 3 weeks?

Sometimes I dont even reply to such things, coz ebay, hotmail , yahoo etc are not 'made'. they are developed over a period of time. they are 90% data and data comes after years of work.

I still have a confused smile on my face reading it again.

I have noticed that atleast 60% or more such enquiries come from the saudi world.

What do you do in such cases? How do you reply.

[PatrickDeese]

I usually ask for a $1000 dollar "good faith" deposit in order to create a detailed proposal for these kind of dipsydoodle requests, otherwise I give them a proposal corresponding to the amount of time it appears it took them to compose the inquiry.

[Sobriquet]

the guy who asked this morning wanted to complete teh project in less than 750.00 .

whats more.. he wants a flash intro to teh ebay kidaa site too , included. lol.. lmao.

but yes, asking a $1000 for proposal making sounds an excellent idea. I shall mail him this one :

[Fischerlaender]

I know this kind of requests from my seo business. I got one client who tries to establish a dating site with nearly no budget at all - but of course he wants to rank #1 for all the keywords.

I learned from this experience: You really have to look very careful what kind of client to accept. Accepting the wrong clients can effectively ruin your business.