RE: Grrr!! Do-it-yourselfers!

Rolling over on the floor laughing so hard my dawg thinks I am almost dead.

NEVER give anything away for free ('cept 'n a church 'lection plate)!

Walter

PS (raise your rates to almost double for ANYTHING you do for this selfish
jerk.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org
[mailto:owner-hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org]On Behalf Of Mike Kear
Sent: Saturday, August 25, 2001 11:45 PM
To: hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org
Subject: Grrr!! Do-it-yourselfers!


AAARRGH!!

I spent a total of 6 and a half hours so far with a client, talking about
his business, his ideas and how they can be made into a web business. It's a
lot of time to invest in a small project but I figured it was worth it.

We had pretty well agreed that I was going to be paid with a percentage of
revenue from his site.  I was pretty sure he's going to sell a lot of
product.

We were just working out the paperwork - I was drafting up an agreement
based on our discussions.

Then he stunned me last week by saying he had got a copy of a free html
program.  "I'm surprised how easy it is.  There's nothing to it!" he said,
in all innocence.  I said nothing at the time but this morning (Sunday
morning at crack of dawn I should add!) he called me and said "Mike I've
done it -  I built the site all by myself and there was nothing to it!  A
piece of cake!"

I'm afraid I am not in the best mood at near-dawn on Sundays and I got
bitchy.  I said "well I'm pleased for you.  Looks like I wasted my time
keeping up with all the techniques and trends, and becoming professional at
building web sites, learning what works and what doesn't. I should just hire
you to do all my work for me, you know everything about it."

Not a good move in customer relations but it did feel good to hear him gulp
and realise he'd offended me. (We both know he's going to need help with his
site).  I agreed to have a look at his site for him, he hopes I'm going to
give him a nice long list of things that could use improvement, but I'm
afraid he's mistaken.  He pays me cash money for any word of advice he gets
in future.

I went and had a look at the site and as you'd expect, it works, in the
sense that the links work, and the images are there, but there are so many
holes in his strategy for the site and it looks like what it is ... an
amateur on his very first attempt at a web site.

The last word on his phone conversation gave me shudders.  "Now I just have
to work out how to do on line credit cards and I'm in business."   Should be
interesting - we don't allow third party tags on our sites and he doesnt
even have a merchant facility.   I can see him getting into a pickle over
that and I'll have to get him out of the trouble.

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks.
http://afpwebworks.com


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