Picking & choosing clients

by Rachel Hartman <rhartman(at)io.com>

Date:	Wed, 05 Jan 2000 19:50:34 -0600
To:	"Majordomo(at)mail.hwg.org" <hwg-business(at)hwg.org>
	todo: View Thread, Original

First, sorry to anyone who was offended by any flames that were sparked by 
my post about spammers and web hosting.  And thanks to all of you who 
e-mailed your agreement on the importance of good customer service.

Now, there's another question that's been sort of banging around in my head 
lately, and hopefully it's a less inflammatory topic than spam.  Have any 
of you set up any formal or informal guidelines regarding the kind of 
clients you will work for?  Or do you judge on a case-by-case basis?

I dealt with this problem myself a few months ago.  The first instance was 
when someone asked me about doing an adult web site.  I'm not comfortable 
doing adult web sites, and I didn't want the headache of trying to find a 
web host that would agree to that kind of material being on their server, 
so I politely declined, saying that this wasn't the sort of thing we did, 
but thank you for e-mailing.  The second instance was a little less 
obvious--the guy wanted a site geared at college students, but the sites he 
listed as his models were places that either sold term papers or class 
notes.  Some people obviously have less of a problem with this than with 
adult sites, but I admit I'm the kind of snobby brainy kid who always did 
her own homework.  So again, I told him, "Sorry, we don't do this kind of 
site, and we recommend you go with someone who has experience in building 
these."

It started me thinking.  What kinds of sites would I never build?  I 
wouldn't build sites that conflicted with my own political or religious 
beliefs.  I wouldn't build sites that offended my personal ethics.  I'll 
probably handle these decisions on a case-by-case basis, rather than draw 
up a formal policy, but I'd be interested in hearing from others.

Rachel Hartman
--------------------------------------------
Rachel R. Hartman, Co-Owner
Hartman WebWrights - http://www.hww.com (512) 989-7844
Affordable, hand-crafted web pages for your company's needs

HTML: hwg-business mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA