Re: FN-FORUM Freelancer hourly charge rates

date posted 24th August 2000 14:38

OK, fair enough Peter ;-)

Though you'd be surprised at the amount of customers I have had who haven't
got any of the right equipment... They don't even have a full install of IE4
so they don't even have Frontpage Express, never mind Frontpage 2000.

It can be hard work explaining to some customers that they need a scanner,
some html software, an FTP client, some image processing software and some
clue how to use it.

I have had many estate agents as clients and many of them are running the
oldest, most unbelievably out-of-date systems. They are often incredulous
when you tell them all the stuff they need before they can start managing
their own web site.

I am always, always in favour of the customer administering their own web
site, wherever possible, so I am trying to persuade some of my customers to
get me to make them a back-end content management system so that they can
input new house details into a database via a web browser interface.

This is so that they can train new people how to do the web site updating
job easily and so they're not back at square one every time the member of
staff who does it leaves the company.

It's an uphill struggle though, as they don't want to pay extra to make
managing their web site as simple as they believe it should already be. A
large part of my job is surely just to manage clients' expectations. If only
that part would come right, most of the stress of the job would simply
disappear!

ruth arnold
spacehoppa.com



> The client will already have the hardware. They will probably have
> FrontPage as part of Microsoft Office. They have all the tools they need
to
> produce a basic site already. But we all know you need more than that to
> produce anything of any quality. The whole point of my email to Damian,
> though, was to point out that there are lots of people out there just
using
> Frontpage and their home PC and calling themselves web designers. So to
> increase the rate he can charge, he needs to set himself apart from them.
>
> Pete