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@mcfly Except most of my clients were not millionaires. They were struggling souls like I am, just trying to start and grow a business. I've never been able to break into larger businesses with bigger budgets because at that level they've already hired their own developers and designers. I actually enjoyed helping people grow something from nothing. Perhaps I played myself there. But you'd think that people starting a new business would be open to the idea that they have to put their skin into the website game. Take out a business loan to cover what it actually costs a developer to create and maintain a site and not assume that just because GoDaddy offers them a domain and "hosting plan" for a few hundred bucks that the design and development will/should be the same. Getting hosted is cheap. Getting a website live is not.
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I will probably never do this type of business again, but if I do, my FIRST question will be "what's your budget" and if it's less than my threshold, I will politely decline the work right then and there, telling them I don't do this work for less than "X" (which will likely be in the 5 figures) and it'll probably be considerably more once we begin to flesh out the requirements. If they come back with that amount, then I'll know they're serious. If they don't, at least I won't get screwed. But I'll probably never get any business thanks to stupid drag-and-drop website builders and cheap overseas labor.
After years of only breaking even or low profitability BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE CHEAPSKATES WHO THINK WHAT I DO IS EASY AND SHOULD BE FREE OR $5 OR WHATEVER AND FRIENDS I DID WORK FOR FOR FREE TOTALLY ABANDONED OUR FRIENDSHIP AFTERWARDS FOR STUPID MISUNDERSTANDINGS ON THEIR PART I closed down my web dev business and now focus only on full time employment. I don’t even do sites for friends anymore.
But did that stop people who before wanted to haggle prices from now BEGGING me to go back into business or to help their referral or to please-pretty-please just help them with one more problem?
Nnnnnnope!
And even now I hate disappointing people and telling them no even though I know they’ll have tiny budgets and will stall and delay and not deliver content or make decisions so I can finish and GET PAID.
WTF IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? WTF IS WRONG WITH ME?! AND WHERE WERE ALL THESE OPPORTUNITIES WHEN FEWER PEOPLE WERE INTERESTED IN MY SERVICES?!
rant