I’ve decided to change discount policies. There are two blanket discounts available:

Orange & Sullivan (NY) Chamber of Commerce members, and members of Business Exchange Network get a base 5% discount on Eclectic Tech’s easy-to-edit websites.

Child care professionals (including teachers, schools, and child care centers), holistic businesses & practitioners, organic businesses, and registered educational non-profits get a base 10% discount on Eclectic Tech’s easy-to-edit websites.

I’m extending a discount of 5% for any contract which is paid in full at contract signing. This discount is in addition to the discounts mentioned above. So for a chamber member to enjoy a 10% discount now requires payment in full up-front.

The discounts will no longer extend to other services or my hourly rates.

I’ve watched some very large contracts come through where chamber members would be getting a discount that is more than enough to pay for me to renew my chamber membership next year. I can’t sustain that level of discounting on my services, especially any services that are laborious and may not be furthering my overall goals in my business.

I’m sorry for any inconvenience. I will honor any proposals that have not expired, but the new policies will take place in any future or re-assessed contracts.

I’ve changed my prices on everything except my hourly rates, as promised.

Now I’ve gone and put a sale on blog additions to the Easy-to-Edit website package.

Whatever it is that you have to speak about, I’ve got the software to help you say it!

Watch the sale page each month for specials. Most specials apply to the Easy-to-Edit package, so get the base package before the price goes up hire — all my prices will slowly be escalating for the next several months, and proposal expiration dates will be strictly adhered to.

Attention to all customers:

June of last year I raised my hourly fees. This year, I’m going to change my package prices. I’ve priced some exceptionally attractive packages, but I’m losing time and money on the deals.

I’m going to phase in new prices incrementally over the next several months.

Starting February 1st, I’m going to raise all the package prices on the website and any new work proposals that go out will be at the new prices — and that raise in prices will be about 10% per month until approximately November. Proposals always go out with an acceptance clause (”prices are good if you respond within X days”), and starting February 1st, work proposal acceptance clauses will be strictly adhered to. If you call the next month, after your offer has expired, the price will go up.

I will extend a courtesy for proposals that expired in January: Any proposal that expires in January can be locked in at the old rate if you sign a project agreement and submit a deposit before February 15th. Proposals that expired before January need to be re-estimated. Deadlines will also need to be changed, and it will be reflected in your work proposal.

Any customers whose proposals expired before January should request a new proposal for their work. It will give my new proposal system a good test and keep me busy.

Money Saving Tips:

1. If your proposal or project agreement expired before January, request a new proposal or agreement and accept by February 15th or the expiration date, whichever is later.
2. If your proposal or project agreement expires in January, sign a project agreement by February 15th.
3. If you miss the boat, you’ll pay more.

Last month, at the Orange County Professional Women’s Network, we did an exercise about holiday stress, and how to relieve it. Many people’s answer to mall traffic and stress was “shopping online”.

I have a better idea: Shop Local Online.

I saw a Times Herald-Record article today about shopping local. I couldn’t agree more.

I have to remember to toss my e-commerce sites on sale around July-August next year, to have them ready by October-November. I might only be able to serve the first 20 or so clients, put up bare-bones undesigned sites, or I may have to hire a helper or three, but my goal, as always, is keeping the local economy thriving. I’ll come up with great ideas for increasing the economy locally, but everyone has to help me out.

If we can spend the next year in a concerted effort to get local businesses online, and find unique ways to deal with the crunch shopping period that seems to now start from Halloween preparations through January, we can pull some of that economy back into the region.

Anyone with more great ideas for how to help out the local economy, let me know. Meanwhile I have more and more ideas to unleash slowly over the next year or two.

Here are some great ideas: 1) Mention to local businesses when you would have chosen them to purchase from but you didn’t have the time or patience to do anything but online shopping. 2) Sponsor a local business’s e-commerce site! I can put a banner ad on the e-commerce site that points to your business’ site, you help the business pay for the site set-up and installation. A custom designed e-commerce site goes for $1000 and has space for 4-6 banner ads — think of that; an e-commerce site with up to 6 $100 ad spaces with ads running for a year can slice the price down to less than half! [Ed - this price is going to be going up over the year!] 3) Mention Eclectic Tech and my Shop Local Spree that will be starting next summer — I can start taking names on a waiting list for businesses that would get in on my sale before the sale begins! Heck, maybe I’ll have 20-30 sites lined up before the summer vacation! When I officially announce the waiting list, I’ll figure out how much the sale will be for ($100 off? maybe more! I only hesitate because e-commerce sites are really cumbersome projects that suck up a LOT of my time) [Ed - as of Feb 1st the plan is for $200 off on the base site, and more than half off non-product pages in July & August - with a complimentary sale for Easy-To-Edit sites with PayPal Buy Now buttons], and whether I require a small deposit to be on the list (like $50 non-refundable deposit?).

Ideally more than just gift-selling retails will want to get in on it, from a “Buy Now” button for a gift certificate on a normal site, through pizzerias and delis with website-to-fax order placing for deliveries. We just have to get creative. Give me ideas I can run with.

Criss

A bunch of things to quickly jot down. First, in response to my last blog post “The Check’s in the Mail” — it was certainly Murphy’s law at work, it took an entire week after that post for checks to start to come in. The day the first check came in I landed two new contracts for websites, along with the respective deposits.

On the subject of rain — apparently Orange County, NY doesn’t do rain halfway. Another few inches over these few days.

My business agrees with the weather — I had 12 incoming jobs (that doesn’t mean they’ll all go to contract, or all go to contract at the same time), two of which went to contract as I mentioned above, and one established client called me with several rush jobs. Feast or famine, but nothing steady! Yay!

I’ve been a networking fiend lately. You can find me at Orange County Chamber of Commerce events, BNI events, Orange County Women’s Professional Network events, Orange County Networking Alliance, Toastmasters, etc. Anyone in the area looking to network, I’d love to hear from you.

On those notes, I have some work to get through then I’ll have new information for my portfolio, clients page, etc.

Good luck out there!!

My Services page has been updated with some lower, and more explicit, pricing.

I had made a mistake when putting up the pricing for flat html design, and made it sound like it was $400 per page — now it specifically says that I am changing $250 and up per page design. So if you want a design for the homepage, and a separate design for “inside pages” it would be $500+ and a per-page fee for the inside page content.

I also corrected the costs for putting pre-designed designs into web applications, a few web applications are easier to template than others and their fees are listed separately.

I’m sorry if that caused anyone to panic and run

I’ve got a Google AdWords campaign going. It’s terribly addicting. I’ve been using it for a week, playing around with the ads, the bids, and the keywords. I knew all about AdWords, being a well-educated SEO techie web-admin-guru, but never had anything to sell, so I never bothered having an AdWords campaign. I’m not a shopping-cart kind of woman. Well, since creating the Comments (0)