If you’re in professional services of any type, where you have to put a price tag on your time, this definitely happens to you. If you are not, it’s likely you’re doing this to people delivering professional services to you.

Let’s look back, for a moment, to my post “Thank You For Your Time” — are you expressing gratitude to people for their one finite commodity, their time?

Service professionals in all industries struggle with the question of pricing. The actual real value of the dollar fluctuates constantly, the purchase power of each greenback gets weaker by the moment, housing, stocks, retirement savings plans, investments, everything around us is bouncing around like a yo-yo on a daily basis, but we need to have a snapshot fixed hourly or service-based rate that we can quote to people. Or perhaps today we’re sending out a 20-page proposal on a 6-month contract and trying to gaze deeply into our crystal ball and project our financial needs for 6-months + the period of time we’ll be looking for the next contract + padding for inflation and emergencies over 6 months, and oh yeah a profit margin so maybe we can actually advertise.

But for some reason, people have little or no respect for time — our one finite commodity. As they firmly grasp and push forward the hands of our lifetime clock, taking our time that we will never get back, the mechanisms screaming protest in clockwork agony, they hold onto their wallets for dear life. Money, however, is an asset that you can quite readily get. Ask any affiliate marketer, you can get a residual income for an up-front investment. That up-front investment, again, is time. But it will continually pay off, the check’s in the mail from the company paying you a commission. If you ask law of attraction aficionados money is ready to come to you in great quantities once you free yourself from disbelief and actually act on your dreams, fulfill your mission in life and STOP WASTING TIME by getting in your own way.

Even as they lengthen our lives with medicines, cybernetic enhancements, nanoprobes, and everything that the creativity of science can leverage against the Reaper, lives will still run out. We can squeeze only so much out of life before it is gone. With the caveat of a few people on ice awaiting immortality.

So why do people “leak minutes” on the boob tube? (I don’t) Why do we often commit sins of robbing others of their time and being stingy on the compensation? While we should come at this with an attitude of gracious thankfulness, instead we hang on to our wallet when someone is willing to leverage their expertise, blood, sweat, and most especially precious moments to further our cause. It’s perhaps one of the leading causes of burnout amongst the experts, since we always have to fight for the right to feed our families, insure our business, plan our financial future. Hear the sound of clients crying in agony, clinging to their wallets like we were ripping out their heart, when what they’re paying for is the ransom for saving them that one absolutely finite commodity — time.

If you could do it yourself, in less time than it takes you to make that money, and with the same quality, then you should do it yourself. What you are hiring is higher quality than you can produce, with less of a <cough> commitment <cough> of your time (remember: the pig is committed*), far less stress, and the ability to “set it and forget it” with regard to achieving the results you need. You decide what price that’s worth to you, and PLEASE save the expert a lot of time by telling us up-front if there’s a hard price limit on what that’s worth to you. We shouldn’t spend 5 hours writing the 20 page proposal if we can tell we’ll need over $15,000 to do the work, but your hard limit is $10,000.

Below is a video message that’s absolutely brilliant. I think it was meant to be funny, but I didn’t laugh. I thought I would share it to help you understand the patent ridiculousness of arguing with service professionals who have set their fees, or poured over your RFP to give you a quote.

Are you the victim or perpetrator? Enjoy:

Perhaps this can help change people’s attitudes? Here’s my wishful-thinking:

If you’re in need of an expert’s services…quit haggling. If you must, ask if the price is final, or if there’s budge room, but don’t whine if the quote is final. Perhaps removing a few unnecessary items from a quote will lower the price to an acceptable fee for excellent service. You can save precious minutes, or hours if you keep requesting revisions to a quote — both yours and the professionals. And if you’re more interested in price than the high quality of the professional who gave you the quote, ask: “Do you know someone who can provide a comparable service for $1000?” Cut to the chase. Everyone can save some grey hairs on the issue.

On the service person’s end: if you’ve poured over pricing and you think it’s fair — It Is! Quit letting customers haggle. If you really feel that you want to work with them, level with them: “What exactly are you willing to pay?” Then decide whether you can remove some items from the list of deliverables to bring it down to their price, but don’t compromise. If there’s no equitable solution cut your losses, reclaim precious minutes and walk away. Someone so willing to haggle over everything is going to be a source of pain for every moment while you’re on the job. If you lower your prices, you will resent doing the work. You shouldn’t charge money if your very best will be tinged with resentment or regret. Don’t low-ball yourself by jumping the gun and offering lower fees if the potential client hesitates. Just keep your trap shut and wait. Either they want you or they don’t want you: they’ll speak with their wallet.

*In the making of the average american breakfast, the chicken and cow are involved, the pig is committed.

I’m an unashamed pack-rat. It’s my doom, especially in a small home. It’s also occasionally enabled those odd moments of synchronicity to occur. Right now is one of those times. Being organized is exceptionally important, mind you. But I get stressed out when I go on the occasional tossing streak, because at the time I collected something, I probably had a reason for it, whether conscious or subconscious.

Flashback to something like 2-3 years ago, when I was frequently combing Craigslist for what was going on in the Hudson Valley. My eye was caught by an ad for massage space by the hour. On the surface, I thought Maxine Ward, my favorite massage therapist could use the space for her practice. I gave the info to Maxine, but held on to it myself. It tickled my mind somewhere — I couldn’t let that paper go. I found it during a descavation (that’s to say the digging out of one’s desk under long-standing rubble). Try as I might, I couldn’t figure out how to categorize it, and I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. So, it being on a Post-It™ note, I just stuck it to my desktop almost under my keyboard — it was temporary. I’d do something with it shortly.

I did. A few days later, under the sounds of jackhammers, and exchange students with dust masks and brushes gingerly brushing the sand off the desktop, I got annoyed at said Post-It™ note. I have this wonderful saying captured from a judge from the MyDreamApp.com competition:

I welcome with open arms any tool that tries to make me more organized! But I have one reservation about this idea — and this is largely a personal problem — to me, Post-It notes are, in a way, the very opposite of organization. They’re 3 inch squares of pastel-packed institutionalized chaos, the paper product demon spawn of Lucifer himself. What starts with one simple Post-It note — “Don’t forget to e-mail Ged!” — quickly devolves into four hundred incomprehensible notes saying things like “magic beans” and “do thing”.

During the descavation, my partner Chris (yeah, Chris) laughs because I’ll find pieces of sticky note that are rendered completely undecipherable by time. The exchange student hands me something that might be useful, or beetle dung. I just exclaim “Magic Bean!” or “Do Thing!” and throw it out. My partner chuckles.

I was having a “Do Thing!” moment when looking at this note. I grabbed it, crumpled it, tossed it into the recycling with dozens of other Post-It™s. Then the little voice in my head said “Noooooo!” and it turned into a scene from Indiana Jones, with everyone rushing to the precipice of a newly uncovered chamber of some ancient Pharaoh’s tomb. I dove nearly head-first into my recycle bin and fished it out. I had it — I knew suddenly why I had been holding on to that piece of paper for Two Years. I was becoming a coach, business & life coach, and there was no way with my towers of pack-rat-itis that I’d have clients peacefully recline in my home office and tell me their dreams. No. Nope. No-way.

Suddenly the piece of paper was a string of rubies, the collar of the Pharaoh’s wife, a new sarcophagus. I could use this woman’s hourly massage room to coach clients. The heavens opened up, and pixie dust rained down on me. An epiphany.

Today she returned my call, and we’re meeting later this week. You can tell I’m a little excited.

Was this an epiphany, design of my conspiratorial subconsious, the world’s Abundance, divine design, or just a coincidence? I don’t care!! “What does it matter–you weren’t looking anyway.” (What Dreams May Come) I wrote to Cindy Marsh-Croll, professional organizer, just to let her know:

Score: 1 for being a Pack-Rat.

But then again, if it weren’t for Croll Organizing, there would have been no descavation at this site in the first place. Thank you, Cindy for teaching me that there might be some treasures, or even an ancient city, buried on my desk. I might even find Atlantis!

Note: Post-It™ is a trademark, probably registered, of its respective trademark holders and thus I didn’t manufacture or attempt to claim the label as my own….I just tried throwing it out.

Note 2: My son wants me to make another disclaimer. I disclaim my ability to make another disclaimer on his behalf. I’m just doing this because it makes him laugh.

But Molly pushed him aside and went up to the unicorn, scolding her as though she were a strayed milk cow. “Where have you been?” Before the whiteness and the shining horn, Molly shrank to a shining beetle, but this time it was the unicorn’s old dark eyes that looked down. “I am here now,” she said at last.
Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn (quote from book, link to video clip)

I moderated at an Orange County Chamber business brainstorming forum on Thursday last week with 26 people participating. It’s called “Small Business Challenges” and is touted as a peer idea generation forum. We split into tables of up to 6 people. Here’s a paraphrase of how I introduced the meeting:

To steal a phrase that may date back several hundred years: “No matter where you go, there you are.” It doesn’t really matter how we got to where we are, we’re here now. And we need to move on from here. Whether we’re in a recession, or a depression, it’s the first time we’re in this situation in the new Information Age, and just like every time it’s happened before, it’s unique unto itself. Hats off to every person who says “But this time it’s different…” because they’re right. And that’s a good reason to celebrate. Let’s make history together!

We need to think differently, start doing different things, so we can get different results. Today we’re borrowing the ideas of other people to help us to think differently about our business, to make new plans, to revise our goals. Meet your temporary board of directors sitting at your table with you. Keep an open mind and let them help you.

There are plenty experts out there, plenty books to read, but unless they know you and your particular business or industry, their advice has to remain generic. It needs to fit many other business, many other people. Today we’re here to address our specific issues, in our specific industries, within our specific situation, and figure out how to go on from here.

If you hung your coat at the coat check, please picture that you’ve hung your fear there with it. We’re not here to be angry or frightened. We’re here to move on into a new and exciting future, to marshall our considerable resources to tackle our own challenges, and to help others with our creativity.

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The feedback on the session is excellent. We’ll be tweaking the format and it will return on February 10th. If you need help before February, please consider requesting a one-on-one brainstorming session, or attend my small group brainstorming sessions in the meantime. I will gladly lead other larger business brainstorming sessions for other business organizations, have one-on-one brainstorming sessions with you, or you may come to The Crissing Link group sessions. Please see http://LiberateYourBusiness.net for more information and testimonials.

Here’s to the crazy ones.[...]Because the ones crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Apple Computers, Think Different

I’ve decided to change from a package rate to an hourly rate on logo design. A logo needs to get the job done, and a package with a set number of trial & errors is not the best deal for the client. I can still offer a flat-rate on logo design, if you really like it, but I was considering raising my price to $1000, and that punishes clients who know exactly what they want and those who communicate effectively, make quick decisions, and the times that I hit the nail on the head the first time.

I decided to stop punishing the easy logo design clients, and start rewarding them instead by charging hourly creative charges. My creative charge is $70/hour because being creative is as tough as being technical (this is the same rate for my technical skills clients). This charge is at an hour minimum, charged in 15 minute increments, rounded up. So an easy logo can cost $70, a tough case can go for several hundred dollars, and you get to choose how long you want to nitpick over details (and it’s your logo — you SHOULD nitpick over the details!!!). Designing business cards, flyers, post cards, etc. goes under this category.

So what about people who need something easier, less creative?

While it can be time consuming, some clients just need artwork cleanup rather than creatives. If you never received a clean copy of your logo design suitable for imprinted products, or scaling up, Eclectic Tech is charging less for artwork cleanup charges. In-trade (printers, promotional product consultants, screen printers, designers, etc.) the charge is $50/hour. For one-time-only clients, i.e. direct-to-consumer, I’m charging $60/hour. So please come to me if you need your logo or artwork cleaned up for a project. Most artwork doesn’t take more than hour to clean up. Half-hour minimum, charged in 15 minute increments rounded up.

If you give me anything from a vague idealistic concept of what you’re looking for through a rough sketch (back of a cocktail napkin or computer mock-up rough) of what you’re looking for, it’s a logo design charge. If you have finished artwork that just isn’t up to snuff for the project at-hand, needs a text change, a color change, etc. then it’s a “light design” charge and goes under artwork cleanup. If you already have a business card, and you want the exact same design with a change in a phone number or color, the charge is an artwork cleanup charge.

Prices may change in the future after this blog entry. Please check my website for current charges.

My first client for artwork-cleanup is Prisms Promotions — I’ve done almost a dozen cleanup projects for them, and I’ve decided to advertise the service. See my portfolio page or testimonial page for more information on who is using this service.

[tags]creative,design,economy,identity,local business,logo,money,portfolo,prices,print design[/tags]

I’m a website designer & programmer. I can work with anyone, anywhere in the world. I chose to be different and do most of my work in the local region. But like I said, that’s different. Many of my colleagues think more is better, and try to price low and gain money on quantity rather than quality, both of their clients and of their services.

When searching for a service online, I don’t care if you’re looking for website hosting, website design, logo design, custom graphics, or an alarm company (the only item in this list that I’m not providing), you probably want — or need — to know where the person is.

So how do you figure it out?

I wanted to use a specific set of examples in this post. Top-of-the-search engine results with fantastic prices, and absolutely no phone number or address to be seen on their website. Sites that ended up being in other countries. Websites with blatant grammatical errors that obviously still rake in enough cash to get to the top of Google search results on pay-per-click hot topics that are highly competitive.

But they asked me nicely to remove their website address and information from my blog. So I’m removing it. Not exactly sure what offended them about the post, as they were only a live example and it was true that they were in a foreign country, but I’ll remove it to keep the peace.

Some cliches exist for a reason. “You get what you pay for” is one of them. In a vast sea of choices and no education, people choose the products by lowest price. There’s either too much information, or not enough, to educate the consumer into making informed choices.

There are real dangers in sending your money to a foreign corporation. They can be of the most stellar reputation, 100% honest, hard-working people, but you are still never afforded the same protections and conveniences you have working with someone in the same town or at least the same state. It is much less convenient to do business out-of-state, or out-of-the-country. If it’s out-of-state you have the additional complications of figuring out which state/jurisdiction to interpret your contract in, and where you have to travel to in order to arbitrate disputes. In foreign matters, unless you have the type of money it takes to go to International court, you don’t have legal protections no matter what the contract says.

If you are going to a local company, you can check their mailing address, their reputation, get a real referral from someone you know to someone you know you can trust. You can track their professional affiliations, check the Better Business Bureau to see if there are complaints against them. And more.

So how do you figure out who people really are? There is a database that stores their legal domain registration information. There is real consideration to abolishing this information on the web, but in the meantime the more of us who are using it for legitimate reasons (to check on the idenitity of a service before purchase) the better. This database is accessible at http://www.whois.net/

If you enter theirdomainname.com into Whois you can see their registration record. Enter “theirdomainname” in the field for looking up domain registration data. Make sure the right suffix is selected (“.com”) and click GO!

Not all domains show legal registration information online. The domain owner can hide that information by paying their domain registrar a few extra bucks to make even that anonymous…. Then you need to get into some website gymnastics to figure out who these people are, and I am not sure it’s worthwhile. If they’re hiding, maybe they have something to hide. More often, though, people are banking on ignorance. This blog post is to help some people wake up and smell the scandal. The flip side of this idea: If you run a legitimate business, you should not be anonymous on the web, and prospective clients shouldn’t need to resort to the “whois database” method above, just to figure out where you’re located. I get a few junk mails and a junk fax or 3 for having my information up — the worst is the domain-registration related spam, but that’s a hazard of doing legit business on the web.

I suggest you look at people’s Contact Us page and check that their information matches their WhoIs registration — check their professional affiliations and their memberships in local chambers of commerce. Ask if there have been any complaints against them.

If you’re in the local region, you could ask for a face-to-face with the person you’re doing business with. The only way to see eye-to-eye on any project is to actually be able to look someone in the face.

Moral: You pay for what you get.

Good luck!

There is an awful lot of clutter on the web. There ought to be a fine for littering in cyberspace. You’ve seen the kind of junk I’m talking about here and there: content that is there for the sole benefit of search engines, such as white keyword text on a white background, people who spam in blog comments, and even the harmless pages of nonsense that grows like weeds on each of our websites.

In June I tightened ship on my own website. I’ve implemented some new security on the blog software, notably reCAPTCHA, a captcha project by Carnegie Mellon University. Captchas use images containing distorted text that you have to re-type into a form field. The reCAPTCHA project uses portions of scanned/OCR’d books that failed to be recognized easily by computers to test users. Once the text is verified to be read by a human, it helps add books to electronic libraries. So using this method not only foils spammers, but helps with online literature projects.

I’m also working on editing down my website. I am guilty of using my ability to create web pages so easily as an opportunity to be too wordy. Some websites don’t have enough information, and you leave disappointed that you couldn’t find what you needed to know. Others are too wordy: “Welcome to (this website). We’re so glad you came… have a seat. Would you like some tea while you’re waiting for real content? The bathroom is down the hall.” I’m guilty as charged, in a court of my own self-examination.

I altered the navigation on the site, so it should hopefully make more sense to someone at least passingly familiar with websites. I started out with really obscure labels for the links, now I’m back down to the basics. Practice what I preach: I’m always telling my clients what should be on their homepage, how their navigation should be labeled. I have finally followed my own advice.

As a new service, I’m helping clients with their website “talk” — a website needs to be the executive summary of a longer proposition. The longer proposition can be there, behind the scenes, and you can bring on the content in layers that are carefully crafted to build detail into the subject. However, people don’t need to be hit over the head with a heavy sales pitch, proposal, or autobiography from the get-go.

Tightening up the wording, reducing babble, using bullet lists for main points, taking advantage of proper linking, and proper keyword integration.

People don’t have time to sit through a long reading: they came with something in mind, even if it was just to learn more about you, and then they’re going to go on to the next thing in their life. I’m working on other ways to increase website traffic to my client’s site other than the stinking, lying, cheating ways that some search engine optimization businesses have taken up. It’s a definite art, and it’s easier to do on content that you didn’t write yourself, so for me it’s slow going between projects, and for clients, hopefully it won’t be as slow and inconsistent.

Some of my new philosophies about optimization of websites were covered in my second workshop at the QED Business Edge conference yesterday: “Who’s your website for?” It went over well. More about it later.

Because I’m expanding my business into content development and website planning, I’m starting to subcontract some design work out so I can make room for adding new services to my business. To see what this looks like, see the Rhthym and Rhyme Childcare and Simply FlawlessFaces websites.

Liberate Your Website (part 1)

I’ve come to realize that people aren’t “getting it” when I tell them that my websites are “easy to edit” so I’ve created a movie (6 minutes 10 seconds) to demo it.

It isn’t one of those build-your-website applications you always see on the web — those force you to do all the dirty work and BOY can you break the website, create some hideous Frankenstein-monster website contraption that frightens away clients.

No, that’s not at all what this is.

You can’t really break the website when you use this application. Maybe you can make some poor content design choices, such as making all your content text bold, or italic, so that you have no means left with which to emphasize a word. Maybe you can type in all caps, make everything on the page a headline, etc. But you aren’t playing with the design, only the content, of your website, and changing styles and colors is not an accident.

So, take a look at the demo and see how this is a simple CONTENT management system, and don’t frighten your clients away anymore! In the demo movie — which is only 6 minutes! — I play with several real live websites, so you can see how easy it is to edit your own content. In 6 minutes I could hardly explain to a web designer what I want them to change on a website; I’d rather do it through the Easy-to-Edit system. That’s why all my websites are using this system: in spite of being a web designer, I want to have a quick and easy way to add and edit website content on my sites.

Design in many fields is a process of creating something functional within an aesthetic guideline.

Art, on the other hand, is the path of taking a creative means to an aesthetic and evocative end.

Both certainly use aesthetics as heavy influences in their end goal, but on a practical level the two are quite different.

A design should be objectively judged against its function. A piece of art should be subjectively judged against one’s aesthetic values. In a proper design course in school, one is given hard criteria against which your project is defined for a grade. In a proper art class, you are graded mainly on effort and applied techniques, not on the subjective judgement of the aesthetics of the finished works.

Better put perhaps is to give an example: A beautiful fountain is designed, a classical sculpture is art. If the fountain does not allow water to flow, the fountain ceases to be a fountain. All parameters in creating the fountain must take into account that the end goal is that the fountain shall allow water to flow and all aesthetic considerations must account for the end function of the fountain. A sculpture has no such boundaries, and the only end use is aesthetics alone. Note I have to set aside mechanical and functional sculptures — these are design not art

You can have an artist create a logo, but it may not, in the end, function as a logo. It may be a very beautiful illustration, but if it does not meet the functional parameters of a logo, it will be an illustration — a work of art — and not something identifying a corporate brand.

It is a generally accepted thought that art can be liked or disliked, but is not WRONG. It may be considered skilled, unskilled, “pretty” or “ugly,” but it is not judged against a defined set of functional criteria. I don’t hold my designs against the criteria of “art”. My designs can be wrong, if their form does not facilitate their function. If their form does not facilitate their function, they’re unfinished, or need to be re-thought-out.

If you purchase a finished painting, it is bad form to request correction or changes. The art is “done”. Design should not be fully purchased until it is done. And for it to be done it must fulfill its functional parameters.

When you purchase a web design or a logo design from Eclectic Tech, you’re not purchasing art — I’m an occasionally inspired artist, but I’m not an exceptionally skilled or talented artist. You’re purchasing a design, and I have inspiration, talent and skill in design — in seeing the functional parameters and applying inspiration towards aesthetics while always testing the overall function against the parameters required.

[tags]creative,design,education,essay,identity,information,inspiration,logo,planning[/tags]

It seems that many customers who come to me have not planned their website or print project. My normal flat-fee prices don’t include this time-intensive service. I would really have to get into the company in question, to almost become a temporary staff member, to plan out their website for them from soup-to-nuts.

I’m now offering project planning services, both for website design, content and feature planning, and for print design campaigns and marketing strategies. My usual services require design briefs, copy (content), assets (photos, logos, multimedia, and all other materials) and a list of features provided up-front. I will provide only cursory project planning assistance, guidance, or advice during project intake. I will not write for you, research for you, draw up diagrams, etc.

What my project planning services will provide will depend on each company’s needs and budget. Prices will start at $100 for something relatively simple like site diagramming and navigation planning, and from there the sky’s the limit; you tell me your budget, and I’ll come up with a list of what services your budget allows for, or you give me a list of the services you’re looking for, and I’ll come up with a price. Or we can do hourly rates, I’ll come on-site, and I’ll become a member of the project team.

Services may include:

• Serving in the capacity of a knowledgable aide in the process of project planning
• Company profiling
• Supplying principles or relevant persons with questionnaires for the project
• Corporate history review
• Mission statement assistance
• Research into your competitors marketing materials or website
• Market research for design related to your specific industry
• Review of your current marketing strategy, advertising, materials, website, etc.
• Business marketing development
• Content planning
• Feature planning
• Step-by-step planning of a website or printing campaign
• Website navigation and hierarchy planning
• Guiding your representatives through the creation of an RFP or design brief
• Suggestions for assets or copy to be included in the project
• Composition of a creative brief on your behalf
• Storyboards, mockups, thumbnails, or sketches
• Composition of custom color schemes for the project
• Stock photography, font, or clip art research
• Copy editing, and review or copy writing
• Acquiring permissions or releases for included materials
• Supplying lists of materials to submit to Eclectic Tech or other contractors

If you choose to use another vendor to complete the project outlined, I can offer:

• Overseeing project progress and resolution, quality control, communication with vendors
• Vendor research (printers, programmers, designers, etc.)
• Supply vendors with materials for the project

These services don’t alleviate the principles of your organization from their responsibilities in project planning: I will need to interview them, acquire lists of materials, names to get releases for photography, a company history, supply of old marketing materials, and more. What this does is add another member to your web design team who is knowledgeable, insightful, and entirely dedicated to the one project, which allows your principles to concentrate on other projects with the assurance that if something is needed from them, it will be brought to their attention.

[tags]planning,education,information,news,print design,time,web applications, web standards,writing[/tags]

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.

[tags]blog,open source,easy-to-edit,prices,programming,sale,web applications,writing[/tags]